East Rising (Naive Mistakes #2) (21 page)

"Thanks for the discretion," said Conall,
shaking the man's hand and patting him on the back as he tried to
walk away.

"Young lady," the man continued, now talking
to me, "Conall here thinks it's OK not to pass by this restaurant
as often since he's started living the big life. I hope you will
remedy that, would you?"

Conall protested. "I was here a week
ago!"

"Yes, for five minutes to pay us some
lip-service and then leave, isn't it? You didn't even stay and eat!
You don't do that to family, Conall." The man pointed a chastising
finger at him — a patriarch disciplining his son — with a
semi-smile creeping into his complexion.

Who
are
these people?

I gotta say that...it all
seemed pretty damn
cool
! My Conall, my rich, wealthy, Conall, was a fucking
bad boy
to the core! From
the London Bronx! (OK, this area was far from The Bronx, but the
crowd in this place looked like it belonged there.)

Damn, I was already starting to forgive
him...

Outside the restaurant, Conall and I sat
with drinks. I drank mineral water, Conall had black coffee. The
silence felt like dripping goo.

"This feels weird," I said. Despondency for
the situation covered me like a pall on a coffin. "I mean, us, you.
Me. After all this time..."

Conall sipped his coffee.

"Six months..." My eyes watered gently. I
turned my back to the restaurant window. "And then, we get together
and...you're this whole other person I don't know." My eyes watered
a little more, but no tears broke through, yet. "I... Damn it. I
don't know what to think."

"So, Full-English-Plus and — " Smokey
stopped as he got outside with the massive English breakfasts. He
stared at my face, paused a second, frowned at Conall, then placed
the plates in front of us, dropping Conall's plate a little harder
than mine, as if disapproving of something on his part. "So,
enjoy." He wiped his hands, still looking at us. I knew what he was
looking at. Me. And my almost-tears.

I forced a smile. "Thank you, Smokey."

Smokey took his towel off his shoulder and
whipped Conall's arm with it. He scowled at him, then smiled at me,
walked away.

I chuckled, incredulous.
"Who
are
these
people?" I asked Conall, poking the red beans on my plate. I had
little appetite.

Conall harpooned a sausage with his fork,
bit a piece off the top of it and put the rest of it back down.
"They're...my family."

He chewed.

"And?" Christ, it felt like pulling fucking
teeth from a goddamned crow!

"And..." He sat back, took a deep breath,
finished chewing. "And, Leora...as is clearly apparent..." He wiped
his lips. "...I'm not very good at talking about things. Normally
girls would just be interested in me, see that I came from money
and, well, talking was relegated to the backseat." He waited for me
to respond.

"Clearly," I said. I looked
at my plate, then at Conall, and I realized, like a building
crashing in on itself, that I'd been dreaming... The whole six
months, skipping college this year, all of it... It had just been
one, fucking, magnanimously
huge
, catastrophic
pie-in-the-sky
dream
. "Conall, I'm gonna go. Goodbye."

My ass moved off the seat, just an inch
—

Conall's grip blasted to my
wrist before I was fully up! "After my sister died," he said.
"After she was...
murdered
...I met these people. They
were there for me far more than my anti-depressant mother or
prideful father ever have been."

My butt went back on that seat faster than a
gossip reporter to shots of Miley Cyrus grinding her ass at the
VMA's!

"Go on," I said.

"Not here. Eat. Somewhere quieter, OK?"

No, it wasn't OK. None of it was OK anymore.
I sighed.

"Leora, this is...my way.
I...Damn it! I brought you here because I knew that...if I
showed
you, you'd
understand better. And because..." He raked his hand through his
hair. "And because, I knew that, if I brought you here, I wouldn't
be able to run away from telling you the truth. I've told no one
before. But I want to tell you. One step at a time for me, please.
I want to tell you. I just... It might take some time."

"Not even Alexandra?"

"Not even 'what' Alexandra?"

"You haven't even told her?"

"No! Of course not!"

"But she knows about your sister."

His face went pale. He
looked away. "You...
know
?" he said.

