Bitter Burn novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Wake

I stopped at once.

I stepped back, picked the blanket up off the bed, and set it around his shoulders without touching his skin.

I put a cup of water on the crate beside him and a mug of the tea Bridie kept for storms.

"I'm here if you want me," I said.

He did not answer.

He sat down on the camp bed with his back to the wall and drew the blanket around himself.

I stayed in the room until he lay down and turned his face away.

Then I went out and sat in my car until the sky went grey.

The wake was at my father's house in Roland Park on Tuesday afternoon.

Two hundred people stood in the front rooms in black, holding small glasses of whiskey.

A priest I had never met stood by the fireplace.

In front of him, on an easel, my father had set a framed photograph of Finbar at our wedding.

He was smiling in it.

I did not look at it for long.

"Siobhan."

My father took my elbows in both hands and kissed my cheek.

He smelled of aftershave and tobacco.

"My brave girl," he said.

"A father doesn't ask that of a child lightly."

"I know, Dad."

"The harbor patrol found his coat at the bottom of Pier Nine this morning."

"Tyson says you did it clean."

"I did what you asked."

His eyes searched my face, and I let him look.

I had been practicing that stillness since I was twelve, and I had never needed it so badly.

"Good," he said, at last, and turned to the room.

He tapped a glass with a spoon.

The talk died.

"Friends," my father said.

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