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Diarmuid

 

 

 

Of all the police stations in all the country, she had to walk into mine.

We stood there for what felt like an eternity, our pasts weaving around us, between us, pulling up from the soil of buried memories. A rush of affection washed over me so hard that it almost hurt.

Even now when I got a new assignment, especially a girl, I always compared them to Saoirse. They were never as smart as her. They were never as sharp as her. They were never able to pull out the playful side in me like she did. I cared for them but I never cared for them like I did her. Like I still did.

My body vibrated with the familiarity of being in her presence again. Three years. Had it really been that long? And look at her now—pride drew over me like a curtain—she was a woman.

She’d lost the baby fat around her cheeks, her mouth was full and wide, a natural deep pink. Her blonde hair had developed honey tones and hung down to her waist. Her eyes were chips of jade, sharp enough to cut.

“Diarmuid.” Her voice breathed around my name. The way her lips caressed around each syllable tickled something in my solar plexus. An unfamiliar feeling.

I watched as emotions flickered across her angelic face. Surprise, that one was obvious. For whatever reason that the universe decided to throw her my way again, she didn’t orchestrate it, that much was clear. Her shock mirrored mine.

But it was drowned quickly with a longing that I now recognised. The look I had ignored when she was thirteen, never imagining that she could ever look at me that way.

I closed the door behind me so that no one walking down the hall might witness our reunion. Everything seemed to quiet and still as the door shut.

I realised the instant that the door was shut that it had been a mistake. It felt like we were too closed in. This cosy room, set up like a living room with comfortable worn armchairs circled intimately around each other, felt like our very own labyrinth, our personal home, just her, me and the lifetime that had stretched out between us.

I found my voice, finally. Her name, a name I hadn’t spoken out loud in three years —just in the deep recesses of my head—fell from my thick tongue.

“Saoirse.”

I could have avoided this ambush if I had just looked at her file. But I never looked at their file, preferring as always to talk to my kids, to get all my information from their mouths rather than from a typed-up report.

“What…what are you doing here?” I asked. Perhaps she was a figment of my imagination. A fairy from the netherworld.

“Waiting for my JLO.”

Her eyes flicked down then up my body. I found myself standing up taller, holding my shoulders out wider.

“Which looks like, through some strange twist of fate, is you.” Her eyes felt like they reached into me and peeled back my armour as easily as if it were foil.

“I thought I’d never see you again.” The way her voice quieted, so fragile with pain, hit me in the chest.

I thought I’d never see you again. Hot, sticky air sucked into my lungs, coating the inside of my chest.

I hadn’t wanted to leave her. But I’d had no choice. It had been the best thing for her.

The memories of the last time I saw her hit me as fresh as if they had happened yesterday. The pain twisting up her mouth. Her voice, begging me, begging me…

My legs felt weakened. I held out an arm indicating that she take a seat, but it was more for me. I needed to sit down before I fell over.

She strode towards me. Jesus, when had she gotten so tall? When had her legs gotten so long?

She stopped right in front of me. Three years ago, she wouldn’t have been even up to my shoulder. Now her head came up just past my chin.

She looked as if she was going to say something. To hit me. Strike me. I almost hoped she would.

Instead she sat in the chair beside me, crossing her long legs.

I practically dropped into my chair, my legs giving out rather than a deliberate movement.

Her eyes were still on me, still feeling like they were peeling strips off me.

I cleared my throat, reminding myself that I had a job to do. That I should stay professional. But there was so much I wanted to say.

“Congratulations,” I began. “For graduating.”

Her mouth parted. “How did you know…?” she trailed off.

I gave her a sad smile. “Just because I couldn’t stay, doesn’t mean I stopped…”

I licked my lips, which had gone dry. Since when had talking to Saoirse become so difficult? When she was thirteen, she and I would never run out of things to say. I never got tongue-tied or unsure of myself.

She wasn’t thirteen anymore.

“You kept tabs on me,” she said, not a question. Just a statement of something she realised.

I had been keeping track of her. Of course I had. I had local Garda friends of mine checking up on her every so often, making sure she was ok. They hadn’t mentioned that she’d moved. It must have been recently.

I checked up on her even though I knew I couldn’t contact her. Especially after the way things had ended…

“What are you doing in Limerick?” I asked, changing the subject.

“I live here now.”

“With your ma?” I frowned.

The memory of Ms Quinn still made me tighten my hands into fists. That woman had no business being a mother. If Saoirse had any other living relative who could have cared for her, I’d have called Social Services in a second and had her relocated. But the foster system was not perfect—I knew that dirty fact from the inside—and chances of her being even worse off in the system were too high for me to risk. I would have taken her in if I could have. But it was clear three years ago why I couldn’t.

She shook her head. “My da.”

He must have been let out of jail. Shit, something I’d failed to keep tabs on. And she was living with him now?

My stomach tensed. “You’re living with your da?”