"No. No, I don't. She didn't tell me
anything. It slipped. I mean, she mentioned you had a sister.
That's all. Nothing more. I promise."

"I see." He wiped his lips with a napkin. "I
never told her anything. Alex was there. She was there when Viv...
When my sister... When Viv — " He chomped a piece of sausage,
chewed hard, cleared his throat.

"When Vivienne, my sister, died, Alex knew
me. That's all. That's how she knows. And then I started fighting
at Trey's place. These folks" — he pointed inside — "they're tough
guys. Old men who work with their hands. Many of them trained there
as well. Some of them still do. They got to know me. I was a good
fighter. Anyway, whatever. Long story short. Here we are. And they
were there for me when I needed someone more than ever. Each one of
these men in here is my father. The father I never had."

The
love
of a father you never had, you
mean...

"Smokey is like my older
brother. I owe these men my life. My brother Francis never had
this. After...
Viv
...he went down a dark road. Without them, maybe I would've
fallen to a life of dope like he has.

"Is that enough for you? Can we eat now?
I'll tell you the rest. But not here. Not now." He shook his head,
upset that he had to tell me all of that already, before he'd been
ready.

I nodded an agreement, scooped up a forkful
of red beans and chewed.

We ate the rest of our meal in silence.

In all the time I've known Conall, in the
states and in the UK, I've seen him cry once.

Today was not that day. Although it should
have been.

He should have burst a faucet or something.
It was only here, today, where I got a glimpse of how much Conall
kept inside him, repressed, hidden, buried like an H-Bomb
three-hundred miles deep.

He took me to Hyde Park.

"She loved it here," he said as we walked
past the endless benches with dedications on them for people who
had died. They do that in England, you know. Dedicate benches to
loved ones who've passed:

For Jonathan Stone, Friend, Father, Husband:
1932 - 2004

Or:

In memory of Catherine Remington. 1956 -
2012

We walked the cement paths surrounded by
dead flowers. It must be quite a sight in the summer, but not
today.

"She was three years my junior, the only
girl in the family. She had goldilocks hair and eyes so wide it
looked like something out of an anime film. Huge, innocent eyes...
I was with her, here, when it happened. Come, I'll show you."

The sun had come out since. That's the way
it goes in England, completely unpredictable. One second warm, the
other, filled with black nimbus clouds. The sky was now clear but
the wind cut my skin with its chill.

Despite the lush evergreens and lawns, the
park now took on a sinister quality I didn't quite understand.
Perhaps it had been the dead rosebushes I'd just seen...

Conall's words echoed
around in my cranium:
I was with her,
here, when it happened.

"The worst part about it," he continued, "is
that it was senseless. A senseless killing. A random bullet, aimed
for nothing at all, and finding, as its target, Vivienne."

We passed small brass
shields, embedded in the ground, with a flower in the middle and
the words
Diana of Wales Memorial
Walk
surrounding each one.

"This was Vivienne's favorite walk. The
Princess Diana Walk. She loved Princess Diana. I think all little
girls like princesses, don't they?"

I hadn't really heard him.
I mean, I had, but the words only sank in a few moments later. I'd
been put in the moment.
Where? Where did
"it" happen? Were you on this very path? Did she suffer?

A squirt of bile entered my mouth. I
swallowed a lump.

"Leora?"

"Um, sorry, sorry... Y — Yes, yes, all
little girls like princesses, I think. I mean, I did, at
least..."

My eyes tracked the dead branches. We passed
a gazebo. A shadow covered me. The sun had again disappeared. A
drop of cold rain fell down the nape of my neck.

"Here we are," he said. We faced a
bench.

My hand shot up to my mouth. The tears were
so sudden that I didn't realize they were coming out until they
were at my cheeks. Then I fought them back. I clenched my teeth,
fought the sudden pain at my glands under my ears:

In Memory of Vivienne Williams. Our Diana.
Our Princess.

1992 - 2006

"This is where she died, in this garden
here." He pointed behind us, a circular garden without flowers sat
there. Its flowerlessness felt appropriate. "The Diana Walk. She
and I had been taking it. We took it often. Diana was her
heroine.

