Chapter 5: Customer

I didn't touch the suit bag.

"How did you find me?"

"I didn't follow you," he said. "I swear it."

"Then how?"

"The cab driver. He drives for my uncle's yard on weekends." His jaw tightened. "Which means Senan knows too. I wanted you to hear that from me."

Behind me, the steam iron hissed. Una had stopped moving.

"Take your suit and go," I said.

"Orla..."

"I don't sew for Devanes. Not anymore. Not ever."

He looked at me for a second.

Then he nodded.

He reached for the suit bag.

Una's hand came down on top of it.

"Hang on," she said. "Hang on, now."

She unzipped the bag. Inside was a charcoal suit, beautifully cut, from a tailor on Newbury Street.

She checked the label and her eyebrows went up.

"What's the job?"

"Take the waist in an inch," Cormac said. "I've lost some weight."

"Forty dollars. Ready Friday. Cash."

"Una," I said.

"You don't sew for Devanes." She shrugged. "I sew for anybody with forty dollars. I've got a lease."

Cormac put two twenties on the counter.

Then he put down a third.

"For the trouble," he said, and he walked out without looking back at me.

The bell jangled after him.

Una watched him through the window as he got into a black car.

"Well," she said. "That's a big drink of water."

I went back to my machine.

"Who is he?"

"Nobody."

"Nobody tips twenty dollars on a waistband."

"He's a man I was supposed to marry yesterday."

Una put down her iron.

She pulled out her phone and scrolled for about ten seconds.

Then she let out a shriek of laughter that made a woman on the sidewalk jump.

"You're the altar girl!"

"What?"

She turned the screen toward me.

It was the Southie neighborhood page on Facebook.

Somebody had posted a blurry photo from the back of St. Columba's.