In the Unlikely Event by L.J. Shen

Present

Rory

“May I help you?” the little girl asks from the doorway, her voice honey sweet and soft. She has the most glorious hair. Deep brown, but not quite as dark as her father’s.

Her. Father’s.

See also: My husband.

See also: The man who hid the truth about his daughter from me.

That was one of the first things I asked him when we met in New York again, when he threw his marriage to Kathleen in my face.

“Children?”

“No.”

He didn’t even hesitate. The answer was flat, like the void behind his pretty eyes. But there’s no way this kid is anyone else’s. She is a perfect blend of Kathleen and Mal. Suddenly, I’m hit with the awful, complicated truth. He kept this secret from me, even after he married me. His true family was something he never planned to share. He didn’t trust me enough to tell me he was a father. He thought I’d leave him if I found out, if he ever did care enough about us to want me to stay.

I wouldn’t leave a single father. But I sure as hell would dump a compulsive, dirty liar.

All the times he disappeared. The birthday party. The glitter. The tiny, fake diamond earring tucked between grass blades in the backyard. The rush to head back to Tolka when we were in Greece. All because of his baby girl.

A mixture of anger, frustration, and overwhelming protectiveness toward this kid, who never knew her mother, swirls in my stomach. And guilt. So much guilt, for a reason I cannot pinpoint right now.

I offer her a little wave.

Say something. Anything. You are probably freaking her out.

“Um, hi?”

Not that, you idiot.

“You look like a princess.” She giggles, covering her little mouth.

How old is she? I’m guessing seven at most. Maybe six. Jesus, this cuts it close to the entire napkin ordeal. Is it possible she was conceived that soon after I left?

“That’s because I am.” I plant my fists on my waist.

“You are?” Her eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets.

“Well, kind of. My name is Aurora Belle. I came here because I heard there’s another princess living in this village—a prettier one I must meet. Guess I found her.” A lopsided grin appears on my face.

She chuckles with delight, cupping one of her cheeks to hide her blush. My heart squeezes in my chest. Her smile is dimpled. Neither Mal nor Kathleen had dimples. They were probably given to her by the almighty, to remind her she should smile despite her circumstances.

“You came to the wrong address. I’m no princess; I’m just Tamsin.”

Tamsin.

“Tamsin! Yes! That’s the girl I was looking for.” I produce my planner from my backpack, opening to a random page and nodding vehemently. “Yup. There you are. Princess Tamsin of Tolka. Everybody is talking about you back in our kingdom. They say you are the sweetest, kindest princess in all of Ireland.”

If she could burst glitter right now, she would. She jumps up and down, clapping her hands, and that’s when I realize what she is wearing: cowboy boots, a little leather jacket like her daddy’s, and a pink dress. Her sense of style is all over the place. I like that so much about her. And I hate her dad so much right now for not giving me enough credit to know I could easily love her.

“Would you like to come in?” she asks, taking a step aside.

“Why don’t you call your grandfather and ask him if I can?” I smile nervously, tucking the planner back into my backpack.

“Grandpa-great is not here yet. He comes shortly before teatime, which means in just a bit. Grandma’s here. Would you like me to call her?”

“Oh, that’s not necessary. I’ll come ba…”

“Nana!” Tamsin’s mouth opens to the shape of an egg, producing a shriek that could cause the earth to move. “Na-naaaaa!”

Before I find a good hole in the ground to swallow me into the next dimension, a woman appears at the door. She looks nothing like Mal—not even a little—which makes me suspect the worst. My suspicions turn out to be correct when she opens her mouth.

“Aurora, you said?” She wipes her hands on a paper towel, as if sullied by my presence.

She looks old enough to be my mother—not quite Father Doherty’s age. Ireland is not exactly full of priests who live in sin with women who look like they want to burn me alive, so I’m guessing this is Kathleen’s mother, who lives with Father Doherty and Mal’s mother.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m here to see Father Doherty.”

“Tamsin.” She pats the little girl’s chubby cheek with one hand, her eyes still zeroing in on me. “Go get your room tidy before supper.”

“But I want to stay with Princess Au…”

“Off you go,” she quips, and Tamsin scurries away into a house that looks newly refurbished, extremely spacious, and plush. Nothing like Mal’s modest crib.

The woman throws a warning finger in my face. “I knew you would eventually come back. We don’t have your money. Everything you see here Malachy paid for. Your drunken sod of a father wasn’t half as rich as he made his harem of flings believe.”

Whoa. I can see where Kathleen got her cut-a-bitch streak. Kathleen’s mother could teach mobsters a thing or two about tough talk.

“I’m not here because of Glen. I’m here on a work assignment. You don’t have to believe me, but it’s the truth. And while I’m here, I’d appreciate exchanging a few words with Father Doherty.”

I leave my marriage to Mal out because I still feel like an outsider, a pariah, an interloper in this village. And also because she lost her daughter. Grief is a fiend. It takes over swiftly, then makes you do and say things your normal self would not even think about.

“Whatever the reason you’re here, I’m telling you to leave. My granddaughter was never supposed to meet you. That was the deal we had with Mal. He promised us. It’s bad enough you’re probably warming his bed—”

“Well, I’m not looking for Mal. I’m looking for Father Doherty. Please tell him to meet me at The Boar’s Head in two hours. If you do, I promise I will never bother you and your granddaughter ever again.”

Knowing that the message will be passed, that Kathleen’s mother would never give up a chance to see me gone, I turn on my heel and leave.

Mal

There’s no good way to offhandedly mention to your wife that, by the way, you have a seven-year-old daughter, and oops, her mother was her dead half-sister who absolutely loathed her. Oh, and just for the record, you are ninety-nine percent sure Tamsin (the daughter—see? already getting ahead of myself) was conceived when you were drunk off your arse and raped.

Yet Mam’s surprise visit, paired with the fact that Rory is understandably starting to lose patience with me, plus that little, nagging thing called my conscience, means I’m going to tell her tonight.

I play the inevitable conversation in my head as I park my coughing, five-hundred-year-old car in front of the cottage. The fact that Rory married me and not Shiny Boyfriend without knowing I make seven figures annually only multiplied my love for her to dangerous quantities I’m not sure my heart can contain.

