In the Unlikely Event

“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.”