Chapter 5: Breakfast

Killian didn't hit his brother in the stairwell.

He took his hand off my hip, slow, and stepped between us.

"Go back to your party," he said.

Tiziano smiled at him over my head. Then he let the door swing shut.

Killian drove me home without saying much.

At my mother's door, he kissed me once more, short and hard, and said, "Tomorrow. Breakfast. I'll come to you."

"We open at six."

"I know when you open."

He was at the door at five fifty-eight.

My mother let him in because she was the one who unlocked it.

She looked at him in her doorway, all six foot three of him, black coat, cold air coming off him.

Then she looked at me behind the counter.

"Hon," she said. "Why is the Don's other boy on my mat?"

"He's eating breakfast."

"Is he."

She went behind the counter and picked up the bread knife.

She didn't cut anything with it.

Killian took a stool at the end of the counter like he'd done it a hundred times.

"Mrs. Fennelly."

"Killian." She pointed the knife at him, loosely. "You drove your father in here every Thursday for five years. Never once ordered."

"No, ma'am."

"Why not?"

He thought about it.

"I didn't want to be a customer."

My mother squinted at him.

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know yet," he said.

I put two eggs on the flat top so I'd have something to do with my hands.

"Eggs, bacon, rye toast," I said. "That's what you're having."

"That's what I have."

"I know. You told me. In June."

My mother looked from me to him and back.

"Somebody explain June to me."

So I did, while I fried the eggs.

The napkin, the phone, the year. I kept it short. She'd seen the video.

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