“Hey, darlin’, what do you fancy eating tonight? I’m thinking risotto, wine, and you. Oh, by the way, I have a kid.”

Though, maybe it’s best to warm her up with some good news.

“Hello, Princess. Did you know I’m busking as a hobby and am actually a reluctant millionaire? I have a lot of fun facts in store for you. Here’s another one—I’m a father.”

I push the door open, my hands full of presents for Rory and Tamsin. I got Rory chocolate and vintage CDs of the Irish music she likes, and Tamsin a princess dress and…what the feck?

Rory’s in the living room, stuffing her belongings into her handbag. Her suitcase appears to already be fully packed and standing at the door like an impatient mother, waiting. She has her phone pinned between her shoulder and ear as she struggles to fit her scarf into her purse—she’s always cold when she’s away from me; why can’t she understand that?—and she is growling into the phone.

“I don’t care what vehicle. You can send a freaking donkey, and I’ll ride it out of here.” Pause. “Yes, sir, I know that’s not the business you’re in. My point is, I just need to get the hell away from this place as soon as possible. Please. Honk when you arrive.”

She lets the phone drop to her hand and kills the call. She mumbles something incoherent about calling her mother and punches the screen when I clear my throat.

“Are we going on a honeymoon?” I ask, unloading my hands on the breakfast nook in front of her.

Stay cool. There might be a logical reason for her packing.

She looks up and scowls, like she wasn’t expecting me. Then she takes a step back, as if I’m going to strike her.

“You scared me.” She tugs the scarf out of her purse and throws it over her shoulders, getting ready to leave.

“Right now, I could say the same about you,” I hiss through gritted teeth, doing everything in my power not to launch at her.

I’m not stupid. I knew from the get-go this had a very low percent chance of ever working out.

Still.

Still.

You fall in love with a girl named after two Disney princesses, and you believe in the unbelievable, because…well, Disney and shit.

She folds her arms over her chest.

Uh-huh. This can only mean pissed-off Rory, and that can only mean run for shelter.

“What’s going on?” I round the nook toward her, but she raises one hand to stop me.

“I ran across someone interesting today.”

“You did?” I play along.

She nods.

I say nothing, because I have a bad feeling, and there’s something clogging my throat, probably the amount of confessions I should have spat out to her a long time ago.

She takes a step toward me. “Someone you know very well. A little girl called Tamsin. Ring a bell?”

My mouth goes dry. What can I say to this? That I refused to talk to her about Tamsin because I didn’t think I’d fall in love with her again? That I hadn’t realized I never fell out of love with her in the first place?

That at first, I was simply protecting my daughter from her and Richards and their urban, heathen lifestyle by sending her off to live with her grandparents while I worked on this project—oh, and also on ruining her life?

That the secret, locked room actually belongs to Tam, and it’s beautiful, and so is she, and the house is normally on point, because I raise her alone, just the two of us? That I was mad that she got near it because I was so protective of Tam, even when she wasn’t physically in the room? That I messed up the house in advance to make her experience crappy, leaving Tamsin’s pristine room untouched.

That by the time I realized she could be mine, it was too late? The lie had grown too big, too threatening, and I was running like a headless chicken between my lover and my daughter?

Does she even want to listen?

“Cute kid, by the way.” Rory shrugs, making a show of looking like she doesn’t care. “Then I was informed by your mother-in-law that I am a monster.”

She is a hurricane, and I’m pushing against the storm when I stride toward her, wanting to explain myself, but she shoves me away and stalks toward the door. I jump in front of her and block her way, plastering my back to the closed door.

“Let me explain.”

She throws her head back and laughs, not an ounce of humor in her voice. “What’s to explain? That you’re a liar? That you’re a fraud? That you’re a shitty dad for sending your daughter to live with relatives while you screw your new wife, living the perfect double life?”

When she puts it like that, it does seem impossible to find justification for the clusterfuck I’ve created with my own hands (and cock). But it’s not that simple. I know this well, because I walked into this thing demanding revenge, but I never planned to take it this far.

Honestly, I thought Rory would be long gone. I expected her to quit.

“Rory…”

A car honks outside our door. Rory throws up her arms with faux delight.

“That’s my carriage, as you like to charmingly put it. I’ll see that our equally enchanting divorce papers hit your mail in a timely manner. Hey, Mal, remember our conversation about epic romance movies?”

I glower.

She is making fun of the breakdown of our marriage. No matter the fact that I was stupid enough to cause it, and she is clearly pissed off, I’m still finding it difficult to watch her shitting all over what we have.

Rory doesn’t wait for me to answer, making a show of bypassing me and throwing the door open. She stands on the threshold as she delivers her last line.

“You said all great romance movies have a scene where the woman drives the man. Here’s an unscripted twist: our romantic, amazing, sweet, perfect movie was a parody. Bravo.” She claps, taking a little bow. “You won the Razzie for this one, Mal. It really was that bad.”

Then she takes out the napkin—our napkin with the contract—from her bag and rips it to shreds in front of me, throwing the pieces in the air and watching them float down like confetti.

“The contract was dumb. So were we. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe it’s in my DNA to attract lying asshats. But if I have to thank you for one thing, Malachy Doherty, it’s for opening my eyes to the fact that Callum was just as big a douchebag as you are. Congratulations. You’re just as bad as—what did you call him? Shiny Boyfriend? Make sure you give him a call and invite him next time you’re on the prowl.”

With that, she slams the door in my face and leaves.

Rory

Still reeling from finding out my husband has a secret daughter, and that he promised his family he’d keep me away, I show up just in time for my emergency meeting with Father Doherty at The Boar’s Head.

He is already there when I arrive, twiddling his thumbs and glancing left and right, like he’s committing some sort of crime. When I slide into the booth, he stands up and stares at the table, hard.

“On one hand, it is highly frowned upon for me to socialize with women of your age, publicly or otherwise. Especially at a pub. On the other, I am deeply worried for your wellbeing in Mal’s house when both Elaine and Lara are in Tolka.”

“Which one is which?” I plop down on the wooden seat opposite to him, cradling my tall glass of water. I don’t mention that I will no longer be staying at Mal’s house.

