“When Lena knocked her over, Michelle stepped out onto the street without looking where she was going.”
“That’s no excuse,” I snapped.
“No, but itwasan accident. When Michael called to tell me Lena had knocked someone over and I got to her, she thought she’d hit a man.” He shrugged. “Not a justification, just proof to me that she hadn’t targeted Michelle as a grudge.”
“A big fucking coincidence,” I snarled.
“No. She said she’d started going to the tea room every day. Watched Michelle as much as she could.”
“Aoife would have recognized her, surely.”
“No. She said she tried to see the kid she thought was my daughter, but she never managed to. And I believe her because when you brought Aoife home, she wouldn’t have been so nice, would she? Plus Aoife would have mentioned the connection.” He grunted. “Lena was obsessed, Finn. Michael says she was too. Confirmed that she was there every day, parked up, watching for hours on end. It ate her up inside.
“There’s no wonder she got into an accident. She was irate, erratic, and she stopped taking her meds.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“No, it isn’t,” Aidan admitted. “But you know they keep her leveled out.”
Because I knew it wasn’t bullshit, I had to nod. A few years back, Aidan had been stabbed by a rival and Lena had witnessed it. Her shrink said she had a kind of PTSD and gave her meds.
If she hadn’t being taking them, then she’d definitely been living on the edge.
I couldn’t even think about the revelation that I was his son. My focus was just on Aoife, and what I was going to do, what I was going to tell her.
“What am I supposed to do, Aidan?” I rasped.
“There’s nothing you can do,” he replied quietly. “I’ll never let Lena go to jail. You know that. Let the sin rest on my shoulders.”
My throat felt like it was closing in on itself. “She has a right to know.”
“Knowing will do her no good, son.”
Aidan had always called me that, and now I knew why. I wanted to flinch, wanted to reject the label, but it was too ingrained for him to say it, and too ingrained for me to hear it.
“I’d want to know.”
“You’re different. Even if Gerry was a cunt, you were raised with the Five Points, and when you moved here, it was natural for you to come in with us.
“One of the proudest days of my life was having you and Aidan come to my office and tell me you were both ready to join up.” I heard the emotion in his words but ignored it. I couldn’t handle it. It was just beyond me. “Other people are raised to think of law and justice. But we don’t live that way.”
I swallowed. “We have our own code. If someone had knocked over your mother, you’d have sliced their throat whether it was an accident or not.”
“Yeah, but I’m a Five Points man. So are you. Aoife isn’t. Aoife would be happy with her mother’s killer going to jail, but… Lena isn’t going anywhere, Finn. I need her. You need her. We all do.”
I did need her. I wasn’t going to lie. She was my mother. Fiona had let Gerry do things to me, and though Aoife seemed to think Fiona had loved me, I knew that was wrong. Why had she let him do that shit to me if she loved me? But Lena? Lena would do anything for me. She’d lie on oath to give me an alibi, and had Aidan given her the choice, she’d have helped turn Gerry into fish food. She’d kill for me,diefor me.
I loved her.
She loved me.
But Christ, what I felt for Aoife…? It consumed me. I couldn’t live without it. Withouther.
“How am I supposed to live with this?” I almost wheezed out the question.
“It’s my fault, Finn. I thought admitting the truth would be enough, and when she wanted the details, I was taken aback. I locked down. Didn’t tell her shit. Those gossiping old hags gave her the wrong information, and Michelle and Aoife are paying the price for what aremysins.” He sat forward and the leather seat creaked as he bowed his shoulders, letting his head fall like the weight was too much for him to bear. “Aoife will never get justice for her mother, Finn. You telling her will only wreck what you have.”
He was right.