Four months earlier…
Aoife stopped pacing and put her hands to her head. "Mum, please, my head is pounding." Her mother didn't even look up from her rocking chair. She continued to weep and wail while staring into the peat fire. The only intelligible thing that came out of her mouth was her stepson Thomas' name, over and over. "Please, Mum." Aoife walked to the rocking chair and took her mother's hands in hers. "He's only a few hours late getting home. That happens sometimes. We don't know anything has happened to him. He was probably just out drinking with friends and forgot that we had plans tonight," she pleaded.
Colleen Skerrett looked through her only daughter before keening, "Thomas!" again. Aoife dropped her mother's hands and returned to pacing the floor. Rationally, there was no reason to worry yet about Thomas. He was a few hours late for a dinner with his stepmother and half-sister that Aoife knew he hadn't been looking forward to. Of anyone in the family, he was the one struggling the most with his stepmother's steady descent into madness, and he had been shutting everyone out. Aoife lived down in Galway, but she had been in Derry since Thomas' wife Katherine, overwhelmed by the pressures of raising two children and caring for a mentally ill mother-in-law with minimal help from her husband, had moved out two weeks before. When Aoife's and Thomas' father died in police custody two months ago, Thomas had seemed to be in better shape to care for Colleen than Aoife living in her single bedroom cottage, but clearly it wasn't so.
Aoife's mother had had these spells before, with preternatural accuracy. Two years ago, it was Aoife's half-brother Colin, and then, two months ago, her father, Padraig. When more distant family or friends died, Colleen usually had a crying spell and called their name well before the phone rang to notify the household. Other than that, Aoife's mother was largely silent, locked away in her rapidly deteriorating mind. She had traded her mental engagement with the world for playing the role of a modern banshee. The fact that she was now crying Thomas' name made Aoife's spine stiffen with fear.
Aoife stared at the pitiful creature in front of the fire and realized she couldn't be in her brother's little rental house a minute longer. "I'm going out to find him," she said over her shoulder as she thrust her arms on her black pea coat.
The rain from earlier in the evening had stopped, but the streets were still slick and shiny, and passing cars threw up great sprays of water. Aoife stopped in at Thomas' favorite pub, The Speckled Dog, where friendly faces greeted her. Yes, they had seen Thomas, but that was a few hours ago. He'd been drinking with some friends they didn't recognize. Could they tell her anything about them? Fairly nondescript, dressed in the wet weather uniform of a turtleneck, jeans, and a pea coat, both with dark hair. Anything else? Aoife pressed, and the bartender told her that when one ordered another round, he stuttered. "McNamara," Aoife muttered to herself. "That must be Michael McNamara." She had met him earlier this week, one of her brother's new IRA friends. Aoife told the bartender that if Thomas came back, he was to call her immediately. "My mother's doing poorly," she offered as explanation.
She trekked through the neighborhood, stopping at pubs Thomas frequented, and at each one, getting similar answers. At the Railway Pub, she managed to pick up the name of Thomas' second drinking buddy as Seamus Doherty, another new IRA crony. Aoife had never met either of the men before this week, but they had shown up at the little house every night during her visit, asking Thomas to come out drinking with them. A little further away, she came to the Red Lion, traditionally the point at which Thomas turned around, as the population turned more unionist further to the west. But the middle-aged woman waiting tables told her that Seamus and Michael had cajoled Thomas into coming with them for one more pint. "The closest pub in that direction is the Crown. It's likely that's where they went if they were already further east," the barmaid said with a jerk of her thumb.
Aoife stepped back out into the wet streets from the doorway of the Red Lion. She started down the street, where she could already see British flags waving in front of some of the houses. The road curved and dipped in another two blocks, further than she had ever dared walk by herself. She knew this place, she realized, and her blood froze in her veins. She was maybe a block south of where her husband Adam had been gunned down by police while he tried to stop the bleeding on a wounded IRA member several years ago. She sucked the cold, damp air into her lungs through her teeth, willing her heart to slow down. There was no logical reason to fear the place where her husband died. It was just another place of blood and death. Her homeland was filled with them.