“Elaine is Kathleen’s mam; Lara is Mal’s.”

I didn’t even know my mother-in-law’s name, and just found out she’d likely to stab me in the eye before shaking my hand. What a wonderful start to obviously long-term marital bliss.

I rub a drop of water on the table, back and forth, wondering how this day could possibly get any worse. Of course, I believe it can. Today hasn’t met a negative challenge it couldn’t conquer. I wouldn’t be surprised if a UFO kidnapped me on my way to the airport to perform a full rectal examination on me, sending me back to Earth with nothing but lubricated ass cheeks, anal scars, and a T-shirt that says “My Wife Went to Kepler-22b and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.”

“I’m guessing they both hate me.” I frown at my drink, because examining Father Doherty’s face is too painful.

He says nothing to that.

I should really get what I’m here for and move along. There’s a flight to New York in four hours, and I don’t want to miss it or I’ll have to stay another day.

Mal hasn’t kept something small from me. He kept an entire child, with personality and freckles and purple eyes and hobbies. And she’s my niece. My half-sister’s child. Why do people insist on hiding things from me?

Mom.

Father Doherty.

Mal.

Summer and Callum.

“Father?” I slant my head. “Is there anything more unholy than preventing justice? The truth is all around me. If I don’t get your version of things, I’ll get Ms. Patel’s. Or Maeve and Heather’s. Or Mal’s, eventually. We both know I’ll get a far worse version from any of them, or at the very least, not as accurate as yours.”

“I promised your—”

“Mother?” I arch an eyebrow, mustering the courage to lie to a priest. If I burst into flames right on the spot, I will only have myself to blame. “She told me her side of the story.”

“She did?” His eyes flare.

Bingo. They are in this together. I decide to run with the only thing I have. It’s a shot in the dark, but on the off-chance it’s a memory and not just a dream, I fire it out.

“Yeah. How she was here. How she ran with me.”

My heart is beating so hard and loud in my chest, I’m surprised he doesn’t hear it. Maybe he does, and he wants to spare me the embarrassment. It was just a dream. A nightmare of sorts. But it seemed so real.

To my surprise, Father Doherty plants his head inside his palms and bursts into tears—the gut-tearing sound of a mewling animal being ripped to shreds by a pack of coyotes.

“Please forgive us. All of us.”

“Tell me.” I lean down, careful not to touch him as I beg for more of his words. “Everything. Please. Don’t I deserve to know? There’s a chunk in my life—the first chunk, the most important chunk—that’s missing, and nobody here is telling me anything.”

My voice sounds so urgent, so crisp, so wild, I scare even myself. I sound unhinged.

He looks up and exhales sharply. “I don’t know how much your mother has told you.”

“Then tell me everything. From the beginning.”

“When you weren’t even a year old, she decided to take a leap and give in to your father’s pleas to come to Ireland and try to work things out. She was lonely here. An outcast. She came to church often. Less to confess, more to…vent, I suppose. She told me—outside of the confession booth, of course—that two things brought her here. She wanted to try to help Glen get sober, but even more important, she didn’t want it on her conscience to have you live without a father knowing she didn’t even try. She moved in with him and they became—how do you call it?—an instant family, making Kathleen and her mother take the backseat in Glen’s life.”

Molten ache seeps under my skin. I had no idea Mom came here. I had no idea she ever set foot in Ireland. Why wouldn’t she tell me? Seems like the kind of thing she would gloat about. “Look. I tried.” Yet, she never mentioned it, even though she knew it would put her in a positive light.

“Continue.”

“Things weren’t easy for the couple. Glen struggled to stay sober for more than a few hours. Your mother felt lonely and isolated. She tried to befriend some of the village women, but naturally, they felt loyal to Elaine, who was absolutely devastated. Elaine—Kathleen’s mam—had held on to the hope she’d reunite with Glen for years after Kathleen was conceived. Debbie took this hope from her. Or so she felt.”

I realize he is saying this about a woman with whom he lives and is probably fond of. I refrain from letting a string of profanities exit my mouth.

“Okay,” I say, my heart pounding fast. “Then what happened?”

Father Doherty stares down at his hands on the table, like they’ve committed some sort of horrible crime.

“Your mother came to me one day and told me she would like to leave and take you back to America, that things had not worked out so well between her and Glen. That was no secret. She said he’d been verbally abusive and prevented her from going out with you three separate times, accusing her of flirting with the villagers. We had a lengthy discussion, during which I gave her my opinion on the matter. Principally, that families should remain together and that she should consider encouraging Glen to try harder, perhaps by agreeing to his marriage proposal.”

I bite my lower lip. My mother was in an abusive relationship with my father, here in Ireland. And I gave her hell for putting a buffer between him and me.

“Then the weight of my words crashed down on me.” Father Doherty’s lower lip trembles, and he chokes on a sob that never quite makes it out of his throat. “She went back to Glen that day and told him she was willing to marry him if he went to rehab. He said she’d been nagging him for months and that he liked the drink better than he liked her. He sent her on her way. Debbie was relieved to leave. She tried to take you, but he wouldn’t let her—said you were going to stay with him because you didn’t need a pesky mother like her.

“They almost tore your limbs fighting over you, snatching you from each other. You were only a year old at the time, still so fragile. Finally, your mother took you. She gathered your passports and her bag and flew out the door. Glen grabbed a bottle of whiskey and threw it at her. Luckily, he missed. But the glass shattered against the wall and part of it…part of it…”

He swallows, his eyes shifting to the scar on my temple.

The one my mother told me I was born with.

Everything inside me shatters. Glen did this to me. He gave me this scar. Father Doherty squeezes his eyes shut, and when he opens them again, a zing of determination flashes through them.

“It cut you open. You were bleeding badly, and it was close to your eye. The blood came gushing out. I remember getting to their house shortly after the incident and throwing up from all the blood, which I knew belonged to an innocent baby. But Glen wasn’t shocked by what he’d done. He was too far gone, too drunk to realize his actions. He started chasing after your mother, who took off with you in her arms. She ran up the road on Main Street, toward the entrance of the town, to try to catch a cab to the hospital. He raced after her. People on the street noticed. They thought your mother was running away with you. She didn’t have the best reputation in Tolka. She was seen as the woman who came for the man Elaine had pined for all those years. Some of them ran after him and her, to see what went on.”

