Honey Cut novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Sunday Dinner

Seamus Carrick's house in Milton had a gravel drive, white columns, and a stone lion on each side of the front door.

I walked up it in my mother's cream coat with Niall's overcoat over my shoulders.

The cut on my palm was stitched and wrapped.

I hadn't slept.

Kieran walked three steps behind me with a clean white bandage on his forearm.

Niall walked beside me and said nothing at all.

The door opened before we knocked.

"Mrs. Carrick," said a maid, and for a second I didn't know who she meant.

The dining room was long and bright, with a table laid for sixteen.

Cousins sat on both sides, men in sweaters and women with careful hair, passing roast potatoes.

Seamus sat at the head in his green cardigan.

At his left elbow, with a napkin tucked into his collar and a plate of lamb in front of him, sat my father.

He looked up.

His fork stopped halfway to his mouth.

The room went quiet in a ring, outward from us.

"Katherine," Seamus said warmly. "What a lovely surprise. Sit down. We've set a place."

I didn't sit.

I walked the length of the table with the cousins turning in their chairs.

I stopped behind my father and took him by the collar of his good shirt.

I pulled him up out of the chair.

The napkin fell.

"Kit," Da said. "Honey, listen."

"You burned it down."

"I didn't."

"You took the money out of the safe at midnight and you got in his car."

"I did it for you," he said, and his voice broke. "He was going to take the pub on Monday. I thought, if it burned, it's insurance, he can't collect on ashes, and he'd leave you alone."

"He'd leave me alone."

"And I was going to give you the money."

"You sold me on Thursday."

He didn't answer.

His big soft face crumpled and the tears ran straight down it, and I felt nothing.

I felt a long cold calm.

"Where's the deed to the pub," I said.

He stared at me.

"Da. The deed."

He reached inside his jacket with a shaking hand.

He pulled out a long folded envelope and I took it.

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