Bitter Burn novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Sunday Dinner

My father's dining table seated twenty-four, and on Sunday night every chair was taken.

The crew bosses sat along both sides in dark jackets, with their wives beside them.

The union men sat near the foot, and the priest who had buried an empty coffin for Finbar sat near the head.

I was at my father's right hand, where I had sat since I was sixteen.

Tyson sat across from me with a strip of white tape over the bridge of his nose.

Both his eyes had gone purple.

He looked at me over the rim of his glass and smiled, and the tape moved.

My father carved the lamb himself, as he did on every feast day.

Nobody spoke until the plates were full.

Then he laid the knife across the platter and wiped his hands on a napkin, and the whole room stopped chewing.

"Friends," Declan Rafferty said.

"Tonight I have a hard thing to ask, and I'm going to ask it in front of all of you."

"Tyson has brought me something."

Tyson slid his phone across the cloth.

My father held it at arm's length, and I watched his thumb tap the screen.

I knew the picture.

A tall man in a yellow slicker, walking down a gravel lane with his hands in his pockets.

"Siobhan," my father said, "who is this?"

The whole table turned.

I set my fork down.

I had spent three days thinking about what I would say, and in the end I did not use any of it.

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