“The gray squirrel,” I say quietly.

He nods, his eyes telling me I’ve gotten exactly what he meant all those years ago.

A flashback of my dream shoots like an arrow through my head.

The mob.

Chasing after my mother.

With me, bleeding in her arms.

Father Doherty drops his head to his hands again. “I was looking for your mother at the exact same time she was running from him. First, I made a stop at Glen’s. When I saw the blood, I ran out and drove around the village, and when I found you, I immediately stopped my car and let your mother in. We drove to the hospital. The entire journey, I apologized for giving her the wrong advice instead of shelter.”

I rub my eyes, trying to keep myself together. It’s difficult, especially when I want to cry for my mom as much as for myself.

“It doesn’t make any sense.” I shake my head. “She always told me she’s never been to Ireland.”

“She wanted to protect you from the truth, to keep your scars minimal—on the surface—and make sure they only marred your skin, not your heart. She didn’t want you to know who your father really was that day. And after the incident, when you were discharged and Debbie went back to New Jersey, Glen was prosecuted and jailed for a couple years. He got sober in prison, but it didn’t last quite as long as we’d hoped. The time inside changed him, though. He no longer wanted anything to do with—”

“My mother and me?” I finish for him.

I have so much hatred for Glen right now, I’m afraid I’m capable of digging up his grave just so I can kill him all over again. My poor mom. She dealt with everything all by herself.

And let me think she was the coldhearted one between them.

“Well, yes.” Father Doherty rubs his cheek, embarrassed on Glen’s behalf.

“I don’t understand any of this. Then why did my mother show me letters and gifts from him every birthday and Christmas? He always gave me the thoughtful presents. The ones that meant something.”

“It was important to your mother to make you believe you meant something to him. She took the role of the martyr, even though it killed her. She took the blame for the fact that you and your father weren’t in contact, not wanting you to feel rejected by Glen. She gathered the letters you sent him, read them, and made sure you thought he bought you all the things you wanted. But she was the one doing all the buying. And when you asked something that was specific to Ireland—a chocolate bar or Irish music—I’d buy it for you, and your mother would pay me back, despite my refusal to accept her money.”

“She wrote the letters on his behalf?” My eyes flare.

He nods solemnly.

“And the child support?”

Father Doherty shakes his head.

Jesus. Glen didn’t pay. It was just Mom and me.

He sighs. “She only wanted the best for you. She would send me your gifts, spending hundreds of dollars a year, so I could send them back to you and have it appear completely authentic.”

I remember the Irish stamps, the wrinkly boxes that put butterflies in my stomach. I’ve never wanted to hug my mother tighter. A rush of sympathy for her courses through me. She’s been through so much, and I’ve been a brat to her. The entire time, I thought she was jealous of the relationship I wanted to have with Glen.

“Is that why Kathleen hated me so much? Because I took her father, monopolized his time, then sent him to jail for a while?”

He sighs again, evidently feeling the strain of having to admit just how awful the man who left me his DNA and a mountain of daddy issues was.

“Kathleen was desperate for love. Always had been. Feeling loved was a need for her akin to breathing. Glen limited their communication to Sunday visits, and even then, he took more interest in Mal and his music than in her. But Kathleen wasn’t jealous of Mal. She’d always loved that boy, since they were wee babies. In her head, I suppose, it was the easiest to blame you. Then, when you visited here after he died, she was worried you showed up solely for the inheritance. Your mother sent me a letter informing me of your arrival, so I waited for you. When we met, I wanted to keep you as far away from Kathleen as I could. I sent you to Mal, after warning him never to tell you the truth about Glen and your scar. But then you both went to Kathleen, and she realized not only did you take her father, you were also about to take the lad she’d been in love with since birth.”

“Hold on.” I lift a hand. “Mal was aware of all of this? He knew this when I came here at eighteen?”

But, of course, he knew. If Maeve and Heather knew my story—and they didn’t even have the slightest business knowing me—how could Mal not?

By the pained look on Father Doherty’s face, I realize he did not think this implication through.

“He didn’t mean…”

“I have to go.” I dart up, my throat itching with the ball of tears lodged inside it. No truer words have ever been spoken by me. I have to leave. Not just The Boar’s Head, but Tolka, too. I have to leave Ireland behind. Every green, rolling hill, charming, cobblestoned pathway, and red door is haunting me.

I have to listen to my mother, who’s been telling me, begging me, warning me about this place. Telling me to run away and never look back. Maybe I can get the marriage with Mal annulled. It hasn’t even been a week.

Mal. Mal, Mal, Mal.

A secret daughter.

The truth about my father.

The lying, deceiving, manipulative piece of—

“Wait!” Father Doherty rises to his feet, staggering forward, holding on to the edges of the table. He’s so frail that he groans involuntarily as he does. He puts his hand on his lower back, wheezing.

I stop, my shoulders sagging. “Do you need me to call you a cab?” I ask, my voice softening.

He shakes his head. “Please don’t be mad at him. He just did as he was told. He, like your mother, like myself, didn’t want the truth to consume you, to have your past dictate your future.”

With all due respect, Father Doherty sounds like a fortune cookie. I’m not going to accept this excuse.

“It’s not for him to decide what I should or shouldn’t know. Or for you. Or for her. For anyone.” I let out a feral yelp, throwing my hands in the air.

All heads in the pub snap toward me, and I turn my volume down a notch, leaning forward and whispering hotly, “No one ever appointed Mal to be my Prince Charming, and if he were such thing to me, he’d be doing a crappy job. I deserved to know. I came to him begging for answers. He lured me into his net and made me think it was of my own free will. I never would have…”

Slept with him had I been up to speed on what my father had done.

Let him hold me all night.

Fallen in love with him.

My relationship with Mal would have been completely different, had he told me the truth when I met him the first time.

Then something else occurs to me.

“Tell me, Father, did Tamsin celebrate her birthday recently?”

The glitter.

The cake Mal baked.

The present.

Father Doherty showing up at Ms. Patel’s newsagents unexpectedly, buying booze.

