The Magic Man
Mojo Malone was well liked. He’d been an outlaw biker, the president of the Ministry of Malice and even after he turned state’s evidence, in an attempt to keep him and his brother’s noses clean, it was his brothers, most of which were scattered around the funeral home in pews sobbing against each other, that held the deepest affection for him. It wasn’t hard to understand why. Mojo had been a charmer.
He’d also been a handsome man. Even with the ravages cancer left on his body, the face was still chiseled and his hair still thick, fastened in a long braid that rested over his shoulder. Mollie had dressed her father in his beloved leather jacket with Ministry cut fastened over the chest and a pair of clean Wrangler jeans. But it was that handsome face that caught my attention as I sat on the pew just behind Sayo and Quinn while Layla and Donovan joined Vaughn in the front row. Mollie, bless her, looked scared and small, hovering on the small stage while “Into the Mystic” funneled from the ceiling-mounted speakers. Van Morrison’s gravel-soaked voice was met with slow smiles and melancholy grins peppered on expressions around the room. Mollie, for her part, wiped her damp face, making attempts, but not quite managing, to glance at her father while the song continued. It seemed as though, to her, looking down once in that coffin would make her lose composure altogether.
But Mollie was fierce, strong, just like her father had been and when the last few chords faded into silence, she took to the podium with her chin lifted and her gaze set straight ahead.
“Thank you for being here today…” she started, and I let the rush of anger Declan had worked inside me dim as Mollie began to speak. “My dad wasn’t always a good man.” Here she grinned, shrugging, then shaking her head when she caught her mother and sister in the corner of the church. Neither woman looked as amused by Mollie’s assertion as the laughing congregation. She went on anyway. “He liked to live outside the law because, he always said, it made him feel free. No rules. No burdens. Just the open road and the limitless horizon.” She inhaled, smiling to herself. There was a small glint in her eye when she tilted her head, but it disappeared after a few quick blinks. “Well. He said something like that with a shit ton of ‘fucks’ and ‘bastards.’” The laughter rose around us, and the sound seemed to feed Mollie. After the humor died down Mollie relaxed and she went on speaking about her father as though he hadn’t died at all. Then, there were stories, one after another from his brothers, from former old ladies, even from Vaughn’s D.A. sister, Viv, about Mojo and what an astounding and remarkable life he’d led.
I clutched my stomach, laughing as Vaughn spoke of the cruel way Mojo had first treated him years before because, in his words, “No one was good enough for my baby,” not even Vaughn, a seasoned Marine. It could have been a perpetually sad day altogether, but this was not what Mojo had wanted and it was not what Mollie would allow. Several times Sayo glanced my way, exchanging a grin when someone mentioned Mollie, how so like her father she’d turned out to be and the laughter, the tall-tale telling made the irritation and constant frustration I felt after my argument with Declan nearly vanished.
There had been a time I had been his constant thought. We couldn’t go an hour without touching, even when we first left Cavanagh, that long flight to Auckland, the only time he hadn’t held my hand was when we went to the bathroom or ate our meals. Otherwise, Declan held me or just rested his palm against my arm or on my thigh. He hadn’t done that in months—the casual touch, the seemingly insignificant grazes that reminded me he always wanted me.
Even when we argued, he’d want to touch me, hold my wrist, grab my face just long enough to keep me distracted from my screaming so he could kiss me. Declan hadn’t done that this morning. He’d appeased me, he’d settled things in his mind, but he hadn’t stopped me when I walked out of the house. An hour ago, he’d shown up, jumping out of a cab and straight into the funeral home foyer to nod a greeting at our friends and his brother. I’d watched the interactions; it was awkward, forced, even with Declan and Quinn. They were blood. They were brothers, and Declan had seemed more focused on slipping stares my way—a pathetic attempt to gage my temper—and fiddling with his phone. Our friends noticed his distraction. How could they not?
I tried to push back the thoughts swimming in my head and embrace the general good mood all the Mojo stories were inducing, and didn’t flinch when my husband slipped in beside me, casually draping his thick arm along the back of the pew. Still, the smile stuck on my face and didn’t dim remotely when I watched him. It didn’t lessen even as I sat back and Declan grazed my bare shoulder with his fingertip, like we hadn’t screamed at each other just this morning; as though I hadn’t abandoned him at my father’s home.
It would have been forgotten, our fight, if only for a moment, as we listened to Mojo’s friends and family continue to pass stories around the room like mints, but next to me Declan shifted, the heavy weight of his phone brushing against my hip and the smile faded from my mouth when the vibrating started.
