“He’s fucking with you,” I said.
She shook her head and gripped her mug tight. “That makes no sense.”
“Sure it does. Think about it. Your uncle thinks you betrayed him, right? But do you really think he’d kill his own brother?”
She hesitated, chewing on her lip. She lifted the mug up and drank from it.
“No,” she said.
“Were they close?” I asked.
“Not really, especially not after he left.”
I was quiet for a long moment. “What happened?” I asked. “To make your dad leave.”
She stared out the window. “It was a long time ago,” she said. “I was just a kid. I barely remember any of it.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No,” she said. “Maybe it’ll help.” She was quiet and sipped her coffee. I rolled through the streets, driving deliberately slow and in large circles, just to give her time to talk. Eventually, she took a breath.
“The Club was in some war,” she said. “I don’t remember who it was against or why they were fighting. My dad was big into it back then, you know? Part of the leadership. There were always guys over our house, running around, doing errands for him, especially when the war was on. I don’t know what they were doing, but in retrospect, I guess they were talking about strategy… and maybe making bombs.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Bombs?”
“Sure. Some Irish guys learned it when they were working with the IRA. They used to plant roadside bombs all the time to kill the loyalists and the protestants. Those Provos liked the bombs, you know? It was easy and worked really well, at least for a while.”
“Can’t say I know much about the troubles,” I said.
She waved that away. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, back then, there were always guys around and my mom was always helping them out. Not with the bombs or whatever, but making tea and coffee, making them food, that sort of thing. I think she was doing their laundry too, or at least I remember finding a basket full of bloodstained clothes one time, and I swore I’d never seen any of it before.”
“That war went on for a while. I think it got pretty bad, you know? I remember seeing guys come to the house with bloody faces and guns showing, and my father would shout and send me to my room, but I’d sit and listen at the steps. They were always talking about killing and shooting and blowing stuff up, and I didn’t really understand any of it back then.
“One day though, the guys were at the house, then they went out to do something. I knew it was something serious, since my dad was really quiet, and the other guys weren’t laughing and joking like they normally did. My dad kissed my mom goodbye and went off with this group of men. When they were gone, she took me to the neighbor’s house and had me stay there for the night.”
She stopped and sipped her coffee again. She didn’t start speaking for nearly five minutes, but I gave her time to gather herself and process her thoughts.
“I wasn’t there when it happened,” she said. “I heard the gunshots though. Sounded like thunder, but right outside my window. Loudest thing I’d ever heard in my life. I remember our neighbor, this older woman named Rita, she dragged me off and pushed me into a closet and told me to stay there until the shooting stopped. Well it sounded like the shooting went on forever, you know? But it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. And when it was over…” She trailed off and shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not sure of what else to say.
“I stayed with Rita for the night like I was supposed to. Nobody came to get me until night time the next day, but I think Rita knew, because she was being so nice to me all day. Let me do whatever I wanted, it was a lot of fun. But then my dad came to get me, and he was all hollowed eyed, you know, his eyes were red from crying, and he told me that mom got killed. That someone came and shot up our house, and she got killed.” She paused for a second and touched her palm against the window then pulled it away.
“On some level, I think I always knew those bullets were meant for my dad and all those men. But I guess whoever did the shooting came too late? Missed them by maybe a half hour. And my mom got hit instead. I always wondered who did it, and wondered if they even realized what happened, but I doubt it. They just drove off and didn’t care.”
“You’re probably right,” I said, my voice soft. “They probably had no clue.”