Of course, that’s another event I was shunned from because I’m the daughter of the devil—the devil whose only crime was trying to save me from my father.

“Yes.” He tucks his chin, staring at his shoes. “Her seventh.”

“I see.”

For the first time in my life, I can say this with certainty. I do see. And as precious as Tamsin is, I cannot afford to stick around and watch her grow.

“Are you going to need that cab?”

Even I flinch at the callousness of my voice. This man is pushing eighty-five. I have no business talking to him like this. He coils his fingers over the table, still unable to lift his gaze and meet mine.

“Oh, Rory. My dear Rory. Your mother didn’t tell you anything, did she? She never would.”

I purse my lips, staring down at my Toms, like a punished kid.

Please don’t light me on fire, God.

Father Doherty eyes my suitcase by the table, finds the courage to look at me, and speaks.

“Don’t go. Don’t leave for America. If you go, you will only lash out at Debbie, and she doesn’t deserve it. She loves you so much, Aurora. She always tried to protect you from everything surrounding Glen. I remember when she named you, she sent me a letter, explaining why she chose those names for you. Because she wanted you to have the fairytale, something perfect and uncomplicated. She never wanted all this mess to touch you.”

“Yet it did,” I seethe, feeling my teeth grind against one another.

He wipes his tears with the base of his thumb, sniffing.

“It most certainly caught up with me, and blew up in my face.”

Mal

The best (and perhaps only good) part of being from a small town is that people look out for you. Fifteen minutes after Rory stormed out, while I paced a hole in the floor trying to figure out my next move, I got a ring from my barman Dermot at The Boar’s Head, letting me know my grandfather was having a lively conversation with a young woman.

Mywoman.

I run to my car and drive like a rabid dog after snapping back to reality. I throw it in park without turning off the engine and look up to see her getting into a cab. The vehicle is an ugly, seventies Renault that coughs its way down the road. Rory is in such a rush to leave, she didn’t want to wait for a decent ride.

This is how much she hates you.

I run, motioning to my wife to lower her window, and guard, and feck—will she just listen?

Rory pretends I don’t exist, staring straight ahead at the back of the driver’s seat, her sunglasses perched on the tip of her button nose. I rap on the window with my fist, coughing out fifteen years’ worth of sex as my sole physical activity.

“Slow. Down.”

My request falls on deaf ears.

“The hell with you, woman.” I slap the roof of the car, and the driver speeds up in response, so I run even faster. (Who in their right mind does this for fun?)

I can’t let her go. Well, I guess technically I can. Perhaps I even should, but I won’t. Not without a fight. And she needs to learn the entire truth, even if it rips us both to shreds.

“I didn’t tell you about Glen because I was sworn to secrecy. Because look at you—you’re devastated. Because I knew, selfishly, that if you found out about Glen, you wouldn’t have room in your heart to fall in love with me eight years ago. Which you did, Rory. We fell in love in less than twenty-four hours. And it took us less than a week, almost a decade later…”

I slap my hands on my knees and pant, sucking in as much oxygen as I can, before resuming my chase. She is still staring at the back of the driver’s seat as if it’s the most mesmerizing thing since fiberglass manufacturing. (No, seriously. Look it up on Google. It’s fantastic.)

“…to remember how we can’t live apart. Not really. Exist, maybe, but not live. And it’s not like I completely shielded you from the truth. Trust me, I battled this shite internally. I did. That’s why I took you to Kathleen. It was my coin-flipping moment. I told myself if you really were meant to know, she’d tell you the truth. She didn’t, Rory.”

She still gives me nothing.

“Yes, I fecked up. Yes, I kept the truth from you. About you. About me. But none of it was because I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to protect you. To shield you from the past. It’s called past because it passed! We have a present, Rory. A future.”

Her nose twitches in annoyance. It’s the slightest movement, but it gives me hope—not that she will forgive me, but that she might be pissed enough to stop the cab, get out, and smack me in the head.

“Fine. A part of it wasn’t entirely altruistic. Of course, I wanted to feck you again when I saw you. Who wouldn’t? Look at you.”

Her nose tics under her sunglasses again, her lips folding under her teeth.

She is angry.

I’m about to make her angrier.

“Want to know if you love someone? Watch them suffer and see how much it tears you apart. Because when you were down, when you hurt, Rory, every fiber of me burned right along with you. You leaving without listening to what I have to say simply solidifies my suspicion all along: Your skin is not the only thing cold about you. Your heart is frozen, too. I loved you from the start. You, however, were always more interested in my dick and my Irishness. You really took daddy issues to a whole new level, darlin’.”

I can see her hand gripping the door handle. She barks something to the driver, and the car slows down gradually, not yet coming to a full stop. I know I’m close, so I put the final nail into the coffin. The one I was waiting to share with her on another, happier occasion.

“Oh, and another thing: That napkin you just tore apart didn’t mean jack-shit. You said you didn’t believe in kismet when we first met. I forgot to mention—neither do I. I sought you out eight years ago, after you left. I sent you letters and gifts and tried to track you down. I called your house and your mother and your dorm, trying to get to your cell number. Want to know something else? I hunted you down last year, too—saw your name on the back of a Blue Hill Records cover and put two and two together. I knew you were working for that wanker, Ryner. So I accepted his offer to write Richards an album, because I wanted you near me. It was never fate. It was never luck. I demanded to have you at my disposal, Aurora Belle Jenkins. You were a part of a package deal. It’s not fate; it’s us. From start to finish. Twisted, screwed, obsessed, destructive, wonderful us.”

The car comes to a stop, the driver punching the steering wheel with frustration. I watch as Rory bursts out the back door like fireworks, shaking her fist in my face.

“How dare you! We said no seeking each other out. You used that napkin to make me marry you! You lied!” She pushes my chest.

She is completely red, her hair a mess.

“Bullshit!” I laugh in her face, shoving her away, no longer able to tolerate anything less than the truth. “You married me not because of that stupid napkin, but because you let me shove my fingers, and a chocolate bar, and my tongue into every hole of yours I had interest in invading while you still had a boyfriend. Because that’s what we do. We run people over to get to each other. We destroy everything in our way, other than ourselves.”

