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Diarmuid

 

 

 

Then—Dublin, Ireland

 

 

I let Saoirse into the Sidewalk Café, my favourite local since it opened up a few years ago.

“Hey, Betsy,” I called out to the owner/waitress, a short, voluptuous redhead, her curly hair piled into a glorious mess on her head. “Breakfast for two, please.”

I directed Saoirse to slide into one of the booths near the window. I slid in opposite her, the hard green leather crackling underneath my bulk.

Betsy strutted up to us with two menus, slipping them in front of Saoirse and me.

“How are you now, Diarmuid?” she asked.

“Grand, yeah, thanks.”

Betsy turned her eyes to Saoirse. “Is this your niece or something? You’ve never bought her in before.”

Saoirse scowled. “We’re not related.”

“She’s just a friend I’m hanging out with.” I shot Betsy a smile. Betsy knew what I did, so I’m sure she suspected that the teens I sometimes brought in here with me were for work, but I never mentioned it out loud. “I’ll have a white coffee, please.”

“Me, too,” Saoirse said.

I turned to her, frowning. “Do you drink coffee, do you?”

Saoirse rolled her eyes. “Don’t you tell me I’m too young to drink coffee.”

I snorted and closed my menu. “Two white coffees and two full Irish breakfasts, thanks, Betsy.”

Betsy took the menus and went off to fulfil the order, leaving me alone with Saoirse.

Saoirse leaned back in the booth, head tilted, arms crossed and a defiant glare on her face. She looked so adorable, I almost laughed. I didn’t. I didn’t think that would go down very well.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“Well,” I said slowly, “breakfast is a start.”

She shook her head, her golden hair swishing about her sweetheart face. “I mean, what you want from me? Why you being so damn nice?”

Her words stung with the realisation that this girl had probably never had anyone do anything nice for her without wanting something in return. I clenched my hands into fists under the table so as not to scare her. It was all I could do not to throw the table aside and roar in anger. No child should be this young and this cynical already. So weary of the world.

I tempered my voice when I spoke. “I want for you what I want for all my kids—the possibility of a better life. I want you to get through these next twelve months without reoffending. But right now, I want to get to know you a little over breakfast.”

She held my gaze for another second, and I willed for her to see the truth in my face. She glanced away and looked out the window, her chin stubbornly set.

Betsy came with our coffees and breakfast. My mouth watered as I smelled the delicious full Irish breakfast: two eggs, grilled tomato, hash browns, fried mushrooms and blood sausage. For a few minutes, there was nothing but the sound of cutlery scratching on plates and chewing, a Lisa Hannigan song playing in the background.

I started out with a simple question. “Your breakfast good?”

Saoirse nodded before stuffing her mouth full of food. The way she was attacking her plate, you’d think she hadn’t eaten in a week. Shit. It was likely she hadn’t. Pity coiled on the base of my stomach, making it difficult to swallow my next bite.

“What grade are you in at school?”

“Seven,” she mumbled through a mouthful of fried egg.

I repressed the urge to chastise her for talking with her mouth full. That wasn’t my job. My job was to become her friend. Not her substitute parent.

“Do you like your school?”

“S’okay.”

“You have a best friend?”

She gave me a one-shouldered shrug, eyes on her blood sausage.

God give me strength, I sent a prayer inward. She wasn’t giving me anything.

“You have a favourite subject?”

“Chemistry,” she said without hesitation.

I raised an eyebrow at her. I expected… Well, I didn’t know what I’d expected her to say, but it definitely wasn’t chemistry. I looked at the small, unassuming girl before me. She had practically demolished her entire plate when I thought she would struggle getting through half of it. Shows how much I knew about her.

“Chemistry?” I repeated.

She nodded once solemnly.

“Of all the subjects, why chemistry?”

For the first time during the entire breakfast, Saoirse placed down her cutlery, grabbed a napkin and wiped her mouth. “Are you actually serious?”

“Seriously want to know why you love chemistry so much? Yes.”

Her eyes widened and she placed her hands on her chest, inhaling loudly in an overly dramatic fashion.

“Diarmuid Brennan!” She spoke my name with such astonishment and admonishment I almost laughed. She leaned in, resting her fingers on the edge of the table. In a hushed voice, as if she was spilling the secrets of the universe, she said, “Chemistry. Is. Life.”

Then, as if she had said nothing of importance, she gathered up her knife and fork and began to tackle her last pieces of food.

I blinked at her. She was pulling my leg. Chemistry? Who the hell loved chemistry?