Aoife reached the Crown Pub. She reached for the door handle but then she heard it: the soft thud of something heavy meeting flesh down the alley. She crept along the tiny alleyway towards the sound. She gritted her teeth as she heard the crack of a bone and the moaning of a person in agony. Aoife peered around the dumpster and had to shove her fist in her mouth to keep from crying out. Thomas lay sprawled on the ground, covered in blood. Seamus was swinging a pipe viciously at his legs, and Michael delivered a series of hard kicks to Thomas' ribs. Thomas' body jerked with each blow, but there were no signs of resistance or sounds of pain anymore. Aoife knew her brother was dead. She turned and fled, blinded by the tears in her eyes. She ran and ran until she was within sight of The Speckled Dog. She slipped in the back door of the pub and into the ladies' restroom. Aoife splashed water on her face, tied back her hair, and composed herself. Her instincts told her to keep what she saw to herself, and if there was anything she had learned from growing up in the IRA, it was to trust her instincts.
Back at the rental house, Aoife's mother had fallen asleep in her rocking chair. Aoife spread a quilt over her and kissed her mother gently on the forehead. Aoife didn't sleep that night. She lay in the uncomfortable single bed in the room that used to belong to her nephews, staring at the clock on the bedside table. Every time she heard footsteps outside, she tensed, waiting for the inevitable knock on the door. Once the footfalls would fade, she would allow tears of anguish to slide silently down her face and into the pillow. The knock finally came at 7 am, in the form of two police detectives looking for the family of Thomas Skerrett.
Aoife went through the entire process numbly. She rode with the detectives to identify her brother's body and answered their questions about Thomas' activities through a fog. He was a logistics manager in the family bookselling business and acting director since her father's recent death. She paused for a moment. She must be acting director now, being the only living, competent immediate family member. She pushed that thought aside and continued answering questions. It wasn't until the older detective cleared his throat and mentioned that they needed to tell her something she might find disturbing that she really paid attention to what was going on around her. "It'll be all over the papers, so I want you to know," he said with a kindly hand over hers. Aoife could only blink at him. "Along with your brother's body, we found graffiti indicating that the crime was committed by one of the loyalist paramilitary groups." Aoife let out a startled cry before biting down on her knuckle. "I'm sorry, ma'am." Let him think that her reaction was to the idea that this was an act of partisan violence. She lied her way through questions about possible IRA involvement - no, of course not. She couldn't imagine her brother being involved in a group like that, she told the detective, tears in her eyes. It must have been a random act of violence.
Once home, she pummeled the pillows on her borrowed bed into oblivion. Those fucking bastards. Two days ago, they had sat at her dinner table eating food she had cooked and laughing and joking with her family. Then they had beaten her brother to death to – what? Inflame partisan tensions? Provide an excuse to plant bombs? Win public sympathy for the unionist cause? Whatever their reason, Aoife resolved, they would pay for what they did in blood.
Thomas' death was the catalyst that set off a dangerous week in Derry. A car bomb exploded near the site of Thomas' beating as a warning from the IRA, and two more were found and defused in front of other pubs in the area. Since no loyalist paramilitary group had claimed responsibility for Thomas' murder, the editorials in the papers reflected a fear that there was a new, as yet unidentified, player in the terrorist game. Aoife used the tension as an excuse to travel home to Galway and set her plans into motion.
She asked the only person in Ireland she was sure she trusted for help, and her cousin and best friend Declan readily agreed. Aoife blamed her mother's decline for many of the actions she took – making plans to return to the U.S., naming her cousin the acting director of the family bookselling business, selling the family home outside Galway. She was moving closer to her stateside family, she told those who asked, to get help with her mother and to heal from the tragedies of the past few years. Aunt Rois was delighted that Aoife was coming back to the states and offered her a job and a place to live. Rois kept her cancer recurrence to herself at that time, trying not to burden Aoife with any additional worries.