The cab driver gives me a look of interest, listening with his tongue out, practically panting. Probably should’ve kept the chocolate bar bit to myself.

“You’re lying. You’ve never sought me out.” She points at me, manic.

I laugh harder. I can’t help it, because now that the truth is coming out—why not let it all out? She deserves to know what her mother did, even if it makes both her parents intolerable arseholes.

I turn around and stomp back toward my cottage (feck the car), and she follows me, because I hold the one thing she wants—the truth.

“Try again, Rory. Why do you think I hated you so much? Why do you think I married Kiki? Why do you think all the bad shit happened? I chased you around, and your mother told me you wanted nothing to do with me. She said I should move on. That you’d found another lad to keep you warm at night. She sent me the pictures you took of me, with the god-awful things you wrote about me on the back of them.”

I turn around to see her face morphing from angry to horrified.

Her features twist in pain. “Oh, God.”

“Yeah, that’s what you said when I screwed you six ways from Sunday and gave you enough orgasms for a decade of PornHub material. Yet apparently, I tried too hard. And you know what? I did. I did try far too hard, because I wanted no one else to compare.”

“No one did compare!” she screams in my face. “Happy? No one compared, which is why I didn’t date until Callum came along. There was no other guy. I wrote those things on the back of your pictures because I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and Summer gave me an exercise in trying to find the bad things in you, and those were the only things I could come up with. You were damn near perfect. When I came back from college, I turned my room upside down so many times, desperate to find your photos, because they were the only thing I had left of you. And I didn’t want to look you up on social media, because I still honored the stupid contract. I cried days and nights about those pictures, Mal.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, taking a deep, cleansing breath. “I sent you dozens of letters. They were redirected to your New Jersey address, and you never saw them.”

“Jesus.”

“The cherry on the shit cake? Your mother told me I got you pregnant and you had an abortion.”

There’s radio silence from her side of the bare shoulder of the road, so I open my eyes to look at her. She is staring back at me, stunned.

“Is it true?” I ask quietly.

She shakes her head slowly.

Thank God.

“I’m speechless right now,” she admits.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But also, sort of relieved, because now you’re angry at someone else.”

“Is that why you and Kathleen got married? Had a child?”

“Yes. I mean, no…I don’t know.” I shake my head, pacing back and forth.

The cabbie dumps her suitcase and backpack onto the side of the road and drives away, leaving us in this field, and it’s getting dark, and cold, but neither of us seems to care.

“This is how it happened: I got so furious with you, I pulled a Glen and went to get myself two bottles of something terribly strong to knock myself unconscious. Kathleen was there, at the newsagents, and she sort of jumped into my car without my consent, but I was so lethargic, I didn’t even have the strength to kick her out. We got piss-drunk. Well, I did, anyway, and that’s how it happened.”

There are tears clinging to Rory’s lower lashes, and I wish I could kiss them away, but I don’t think we’re there yet. I don’t know if we ever will be. I try to ignore the possibility of never kissing my wife again.

“You slept with my sister, Mal.”

“She…”

I know this will be the first and last time I say this. Not just because Kathleen is dead and I honor her memory, but mainly because I never, ever want Tasmin to know how she was conceived. She doesn’t deserve this horror of a story. I refuse to saddle her with a truth that has nothing to do with her.

“I wasn’t conscious, Rory. I mean, well, not fully. I said no. Several times, I think. But I wasn’t completely there when Tamsin was conceived. This marriage I dangled in your face…it was a sham. A lie. Kiki knew it, too.”

The tears fall from Rory’s cheeks to her feet, and she is quivering like a leaf dancing on the ground in fall.

I continue, undeterred, “I’m not going to lie, though. Kathleen reminded me of you, and at that time, I was under the impression you were something I would never be able to have. So I settled for the closest thing. Her. I’m not proud of what I did or how I did it.”

”Rory, Rory, Rory,” I remember chanting every time I was inside Kiki. Like an unanswered prayer. A requiem for a broken heart.

“When we found out she was pregnant, I was pressured by everyone we knew to tie the knot. She’d been a virgin before, and our families would have killed us. And, frankly, I stopped trying. I thought maybe becoming a father would distract me from you.”

“Did it?” She’s sobbing openly now.

I want to wrap my arms around her and tell her to let it all out. Yet, I’m rooted to the road’s shoulder, waiting for her to come to me just once in this lifetime.

I’m tired of doing the chasing. I’m tired of losing just so she can win. I’m exhausted from plotting how to court her, how to have her, how to ruin her, how to keep her, while she keeps fighting it.

Sure, initially, I didn’t tell her about Tamsin because I thought she wasn’t going to stick around long enough to need to know, and I wanted to protect my daughter. But the minute Rory said “I do,” things became real.

And that was the moment I shoved my reality under the carpet for a woman.

I hid my daughter for a lover.

Never again.

“Nothing made me forget you. The night Tamsin was born was also the night Kiki died. Consequently, it was also our wedding day.” I let all the events sink in. “I know I was more than a bit short with you the day Tam celebrated her birthday. Actually, I was a full-blown arsehole. But I was hurting, the pain coming from so many directions. I didn’t want to be touched, not to mention prodded.”

Her eyes meet mine with understanding.

“After the wedding, we came back home, and Kiki found the napkin. Our contract. She told me to throw it away.” I wait a beat, watching her face.

She stops breathing altogether and waits for me to continue.

“I couldn’t do it.”

She lets out a ragged breath and starts crying harder.

“She ran. And I chased her, like I chased you just now. But with you…”

I suck in a breath. The truth hurts. It cuts you open. That’s why we hide it from the ones we love. From the people whose opinion we care about.

“With you, I chased harder.”

Rory

She died because of us.

She didn’t stop at a stop sign, because the only thing she cared about was running away. After the accident, Kathleen had been rushed to the hospital. Tamsin’s heartbeat was faint, but the doctors were also concerned for the life of her mother. The baby wasn’t getting enough oxygen and was in distress.

My sister’s last words were, “Save him. I know I can’t make it. He can.”

She thought Tamsin was a boy, and that he would live.

She got one thing right. The important part.