"The first shot came from there, the
entrance. I turned, a man was running. There were bobbies — cops —
behind him. He had a pistol in one hand, a bag in the other. He
shouted, 'Get the fuck out of the way!'

"I grabbed..." Conall tensed his jaw. No
tears. No single fucking tear. "I grabbed...my sister." He breathed
in deeply, coughed, shook his head, cleared his throat. Then he was
composed again. "Sorry, I grabbed her. The guy was running,
charging for us. I don't even fucking think he meant to fire the
bloody thing. That's the most sick and ironic thing of it all.
Because when the gun went off... It all happened so quickly. He was
there" — Conall pointed — "then I pushed her, like this." He showed
me, pushing my shoulder with both hands lightly. "And then..." He
looked around. "Well..." He pointed to the ground, cleared his
throat again.

Surely you need to cry about this, Conall.
Surely.

"The man ran, this way, beyond me. I was so
shocked that I... Well, all that blood. I didn't even process it
until...until it was too late. The perp ran this way..." He showed
me. "...like this. He turned, I turned, I looked at him. He
shouted, 'Oh, fuck, bugger! Mate, I'm so sorry.' He looked at his
fucking gun, smoking in his hand, dropped the fucking thing. And
that's when I finally realized what had happened.

"I turned to my..."

Conall bit his fist,
breathed in slowly, he turned away from me. I put my hands on his
shoulders but he shrugged them forcefully away, put his hand up in
a gesture that said,
Just give me
time
. I saw him give another heave. Then he
turned back to me.

Dry eyes. Drier than fucking Death Valley in
the middle of a ten-year drought.

This is
not
healthy...

"I turned to my sister,
here." He pointed to the ground. "And her body... Her little,
fragile body..." His chin trembled.
No
tears. "...was lying there. She
gurgled once. So much blood. So much. It went through...through..."
He hit his chest, then pointed at it. I understood it. The bullet
had gone through her chest.

"I, um, I fell...to my knees." He did this
now again, in his suit pants, on the cement. Rain started falling
harder now, enough to sprinkle his blazer with big blotches of
water. "I had blood..." He showed me his coat. "Blood...here...and
here."

Then he stopped talking, made a motion to
pick a body up and hold it. I fell to my knees with him. I was in a
dress and random pieces of gravel cut into my knees. It felt
real.

Rain slammed down on us now. We may as well
have jumped in a lake and just gotten out of it. He held this
imaginary body in his arms, real as the downpour when looked at
from his own eyes.

"And then she died, right here, looking at
me." He hefted his arms, then dropped them. "I should've had my
wits about me. I should've smothered her as soon as I'd heard the
first shot. Then the bullet would've hit me and not her. I
should've..." He shook his head.

The water on his face was from the rain. I
knew he wasn't crying.

"This is why I hate being all fucking emo,"
he said. "Because I end up getting wet and probably ruining a very
good set of clothes."

So he was joking now? I held his hand. I
understood now. I understood how deep this went. I didn't believe
I'd scratched even the surface of it, not a little bit. The rain
eased. "Oh, brilliant, how's that for fucking irony?" he said.

I wanted to tell him he
didn't need to joke. I wanted to tell him it was OK to break down,
to let go, to show
me
that he wasn't all tough-guy. I wanted to be that person for
him.

I remembered one of my dad's pep-talks:

Just hug them, sweetie.
Men are, well, we're not as smart as women. We talk with our fists.
We're a pretty fuckin stoopid bunch if you ask me. But we're also
easy to please. A good hug, a head on the shoulder. Make a man feel
like he means something. Like he's strong. Never acknowledge his
weaknesses, his vulnerable moments, even when they're in plain
sight. That's all a man needs. Never forget that behind every
strong man is a babe benching three-hundred.
Capisce?
But never make him feel
weak. That's all the pride a man has: He needs to feel, even if
it's not true, that he's protecting his woman, that he's strong. I
know, ape-monkey think. But it's true. And if he fails at it,
provided his intentions are good, never let him know it. Never.
It's the only thing that will ever kill him.