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“Ya think yer too good fer this now, don’t cha? ’Cause yer goin’ to some fancy fuckin’ college. Ya think yer better ’n’ me?” He released me just long enough to pull that hand back, flatten his palm, and slap me across the face.
The worst part about being hit wasn’t the sting, not for me; it was the sound. That smack would ring in my ears for hours, sometimes days—long after the swelling went down—reminding me that I was weak, humiliating me over and over again, from the inside out. The sharp clap of skin hitting skin was the soundtrack of my youth. The vibration of my soul. And the source of all my shame.
I barely heard the rest of his speech over the sound of it repeating like a broken record in my head.
“Ya won’t be thinkin’ yer better than me when I put yer arse out on the street, now will ya? The only reason yer still here is ’cause Sheila begged me to let ya stay until you could afford a place of yer own. But yer twenty goddamn years old now, darlin’. I can kick you out whenever the fuck I want. So, maybe think about that the next time ya feel like bein’ smart with me.”
My cheek throbbed, my eyes burned, and panic took hold once I realized what was happening. I couldn’t cry. Crying only made him angrier. I had to hold it in. I had to.
Widening my eyes to keep from accidentally blinking out a tear, I stared straight ahead at Oliver’s heaving whiskey barrel of a chest. A stray beam of sunlight had broken through the clouds, making the side of his bushy blond beard glow like hay that was about to catch fire.
I wished that it would.
“Ollie?”
Da pulled me to my feet so fast that the world spun out from under me and went black. The heap of green rope tumbled out of my arms and onto the ground as I struggled to stay upright and conscious. I felt his arm wrap around my shoulders as Oliver’s girlfriend, Sheila, stepped through the back door, bouncing their thrashing toddler on her hip.
I hadn’t even known Oliver had been seeing anyone until Sheila showed up on our doorstep, pregnant with his baby and crying because her husband had just kicked her out. She’d been a permanent fixture at our house ever since, and honestly, she was the best thing that had ever happened to us. I tried to stay within earshot of her at all times because Da never raised a hand to me when he knew she was around.
The downside of Sheila’s arrival was that she’d given Oliver a son, which only solidified his disdain for me. He had a new family now. A new child. One that could carry on the Doyle name and wasn’t a walking, talking redheaded reminder of the woman who’d shattered his heart.
“Can I borrow Clo for a minute?” Sheila asked, grimacing as my half-brother whined and wriggled in her spindly arms. “Odie’s fightin’ his nap again, and I need her to work her magic.”
Odie was short for Odin, the Norse god of war. That name was one hundred percent my father’s doing. He prided himself on his Viking blood. Sometimes, when I saw him standing on the bow of his fishing boat, I could almost picture him leading the longship full of Norsemen who had raided Howth all those centuries ago.
He would have fit right in.
Da tightened his grip around me in a fake show of fatherly affection, squeezing my injured shoulder with his viselike hand. It was a warning. Oliver didn’t like it when I got involved with anything related to his new family. As far as he was concerned, Sheila belonged to him and Odie alone. She was their special mother figure, not mine. And the sooner I got out of his life, the sooner he could start pretending like my mother had never existed.
The feeling was mutual. After two years of working part-time at the Trinity College bookshop, had almost saved enough money to put a deposit down on an apartment and afford some basic furnishings. Honestly, I probably had enough already, but I couldn’t leave Odie. Not yet. Not until he was old enough to tell me if Oliver ever tried to hurt him …
Or make him untangle those goddamn fishing nets.
“Ten minutes,” Da said, giving my shoulder a shake that made my freshly bruised ribs scream in pain. “Then, this one has to go check the lobster traps.”
I could almost hear his smug grin.
More chores.
Sheila gave me a sympathetic half-smile as Oliver steered me across the yard and into the house. I didn’t know how much she’d seen or heard, but it didn’t matter. She knew. She knew what went on, and she pitied me for it. But I pitied her even more. Because once I left, she’d most likely be taking my place as his punching bag. And unlike me, he’d never let her get away. Ma had tried to do it, and look where it had gotten her.
The back door led into the kitchen, where Oliver left his wellies on a rubber mat and hung his oilskin coveralls on a hook above them. Beside the hook was one of Sheila’s coastal-chic additions to the house—a wooden anchor with the words Life’s a Beach painted on it. Like living on a rocky cliff next to the freezing cold sea in rainy Ireland was the same as having a beach house in the Caribbean.
Sheila tried to hand me the wailing one-year-old, but Odie clung to her with a high-pitched shriek. It felt as if he were crying all the tears I was trying to hold back. My ribs and cheek throbbed, my eyes stung and my throat burned, but what hurt the most was the fact that I had to pretend as if nothing hurt at all.
“Shut him up, will ya?” Oliver grumbled as he shuffled into the sitting room, popping the tab on a can of Guinness.
“He’s just overtired.” Sheila winced, prying his chubby fist out of her limp brown hair. “Nothin’ his big sister can’t fix.”
“Well, she’d better fix it fast if she’s gonna check those traps before dinner,” Oliver sneered, flopping into a blue recliner that was at least a decade older than me. The springs groaned and squeaked beneath him as he yanked on the lever, extending the footrest.
As soon as Sheila extracted the last of Odie’s fingers from her hair, I whisked him into my arms. Turning his body sideways, I pressed his belly against mine and began twisting my torso back and forth while making a shushing sound. He went still immediately. It wasn’t magic—I was simply the only one in the house who’d bothered to research how to get a baby to stop crying.
With Odie taken care of, Sheila plopped down on the couch, her small frame landing in a pile of seashell-shaped pillows—another one of her design touches.
Da turned on the TV, and while the two of them watched the glowing screen, I stood behind them, rocking and shushing and soothing myself. Lifting Odie’s sleeping body to my chest, I clutched him like a teddy bear as one of the tears I’d been trying so hard to suppress finally slid down the swollen side of my face.
Stop it, I scolded myself, wiping my wet cheek on Odie’s soft head. If Oliver sees you crying, it’s gonna be so much worse.