Kathleen was pronounced dead shortly after Tamsin was delivered—close enough that she didn’t get the chance to hold her daughter in her arms. Because of the impact caused by the collision with the truck, Tamsin was born with spinal damage and had to undergo a complicated operation when she was barely old enough to see shapes. Mal shelled out some serious cash to make sure his daughter was given the best medical treatment. Experts were flown from all over the world. He’s been writing and selling songs ever since, never looking back or stopping to consider what he wanted for himself.

The first songs he sold were about me.

He was furious with me. He blamed me for the argument leading to Kathleen’s death. He became a single father before he’d even turned twenty-four. And for what? A girl who’d allegedly had an abortion with his baby and told him to stop writing to her after he confessed his family was falling apart.

On our way back to the cottage, while we are both in too much shock to touch the Kathleen subject, Mal opens up about Maeve.

“Her husband, Sean, was the lorry driver who collided with Kathleen. We were friends, before…” He looks up and shakes his head. “We were mates once. But when the accident happened, when he was bursting with adrenaline, his truth came out. He told me I never deserved my wife. That I never truly loved her. He screamed that she died because of me.”

I wince. The truth has a way to hit you harder than any lie. It’s what you need to face when you look in the mirror every day.

Sean had reminded him he was unworthy of his wife.

So Mal reminded Sean he wasn’t worthy of his either.

“I took Maeve as a lover to prove she didn’t love him, just like I didn’t love Kiki. I paraded her around Tolka as retaliation, making a point of doing it openly. I kissed her in public places, pinched her arse in the queue when we were at the bank. In short, I was a cunt. I hurt so much, I wanted to hurt others. I’m just grateful you weren’t around when I was at my worst.”

“Then you took other women to bed, too? Why?” I ask, my voice barely audible.

“Being with Maeve gave my loneliness a kind of…I don’t know, a stubborn quality. She was in it because she thought we had a future and she wanted her hands on whatever money she thought I had, but I was in it for revenge. What finally made me stop was hearing her kids were being bullied at school because everyone knew their mam was sleeping with a man who wasn’t their dad. I couldn’t stomach it. I broke it off and wrote Maeve a check to send them to a school where no one knew them and they could start fresh. Then I tried to erase the aftertaste of Maeve with an ever-growing line of women who knocked on my door. But the longer the line became, the shorter my attention span grew. In the last few years, I’ve been solely focused on Tamsin. She’s the only thing that’s kept me sane, the only person who’s mattered. Until you.”

I say nothing to this, because even though I’m flattered, I can’t help but also feel angry.

“When I saw your name on the back of that cover, I had a Pavlovian response,” he continues. “I picked up the phone and accepted the job Ryner had offered me months before. I laid down my ultimatums, and one of them was doing things my way—demanding you as the photographer. Ryner desperately needed a hitmaker for Richards. He agreed to all of my requests, including this crazy one to transport you here. It’s amazing what you can get away with in the name of the creative process. I could’ve told him I needed the entire Victoria’s Secret cast and ten kilograms of cocaine to write this album and been the happiest pig alive.”

I swat him when he says that, and can’t help but laugh because he could have said it, and still, it’s me he asked for.

“So, I moved Tamsin to her grandparents’ house for a couple months and planned on making your life miserable and sabotaging your career. I know, extremely toddler-like of me. Trust me, it didn’t sound as outrageously stupid when I thought about it without saying it out loud. I wanted to make your boyfriend break up with you, to shove your face in the reality I’ve lived. But very early on, I learned two things that stood in the way of my Marvel-villain-like master plan.”

Mal rubs his cheek. His hair is a tousled perfection, his eyebrows furrowed, and the curves of his cheeks are so angular and prominent, I can’t believe he is truly flesh and blood.

“One, I discovered you didn’t really do all the horrible things I thought you’d done to me. That definitely put a damper on my Rory-is-Satan quest. And two, even if you had, even if all of it were true, I found I still couldn’t knowingly and maliciously hurt you. I didn’t want to hurt you. I still loved you too much, regardless of how you felt about me. I loved you when you hated me, I loved you when I thought you were indifferent to me, and I loved you when you were on the fence about me. But when I realized you loved me back? All bets were off. The world kept spinning. Days went by. Things changed—other than one thing, my love for you.”

When we reach the door, I look down at my feet. Shame consumes me. Shame for all the times I wasn’t here for Mal when he needed me most. Shame that I became a person he thought wouldn’t love Tamsin wholeheartedly and unconditionally.

Not only does she belong to the man I love, but she also belonged to my half-sister, and no matter how I felt about her, she will always be a part of me.

I swallow. “I want to meet Tamsin. Properly, I mean.”

I look up, and there is so much relief and love in his eyes, I’m surprised my heart doesn’t pop like a piñata—all colorful ribbons and candy and joy—through my chest.

It’s hard to stay mad at Mal for keeping Tamsin a secret, knowing he had every reason to believe I was a monster. I even find it hard to stay mad at Glen for nearly killing me when I was a baby. After all, those events led me here, after all these years. I’m not upset with Mal anymore for keeping what he knew about my father a secret when I came here the first time around—not because he was right to keep the information from me, but because I found out something important about Mal today. He puts his loved ones first. And sometimes he does twisted things to keep us safe and sheltered, just like Mom.

Love makes you do twisted things.

I’m not justifying it—hell, I’d like to maim Mal every single day for how he handled everything with Sean and Maeve—but I’d be hypocritical not to see where their actions came from. I cheated on Callum, too.

“You can’t play God anymore.” I point at Mal’s face.

He nods. “Who says I play Him?” He rubs the back of his neck, grinning.

I swat his chest. “You can’t keep any secrets from me. I mean it.”

“I won’t,” he promises.

“What do I do about Debbie?” I play with my nose hoop as Mal pushes open the door.

He shoves my suitcase into the cottage and steps in after me.

“On one hand, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for what she’s done, sheltering me from the truth in a way that would make me feel loved and appreciated by a father. I know she did that to protect me—portrayed herself in a bad light to make sure I thought highly of him, even though she had a wonky way of going about it, and even though we had such a weird relationship throughout my teenage years. When I left the bar earlier, I was ready to go back home and patch things up with her. Then you told me all the lies about the abortion and her sending you letters and the pictures I took of you, not to mention hiding your letters from me. How do I forgive that? She almost took my happiness from me. Almost.”