I didn’t have to say anything to him. He knew, I guessed, by the movement of my arms crossing and the slip of my body angling away from him that I was still not okay with the constant bombardment of calls and texts.
“Autumn,” he whispered, going quiet when I shook my head. Declan lowered his shoulders, the long-held sigh he released bustling the ends of my hair as he adjusted in his seat. “If you’d just understand…”
“How’s it then?” my father said, taking the podium. “He was a good man, indeed, was Mojo, though I hadn’t had the chance for a long acquaintance. But there was one night, if I’m being honest, with Mojo and a certain district attorney lady we all know…”
My father was a great storyteller, and his charm, his wide, honest smile was likely what made him so welcomed around Mojo anytime he came to Cavanagh to see Mollie. They’d been friendly, too friendly it seemed as I watched my father’s expression shift to a smile, right at the thin barmaid I’d seen at Mollie’s several times when Mojo’s appearance required a grill, beer, and any available friend or acquaintance in attendance. The barmaid had been friendly, if memory serves and by the look on my father’s face, he appreciated just how friendly she was. If Joe’s expression was any clue, I’d guess my father had done more than hire a maid to take care of his place. It seemed he had his own personal bar mistress as well.
“What’s that look?” Declan asked, following my gaze when I nodded toward the woman. “Joe?” I shrugged, still not over my anger enough to do more than make mute gestures. “Autumn, for the love of Jaysus…”
“Shh!” I told him nodding at my father when Declan’s voice carried and he drew the attention of several turned heads.
“Bleeding…” Declan stopped speaking when Sayo and Quinn turned to glare at him. I guessed he also spotted the look shot toward him from the front of the room as both Layla and Mollie frowned. Vaughn and Donovan, typically, didn’t seem to know what was happening. Again, his phone vibrated and I exhaled, not bothering to keep the low grumble from my tone. “What,” Declan whispered, leaning closer so that he wouldn’t be heard, “the hell have I done now? This lot act as though I’ve grown leeches and want to give them away as gifties.”
He just couldn’t be that thick.
“Seriously?” I asked him, glancing down at his hand when he pulled the vibrating cell from his pocket. “Maybe, it’s because in the hours we’ve been here, you’ve had that damn phone glued to your hand.” I leaned closer, lowering my voice when another Morrison song began and the funeral director motioned for his workers to move around the flowers to prepare for the procession out of the funeral home.
“McShane…”
“Maybe,” I said, even lower, “it’s that your brother, your only brother and my best friend are getting married and you haven’t bothered to congratulate either of them or listen, really listen when he shifts out of character to ask for your help. Yesterday he spent twenty minutes explaining an investment and you didn’t bother to listen.”
“I listened fine…”
“Not enough to realize he was pissed at you.” I glanced at Quinn, his stiff back and bunched up fingers. “He’s still pissed and you still haven’t managed to apologize since you got here, late I might add.”
“I had to find a bloody ride.”
“That was two hours ago.”
He opened his mouth, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture, pantomiming another excuse, but I continued before he could speak.
“Maybe the attitude our friends are giving you is from the fact that Donovan called you two weeks ago and then again last week to ask if you could come along with him to scout recruits for his varsity squad when we got here, but you never bothered to answer him and haven’t said more than a few sentences to him since we got here last night.”
“There wasn’t time…”
“There was time when I met the girls at the Falls. Or yesterday afternoon before Vaughn grilled steaks. What were you doing then? Were you talking to Vaughn about the rugby training camp he and Mollie want to open? He asked four days ago in a text for your opinion, but again, you didn’t have time for him.”
Declan only stared at me, blinking as though he didn’t recognize me; as though some weird time gap had occurred between his practices and workouts and very important social events that demanded the squad parade around for rich investors.
“I haven’t missed…”
“And then there’s me.” I’d stopped worrying about my voice or the scene we were likely making sitting in those pews as the crowd began to mil in a procession to view the body.
“You?” he said, voice quiet, breath slow as though he waited on an answer that would clear away some of the fog in his head. “What about you?”
“I’m…I’m going…”
“Autumn?” Sayo called over her shoulder as she and Quinn left their pew.
I moved, standing to follow her, but Declan held my arm, stopping me to look down at him. “What have I neglected with you, McShane?”
I shook my head, my heart beating hard, my mind clouded by the thoughts that raced in my head like lightening. “Everything, Declan.”