Page 6 of Blood in the Water

“I’m guessing they’re planning another robbery,” Nolan said. “It makes sense. They got away with the last one.”

“That was before the Feds were crawling in our shit.”

Nolan thought about it. “He’s stockpiling.”

“Money?” Will asked.

Nolan nodded. “In case he has to run.”

“Goddamn.”

“It’s a good sign,” Nolan said. “It means he knows he may have to leave. It’s what we want.”

Will dropped his cigarette in the snow and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Am I the only one who doesn’t believe he’s going to make a quiet exit?”

Nolan clapped him on the back. “Nothing about this is going to be quiet.”

2

“When will Dad be home?” Bridget asked, forcing herself to take a bite of her mother’s roast chicken.

“Not until late,” her mother said. “The new medication Doctor Jelen prescribed for Owen’s throat isn’t covered by the insurance.”

Bridget nodded and took a bite of mashed potatoes. They were gummy in her mouth, and she had the sudden urge to gag. It was hard to eat on the nights Owen didn’t join them. Hard to enjoy her mother’s food when Owen was increasingly unable to to do the same, when she could hear the television in the next room, Owen’s preferred method of passing the time when his medications made it difficult to focus on the book propped in front of him on his wheelchair.

He was still able to manage soft foods when he really wanted them, but more and more he seemed resigned to the liquid meal replacement that could be sucked through a straw. His throat wasn’t working as effectively as it was supposed to anymore, something the new medication was supposed to help, and it was hard not to be pessimistic.

The facts spoke for themselves: ALS was a degenerative disease, there was no cure, only management until the body became unable to breathe on its own.

It was a horror Bridget tried not to think about too often. She still saw Owen as the kid brother who’d trailed after her when he was a toddler, the little boy who’d wrestled with her on the sofa, who’d eventually grown tall enough to ruffle her hair and call her “kid” even though she was older than him.

She could hardly breathe when she thought about his creativity and humor and kindness and intelligence trapped inside an unresponsive body, could hardly hold back the scream when she thought about the brochure her mother had found in Owen’s dresser a couple months earlier, a brochure that advertised a facility in Switzerland called Dignitas that offered patients like Owen the chance to choose a peaceful death over a painful one.

“You okay, love?”

Bridget looked up, her mother’s voice breaking through her thoughts. She smiled. “Just tired.”

“The hours they have you working at that place are ridiculous,” her mother said.

“Mom, I told you, they don’t make me do anything. I have clients who need me. A lot of them. It’s not a nine-to-five job.”

“After all that work at law school…” Her mother shook her head.

“I’m doing exactly the kind of work I want to be doing,” Bridget said.

It was true, although also true that her law degree from Suffolk University hadn’t exactly opened doors at Boston’s prestigious, high-paying firms. Unfortunately a law degree was still one where it paid to attend an IvyLeague school, something that had been squarely out of Bridget’s reach.

But it was okay. Her job at Boston Refugee and Immigration Center — otherwise known as BRIC — was a labor of love. Her salary was abysmal, the hours horrendous, but it was work that mattered, work that made a difference. It was work that made the things she did for Seamus O’Brien — bailing out his thugs, negotiating plea deals for the ones who couldn’t escape charges, and since last month, providing legal advice to Seamus in his dealings with the FBI — palatable.

Her mother tucked a piece of strawberry blond hair behind one ear. “I’m just saying, things could be easier for you, love. That’s what your father and I wanted — for you and for Owen.”

Her mother’s voice was heavy with sorrow, and Bridget reached across the table to touch her hand. It went without saying that Owen’s life would not be easier than their parents’. Bridget’s wasn’t shaping up to be a picnic either, but none of that was their fault.

“You’ve given us a wonderful life,” Bridget said. “That I even had the opportunity to go to law school, that I have the opportunity to work for BRIC, is a luxury.”

Her mother had been a child when her parents came to America from Ireland in the 70s. Her father had arrived as a teenager around the same time. They’d had it better than their parents before them, who had fled political strife and economic despair, but they had no education beyond high school. Her father had gone straight to work on the factory floor at Reynold’s Machine Shop, a job he’d felt lucky to have at the time. Her mother had worked at a bookstore until she’d met Kyle Monaghan, after which, like mosttraditional Irish Catholics of their generation, she’d focused all her energy on her home and family.

“But what is the point of having those opportunities if you don’t take them?” There was no judgement in her mother’s voice.