Chapter 6: Sunday Dinner

"Declan's driver?" I said. "You mean the man he sent to the pier?"

"I mean the man who fired the shot."

Ronan's hand lay still on my hip.

"You'll say that to my aunt on Sunday, exactly as you saw it."

"I saw him shoot into the water."

"Then that's all you say."

He pulled the blanket over my shoulder, and that was the end of the talking.

Sunday came fast.

Orla Kavanagh lived in a narrow brick house in South Boston, with a statue of Mary in the front window.

The long table in her dining room was already full when we walked in.

Fourteen people sat at it.

Men in dark jackets, a few older women, a priest at one end with a napkin tucked in his collar.

Every one of them stopped chewing when Ronan came through the door.

He walked straight to the head of the table.

A small gray-haired woman in a black cardigan sat there, a rosary spilling out of her pocket.

"Aunt Orla."

She looked up at him for a long time.

Then she stood, and she barely came to his chest, and she slapped his face.

Hard.

The room gasped.

"Three years," she said. "Not a postcard."

"I was dead," said Ronan.

"You were not dead. I pulled you out of that water myself, with a driver and a blanket, and you left before the stitches healed."

She kissed his cheek where she had hit it.

"Sit. Who is this?"

"Neve Tierney."

"The girl with the hook," said Orla, and looked me up and down.

My face went hot.

"Sit by me, girl," she said. "You can tell me about the hook."

I sat.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Caged by His Twisted Love from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.