I cleared my throat. “Tell me more about chemistry, then. Maybe they’re teaching it differently from when I went to school.”

“You mean a hundred years ago?” she said with a glint in her eye.

“Hey,” I protested. “I only graduated five years ago.”

“Which makes you around twenty-four.” Her eyes did a once-over of me. For some strange reason I felt I was being assessed and somehow came up lacking. “You look older than twenty-four,” she finally said, assessment done.

I let out a breath, unaware why I’d been holding it. “You act older than thirteen.”

She shrugged. “You and I both know that you can’t judge people based on what they look like,” she said, using my own words back at me.

I smiled as I thought about how we both looked sitting in this booth to the outside world. Me with the ink covering my arms, the gruff brutish way I appeared, and her with her doll-like stature. We were like oil and water. Like cotton and leather. Light and dark. At least from the outside.

“So, chemistry,” I said, putting the subject back on track. “Tell me why you love it so much.”

She popped the last piece of her breakfast into her mouth, chewed and swallowed. She arranged her cutlery across her plate in an angle the way I’d seen people do in fancier restaurants to alert the waiter that they’re finished. She wiped her mouth, then leaned back into the booth, one hand resting across her full belly.

“I love math. Numbers just make sense to me. And chemistry is all about numbers and how they relate to life.” Her free hand waved as she spoke, her voice growing more passionate. “In chemistry there is no grey, only black and white. It’s precise. The outcome is always known. I love the certainty of it. The safety in knowing the outcome beforehand, every time. And I love the idea of combining molecules to create something different, something new, something better.”

During her speech, I’d started leaning forward on my elbows, drawn in by the passionate way she spoke, the way she seemed to age almost a decade as she did.

I stared at her. Saoirse’s body was that of a girl, but in her head was a mind as sharp and mature as I’ve ever seen. You and I both know you can’t judge people based on what they look like. She had a confidence about her that I knew some thirty year olds didn’t have.

And yet, there was something so immature, so raw, so naïve about her. Something about her that made me want to nourish her…protect her. More than any kid I’d ever been assigned.

“That’s incredible,” I said. “I’ve never heard anyone in my life speak like that about chemistry.” Let alone a thirteen-year-old girl. “Heck, you make me want to get out all my old high school chemistry textbooks.”

She cleared her throat, glancing down into her lap, seemingly uncomfortable with my compliment. “School will be starting soon.”

I looked up at the clock on the wall. She was right. It was almost eight o’clock. I didn’t want Saoirse to be late on her first day back. I made a motion to Betsy indicating a check.

“The bill should come to 21.32 euro,” Saoirse said.

I frowned. “That’s a bit of a precise guess.”

“It’s not a guess. The two breakfasts were 7.87 each plus two coffees at 2.79 each is 21.32 euro.”

Betsy slid the bill in front of me before I could say a word. I searched for the total, finding it marked with a blue pen.

Twenty-one euro thirty-two.

My head snapped up. “How did you do that?”

She gave me a look. “Obviously, I looked at the prices before I gave back the menu.”

I shook my head. “I mean, how did you add those numbers in your head?”

She shrugged. “It was easy. That’s why I like chemistry. I’m good with numbers and stuff.”

“You’re telling me,” I asked slowly, “that you added those numbers up in your head? Do you have like a calculator hidden in your lap or something?”

Saoirse just looked at me.

The gravity of what she just did hit me. I didn’t know a single adult who could take those numbers and add them up in their head the way she just did.

“Saoirse, you’re really smart.”

She let out a long breath as if relieved about something. “I know.”

“You could do anything. Whatever you wanted. Go to a good university, get a degree, get a good job. Jesus, you could become a doctor if you bloody wanted to.”

She shuffled in her chair, her eyes darting everywhere except for on me. I wondered if anyone had ever given her a compliment before.

“Why the hell do you need to get involved with drugs?” I blurted out.

“I didn’t.” Her eyes locked onto mine. “None of that weed was mine. It was my first time smoking it.”

I nodded, suspecting as much.

“I’m not a rat,” she said adamantly.

“I know. I’m not asking you to be one. Jesus,” I let out again. “Do your parents know how smart you are? Your teachers?”

Saoirse screwed up her face.

No.

The answer was no. Nobody knew how smart she was. What I wanted to know was, why the hell not?

She had so much potential. She could do something incredible with her life. I vowed on the spot, I’d do everything in my power to make sure her life veered onto the right path. Everything.