Honey Cut novel · Chapter 12 of 24
Chapter 12: The Back Booth
Niall looked into the box for a full minute.
He didn't touch the photographs.
I had pulled on his shirt, and I stood in the doorway of the bedroom with the quilt around my shoulders.
Behind me, Kieran sat up in the bed and saw what Orla was holding.
I watched him understand.
He didn't say a word.
"Orla," Niall said. "Go downstairs."
"Niall."
"Please."
She put the box in my hands and went.
I carried it to the window seat and sat down.
The top photo showed me at the register, laughing at something a regular had said.
The next showed me carrying a tray of pints.
The next showed me asleep on my arms at the end of a double shift, apron still on, a half-eaten sandwich beside me.
I turned it over.
On the back, in a small neat hand, sat the day.
Tuesday.
"Kieran," I said.
He got out of the bed and stood there naked, and then slowly pulled a sheet around his hips.
"I'll tell you," he said. "All of it."
"Then tell me."
He sat on the floor.
He didn't take a chair.
He sat cross-legged with his hands open on his knees and his eyes on the carpet.
"Two years ago I was in the car outside Dunleavy's, waiting for Niall. He was inside with your father about a loan. I went in to get out of the rain."
"You sat in the back booth."
"You brought me tea."
I remembered it.
A dripping man in a black coat who thanked me twice and left a ten-dollar tip on a three-dollar pot.
"I came back the next Tuesday," Kieran said. "And the next. I told myself I liked the tea."
"You never said a word to me."
"I didn't have any to say. I'm a driver. I carry a gun for a man who has a family and a name. You were the girl who dried glasses and sang along to the jukebox when you thought no one could hear." He took a breath. "I took the pictures at the start because I was ashamed to look at you in the room. By the end I couldn't stop."
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