“Yeah. He came back for me. He never forgot me.”

Guilt stabbed me with her words. She still blamed me for leaving three years ago.

I let out a sigh. “Saoirse—”

“And what about you?” Her lips pressed together. “Was it a boy or a girl?”

I looked up. “What?”

“Did you replace me with a boy or a girl?”

I gritted my teeth. “I didn’t replace you.”

She snorted. “Whatever.”

I cleared my throat and flipped open her file, straining to focus on the written words. I could see her creamy slender leg flicking in my periphery. Shit on a brick, what was she wearing? A pair of denim cut-off shorts and a cropped top, revealing a line of toned creamy stomach.

I fought the urge to go and grab a police blanket and cover her up. It was already the beginning of September, didn’t she know? Didn’t she understand that she’d attract all the wrong sort of attention wearing that? She didn’t look a day younger than twenty now.

She was seventeen. That might not mean something to other men, but it meant something to me.

File. Work. Right.

I scanned her file, looking for the important bits of information, hungry for every single piece of info about her. Where was she living exactly? She’d given an address as a house in Dooradoyle. Hmm…that wasn’t the best location. Why was she arrested?

Driving without a licence and drug possession. Fuck. Drugs again. Tell me she wasn’t using. I wiped my face before looking back up to her, my eyes scanning the whites of her eyes, her skin, the creases of her elbows. Her whites were white. Her skin wasn’t sallow. No track marks. She looked healthy. Thank fuck.

“You were picked up driving on a provisional licence without another driver in the car,” I said, my tone asking for an explanation.

She rolled her eyes. “I can drive.”

“You can only legally drive with another driver in the car.”

“Please. Everyone my age drives by themselves.”

I stamped down my frustration. “And this drug possession charge…”

“The pot wasn’t mine,” her eyes flashed, her voice growing hard.

The Garda who’d written the arrest report had stated that they’d spied a small baggie of weed on the floor of the unregistered car after they’d pulled her over.

I stared at Saoirse. This was beginning to sound too much like déjà vu. “And let me guess, you won’t say who it belonged to either. Or whose car that was.”

She glared at me, defiance clear on her face. “I wasn’t a rat then, I’m not a rat now.”

I placed the file aside. “Saoirse, off the record—”

The door banged open, cutting me off.

In walked a heavy-set man, looking like a boxer, with reddish-brown hair and piercing green eyes the same colour as Saoirse’s. This must be her father.

Liam Byrne.

He’d never married Saoirse’s mother, which is why she’d been given her ma’s surname and not his. Saoirse had no idea how much of a small mercy that was. Byrne was not a well-regarded name around here. Or anywhere in Ireland.

“Da.” Saoirse leapt to her feet and ran to Liam’s side. He enveloped her in a one-armed hug at his side.

A stab of jealousy went through me. I used to be the one who she ran to. I used to be the one who she clung to.

I stood, my hands fisting at my sides, and tried not to scowl. Every single cell in my body was on high alert.

Liam Byrne was as bad as they came. He ran one of the largest drug operations in Ireland, a string of suspected murders in his wake.

Did Saoirse know? I doubted it, otherwise she wouldn’t be looking at him that way.

Liam kissed the top of her head. “Are you alright, love?”

She smiled up at him as if he’d hung the stars for her. Another stab went through me. That smile belonged to me.

“So good of you to join us, Mr Byrne,” I said.

Liam’s eyes darted to me. “Who are you?”

I stood up to my full height, making full use of my six-foot-five frame. “Diarmuid Brennan. I’m the Juvenile Liaison Officer assigned to your daughter.”

Liam eyed me up and down and then shot me a searing look. “She doesn’t need no JLO.” He turned to leave, pulling Saoirse with him.

“In that case we will charge her and she can go to court.”

Liam stopped and turned back to me, studying me.

I kept going. “Saoirse was charged with driving without a licence and drug possession. Drug possession is a crime that could land her jail time if it goes to court, especially as it’s not her first offence. You can risk your daughter going to jail. Or you agree to letting her into the Young Offenders Program for minors who have offended. You can let me be her JLO.”

His eyes narrowed and he shrugged, but I knew I had his attention. “What does this program mean exactly?”

“We’d have to have weekly contact.” My eyes flicked to Saoirse. She was avoiding my eyes, looking like she just wanted to get the hell out of there. I thought I saw a flicker of anger underneath her apathy.

Once upon a time I could have read all her emotions on her face as if they were words on a page. But now…

“I’ll be supervising her until she turns eighteen,” I continued. “Making sure she knows what she’s done and keeping her from reoffending.”

Liam watched me for a pause, then nodded. “Fine.”

He turned and this time he dragged Saoirse away with him, his arm slung around her shoulders.

Before the door shut on them, Saoirse glanced back. Our eyes met. My stomach tightened.

It was six months before her birthday.

I had six months during which she was forced to spend time with me. Six months to positively influence her.

I was already running out of time.