How do I forgive my mother for wanting to keep me away from the love of my life?

Mal cups my cheeks, smiling down at me. I never considered just how perfect we fit. He is tall enough to tuck my head under his chin. Just enough wider than me to cover me completely, but not comically so. Everything about us is in sync. It’s like we were made for each other, two pieces of an elaborate puzzle that can only go together.

“You talk to her. You hear her out. You give her shite, then you move on and let it go, focusing on your happiness. Because, Rory?”

I blink up at him.

“Blood is thicker than water, and it’s only when you’re about to lose someone in your family that you realize just how much you truly love them.”

A NOTE FROM DEBBIE (RORY’S MOM)

Before you judge me, consider this: I did everything I could, and I worked with what I had.

Can we please just keep in mind that I had Rory when I was eight-goddamn-teen? I was supposed to go to college, for Christ’s sake. To have a life, a future, a steady boyfriend. The wedding of my dreams, a big Italian family with a good boy from the right side of the tracks. All of that—poof!—gone. And for what? One mistake? Everyone makes mistakes. Some just have more weight than others.

Mine happened to crush my entire life.

Of course, I love my daughter. But that’s why I did what I had to do.

It seemed a little unfair that I was put in this situation. Single mother, struggling to put dinner on the table, forever late with paying the bills. I dwelled on the unfairness of it all for years, when I clocked in and out of a drugstore I hated, working double shifts and leaving Rory with a sixteen-year-old babysitter who occasionally forgot to feed her. Unfortunately, she was the only sitter I could afford, so I had to shove some food into Rory right before I left for my shift.

I’ve done some things I’m not proud of to make sure we had a roof over our heads. My folks weren’t mighty thrilled to find out I got knocked up overseas, and they definitely didn’t offer to help me, let alone house me. In fact, their exact words were, “You’re done here, young lady. Pack a bag and leave, or we’ll do it for you.”

They died months apart when Rory was three, so they didn’t even get to see how great she turned out. How well we both did. How we made it.

The day they told me I was no longer welcome in their house, I vowed to make sure she’d have everything I didn’t.

What did I do to support us? Well, what didn’t I do?

I worked double shifts, scrubbed diner kitchen floors on weekends with Rory in her little sling carrier attached to me, taking cat naps and staring at me periodically with her kind, intelligent silence. I started doing women’s hair in my apartment whenever I didn’t have a shift or a cleaning gig. The rules were they needed to bring the hair dye along with them, so I wasn’t responsible for the shade, and a tip was mandatory, because the blow dryer blew my electricity bill through the roof.

I went on dates with men I didn’t like and got paid by the hour. I took advantage of my killer legs. I didn’t do anything but cling on their arms, but I still threw up every time I came back home and watched my daughter sleeping soundly next to my bed. I didn’t know what I would do if she ever did that to support her kid, to make sure they had formula, clothes, and medical insurance in place.

I remember the day I started smoking. I’d put Rory to sleep—she was two years old then, exactly one year after I ran away from Glen—and slipped into my tiny, dated bathroom. I looked in the mirror, adorned with puke-green seventies tiling, and couldn’t believe the dark shade under my eyes.

I wanted to cry.

I wasn’t beautiful anymore, even though my entire life was still ahead of me. I was a few months shy of twenty-one, for crying out loud. All my friends were dating, studying, going out, or focusing on their exciting, new careers, and I was either working or begging Rory to stop crying.

I wanted to do something for myself—something destructive but indulgent. Alcohol was out of the question. I’d seen what it did to Glen. So I checked on Rory again—still asleep—and slipped out to the local mart down the block. I bought myself a pack of something fancy-looking and a Zippo and came back home. Made myself a cup of coffee, cracked a window, and lit up.

The first cigarette made me nauseous.

The second calmed me down.

I’ve never bothered to kick the habit. It’s my small way of telling the universe to fuck off.

As for the letter I sent Malachy…look.

At this point I was acutely aware of the fact that Ireland was not for the Jenkins girls. I ran away from it, leaving the father of my child arrested and eventually thrown in jail. Everyone in Tolka hated me, and Rory by proxy. Malachy reminded me of Glen every single time my daughter spoke about him.

The music, the guitar, the songwriting, the charm, the alcohol, the hysterical impatience, the whirlwind romance, and the ability to drive women to madness. I was terrified, and sure, he was just a phase—the first real, exciting guy she’d ever met.

I only half-lied in that letter. I told him the truth about the thought process of being pregnant at eighteen. I just lied about my identity.

It wasn’t Rory who wrote to him; it was me.

And I didn’t abort the baby; I kept her.

Not that I didn’t think about having an abortion at the time. I went as far as booking an appointment at the clinic. But when I arrived and flipped through the leaflets, the clock moving at a snail’s pace, each tick-tock sound flicking my skin like a welt, I realized I couldn’t do it.

Not to her. Not to me. We were in this together.

Then there was her scar.

Of course, I wanted her to hide or remove it. But I couldn’t afford the plastic surgery. I hate it, okay? That’s the truth. It’s a constant reminder of how I failed my daughter. I couldn’t keep her safe from her own father, even when the writing was on the wall, smeared in a drunk’s man vomit.

There are the good souls asking me why I didn’t tell Rory the entire story. Well, what kind of good would it have done her? It was easier to keep her innocence intact, to send Father Doherty gifts, which he sent back to her, and pretend her father was functioning and loving and present. Should I really have told her we sent him to jail? Should I have scarred her again before she even knew how to spell her own name?

I let her think what she wanted to think.

That he was some kind of a hero, that she was deeply loved.

She already thought I was lame. So I scored a few more lameness points. Big deal.

All I ever wanted was to protect my daughter.

By hiding the letters.

By telling Malachy to back off.

Sure, the way I did it may offend some people. I definitely took it too far. Most parents in my position, I believe, would have ignored Mal’s letters. Or simply not opened them in the first place. But I thought I was saving her.

And I’ll do anything in my power to help her.

Even if it kills me.

Even if it villainizes me.

That’s what they don’t tell you in the movies. Bad guys have hearts, too.