Aoife waited to put her plans for revenge into play until the days before her departure. Declan hired a neighborhood woman to stay for the weekend with Colleen on the premise that he and Aoife needed to tie up loose ends with Thomas' affairs. Declan drove her to Derry during the night so that they wouldn't be seen. She stayed inside the rental house, hidden, until it was time to act.
Aoife went after Seamus first. He was a stupid brute of a man, known for his penchant for hooking up with younger women despite having a wife and four children at home. Declan tailed Seamus until the night he went to a local nightclub. Aoife put on a skin-tight dress and a blonde wig and dropped a tiny handgun in her clutch purse. She caught the bus two blocks from the house and strode into the club to catcalls. Seamus was alone at the bar, tossing back shots and leering at the women in short skirts and tube tops on the packed dance floor. It was a simple matter to shimmy up next to him at the bar and flirt.
Soon Seamus was pawing at her through the tight dress and slobbering all over her neck. Aoife wanted to vomit, but instead she giggled and asked Seamus if he knew somewhere more private they could go. His face spread into a lecherous grin, and he practically dragged her down the cement block hallway, past the restrooms and around the corner to a barren utility closet with a stained pull-out couch. He yanked on the light bulb string and locked the door behind him. "Let's get down to business, then, lass," he said with a lascivious wink, undoing his belt buckle. Aoife pulled the handgun out of her purse and leveled it with his chest. "What in the devil do you think you're doing, you little cunt?" Seamus demanded. Aoife pulled off the wig then, keeping the gun trained on him with her other hand, and Seamus' eyes widened in recognition.
"You killed my brother," she hissed.
"Not just me," he retorted.
"McNamara's time is coming, rest assured. I just got to you first."
"It ain't him I'm talking about." Seamus taunted before diving towards her.
Aoife fired until the gun ran out of bullets, counting on the pounding beat in the club to mask the sounds. Seamus lay in a pool of his own blood on the floor. She slipped out the door, wondering what Seamus was talking about. Had it just been a ruse to distract her, or had someone else been involved in Thomas' death other than Michael and Seamus? Her head still whirring with questions, she found her way to the trash barrel she and Declan had agreed to and lifted the paper grocery store bag out. Ducking into the alley, she quickly shed the wig, shoes, and dress and slid into the provided jeans, shirt, and sneakers. She dropped the used clothing in to the trash barrel and lit a match. She waited until the dress had turned to ash and the cheap wig had melted into a pile of goo. She then called Declan on the cell phone in the bag and instructed him to pick her up. On their way back to the cottage, they crossed a bridge and she tossed the gun, now wiped clean of fingerprints, out the open window.
The next morning, a knock on the door startled her. Declan was out. She peered out the peephole to find Finnbar, her boyfriend of just over seven months, standing there looking disheveled and forlorn. He had been one of Thomas' right hand men in logistics, acting as a go-between for the IRA smuggling they sometimes undertook. He was knocking and calling her name. "Come on, Aoife, open up. I know you're in there." She nearly dragged him inside and shut the door.
"When were you going to tell me?" Finnbar demanded.
"Tell you what?" Aoife asked, confused.
"That you're moving to the states."
Aoife blinked at Finnbar. He had been a little overprotective before, but there was an edge to his anger she hadn't seen before - and didn't like. "I did tell you. I told you that I was taking my mother to the states a few weeks ago and that I might be gone a while," she replied defiantly.
"I thought a while meant a few weeks. Your family house in Galway is on the market. You named your cousin as acting director of the business. I went to your cottage to see you and found a 'for rent – furnished' sign on the lawn and your personal things cleared out." An alarm bell sounded in her head - how had he learned about the house and the company and how had he known where she was? Then she shook her head. She was just paranoid after everything that had happened lately. The strength of his reaction probably just indicated he was more attached to her than he had let on.
