THEIR BLOOD BE LAID

PART VI

I've never killed a man before.

The knowing of what has to happen weighs on all of us. My mother hugs me gingerly to keep the blood off her dress. Aunt Katherine is a pale slip of hurt who hovers around the guest room and seems to ease in and out of being. One day into our war on the Mullane gang Aut Eva stops at the front door and drops her bags just long enough to hug us all goodbye.

"Don't let anything happen to your dad," she whispers in my ear. "Give 'em hell, all right?"

"Chicago's got to be an adventure," she proclaims to all of us, like a dare. "I'll come for a visit after the wedding. If there's anything left to visit."

A few hours after that Cousin Finn leaves his bed for the first time.

I miss when he first steps into the office. I'm slumped into the cracked leather of Dad's chair, watching dust collect in the air around me, letting my eyes drift over his collections of books and papers in case they hold any clues I've missed. I don't see Finn until he lets out a sharp hiss and collapses into the chair on the other side of the desk.

"I need to talk to you."

I sit up straight as quick as I can. There's a smear of red across the leather that I'm trying to ignore. "Finn. You need to be resting."

"No, I've got to talk to you."

"You need to sleep!"

"I'm fine," he says, and shifts in his seat, his leg sprawled in an awkward mess of bandages in front of him. "I heard."

"I'm taking care of it."

"I'm sorry about Uncle James." He won't meet my eyes. I won't meet his. "I just wanted to talk to you about it."

"Thanks," I reply, and trace one finger across the grains of wood in the desk. "I guess."

"So here's the thing."

"Finn."

He leans forward. Or tries to lean forward, before cursing under his breath and giving up on it. "You're going to try to get him back, right?"

"He's my dad. I can't not. He's still alive." Alive, but not happy. Alive, but in danger. Alive, but he might not be for long.

"All I'm saying is that maybe you shouldn't try to stop Mullane. Maybe we should push him over the edge."

Listen to your cousin, Dad told me. I don't know if he knew what Finn might say.

"I don't know what that's supposed to mean."

"This isn't going to end. This isn't going to stop until it's settled. We can talk all we want about leaving old country behind, but obviously some of it still sticks, and if I know anything from all of it... curses don't just go away. Not unless they're paid up. And there's one way to pay this one for sure. Mullane's dragging it out, but we know where this goes."

"Finn."

"We can't all die over this. That can't happen. So maybe we need to push Mullane into hurrying up and finishing this, and then we burn the shit out of him. That's all we've got for certain."

A throbbing behind my eyes that won't stop. A hurt in my stomach, in my chest, an ache right down to my toes. "I'm going to — push Mullane into killing my dad, Finn. I'm not going to do that. You can't mean that."

His voice nearly cracks. Nearly. "I don't want to mean it."

"I'm not killing my dad!"

"He's my uncle!" Now his voice does crack, stumbling over the words. "I grew up with him. He held me, he taught me how to shoot, he let me into his house, he's my family too! He's more dad to me than the one I've got. I know."