Honey Cut novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Sold in the Bar
Kit's father announces her marriage to Niall Carrick in front of the whole pub, and she says yes to Niall on her own terms.
My father waited until the Thursday dinner rush to sell me.
Dunleavy's was full, the way it always was at seven.
I was behind the back bar pulling a pint with one hand and plating shepherd's pie with the other.
"Kit, honey, come out here a second," Da called.
He never called me honey in front of the regulars.
I wiped my hands on my apron and came around the bar.
Da stood on the little step by the dartboard with a bar towel over his shoulder and sweat running down his temples.
At the corner table sat a heavy old man in a green cardigan under a good coat.
Seamus Carrick.
He held a glass of Jameson he hadn't paid for in nine years.
Behind him stood a man I had never seen, at least six and a half feet of shoulder in a charcoal overcoat.
His head was shaved and his beard was grey stubble.
He was looking at me like I was a number he intended to get right.
"Everybody," Da said, and his voice cracked.
The pub went quiet in pieces, table by table.
"My daughter Katherine is getting married on Saturday."
Somebody near the door started to clap, then stopped.
"To Niall Carrick," Da said.
The man in the overcoat didn't move.
I laughed, because it was the only thing my body knew how to do.
"Da, what are you talking about?"
He wouldn't look at me.
He looked at the floor, at the dartboard, at the old man in the green cardigan.
"I owe Seamus a hundred and eighty thousand dollars," he said. "The pub is the collateral. This is how it gets paid."
A hundred and eighty thousand.
I did the math, standing there in my apron, and it came out to a father who had been lying to me across the bar for three years.
"The horses," I said.
"Kit."
"You told me the roof leak was eight thousand."
"Honey."
"Don't call me that."
Seamus sipped his whiskey.
"Padraig tells me you're a sensible girl, sweetheart," he said, as if he were commenting on the weather. "It's a good match." "Niall needs a wife. Your father needs a wife for Niall. Everybody walks out of here with something."
I looked at Niall Carrick.
He still hadn't spoken.
His left hand hung loose at his side with a shamrock inked across the knuckles.
I picked up the marker Da had folded on the table, the one with Seamus's name and my father's signature at the bottom.
I tore it clean in half.
Then I put my apron on the bar and walked for the door.
I made it halfway to the door.
A man was standing in it.
He was lean and not very tall, in a black suit with the sleeves pushed up past a pale scar on his forearm.
His black hair was tucked behind his ears and his nose had been broken once and set crooked.
I had seen him before.
He sat in the back booth on Tuesdays and drank tea out of a thermos he kept in his coat.
I had rarely heard him speak at all.
"Miss Dunleavy," he said, very quietly, so only I could hear. "He means it."
"Move."
"There's a car across the street with the engine running. Two men in it. If you walk out of this door, they go in the back and they take your father."
His grey eyes held mine.
He wasn't threatening me.
That was the part that frightened me.
He looked genuinely regretful.
"They won't hurt him tonight," he said. "They'll hurt him on Saturday if you're not at the altar."
I looked back across the pub.
Fifty people I had poured beers for since I was sixteen were staring at their plates.
My father had slid down onto a stool, a soft ruddy man with his face in his towel.
I thought about my mother, the day she died, telling me to look after him.
I thought about every word I'd ever said to her.
Then I turned around and walked the length of the pub to Niall Carrick.
The room didn't breathe.
Up close he smelled like cedar and cold air.
He had pale blue eyes, and they didn't flinch.
"I'll marry you," I said.
"Good," he said.
His voice was low and flat, with no pleasure in it and no cruelty either.
"I have one condition," I said. "My father is not at the wedding, and he does not set foot in your house, ever."
"Done."
"You'll leave the pub alone."
"Done."
"And the day this debt is paid, I get to walk if I want to."
For the first time something moved across his face.
It was so small I almost missed it.
"The debt is paid when you sign," he said. "After that, you can do what you like."
I didn't know what he meant by that, and I didn't have time to ask.
Seamus Carrick rose, buttoning his coat, and caught my arm as I turned.
His thumb pressed into the soft place above my elbow.
"Listen to me, girl," he said, smiling for the room. "The only thing worth marrying in that house is the wife's share. You'll sign it over to me on Saturday in front of the priest, and you'll live long enough to enjoy the pub."
His smile never changed.
"Or you'll be a widow by Sunday, and I'll be the one holding your hand at the funeral."
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