She reached out her hand to his cheek and caressed it with her thumb. "I'm sorry if you misunderstood, Finnbar. I don't know how long it will take to get Mum comfortable, and I'm not sure I'll be able to leave her. She's the only immediate family I have left."
"Don't go, Aoife," Finnbar begged, pulling her to the couch "We'll come up with something. You can move in with me, and we'll hire someone to take care of your mother with the money from the house sale and the cottage rental."
"Move in with you? Finnbar, we've never even gone on a weekend holiday together." Their long distance relationship, with her in Galway and him in Derry, had been passionate but sporadic up until this point.
"I know, and I'm sorry about that. But tragedies like the ones we've experienced lately have a way of putting things in perspective. I intended to wait until a happier time for this, but I feel like the clock is ticking." He pulled a small blue velvet box out of his shirt pocket and flipped it open. "Marry me, Aoife. Let me take care of you."
Aoife stared for what felt like an eternity at that marquise cut diamond before she shook her head and pushed the box away. "No, Finn." She stood, the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears. "I like you, but I can't make a decision like this now." She walked to the kitchen and then realized she didn't know why she was there. She turned back to the couch and was surprised to see a flash of anger cross Finnbar's eyes. But it was gone, replaced by what looked like hurt, and Aoife wondered if she had imagined it.
"I can take care of you and your mother," he insisted, and began rattling off different options, all predicated on her accepting the proposal she had just rejected.
"I don't want to be taken care of, Finn!" Aoife finally yelled. He stopped speaking, his jaw agape. She took a deep breath and exhaled, and then said more calmly. "I'm sorry about that. I'm not in a good place emotionally now. I need time to heal before I can commit to you." She felt tears welling up in her eyes and was grateful that Finnbar stood, kissed her on the cheek, and walked to the door.
"This ring isn't going anywhere," he said just before he pulled the door closed behind him. "I expect that I'll hear from you when you calm down." Aoife's eyes bulged. He had never spoken to her with such a condescending tone before but he was gone before she could recover. She sat down on the couch to cry, but the tears wouldn't come. All she felt was anger. Tonight, she would find Michael McNamara and avenge her brother. Tomorrow, she and her mother would board a plane and fly away for a fresh start. Sometime after that, she would decide if things with Finnbar were worth salvaging.
McNamara lived in a flat a few blocks away. The car was loaded and gassed for the trip back to Galway. Declan parked a street over and turned off the car, plunging them into inky blackness. The moon was a mere sliver in the sky as Aoife, clad entirely in black, climbed onto McNamara's balcony. She easily popped the cheap lock and entered the apartment. A single light burned in the bedroom, and she could hear voices coming from the television. As she considered how to take him by surprise, he padded into the bathroom. She took advantage of the opportunity to creep into the bedroom and take up a position behind the door. As McNamara returned, clad only in a white undershirt and boxer shorts, she waited for him to pass and then stepped out and put her gun to the back of his head. "No sudden moves," she said softly. "Sit down on the edge of the bed and keep your hands where I can see them." McNamara obeyed. She kept her distance, staying a few feet away, within easy reach of the door. Aoife pulled the balaclava up. She knew it wasn't smart, but she wanted McNamara to realize why he was about to die. She could tell he recognized her, but he said nothing. "You and Seamus Doherty beat my brother to death." He scowled at her.
"Aye," he confirmed defiantly.
"I just want you to know why I'm about to kill you."
He snorted. "Heard what you did to S-S-Seamus last night. But let me ask you, little girl, do you really think that we would murder one of our own f-f-for sport? You can kill me, but the man who ordered your brother's death is still w-w-walking around a free man."
Aoife raised an eyebrow at him. "If someone told you to kill my brother, who was it?"
He spit on her. "Ask your boyfriend." His words shook Aoife to the core. He lunged for her then, just as Seamus had the night before. For the second time in two days, she emptied a gun into a man. She sprinted back to the balcony and was in Declan's car faster than she thought possible. They were on the freeway ramp by the time the first police cars went by, sirens blaring.