I don’t have many memories from when I was little.
My mother died when I was only five and the only things I knew about her were that I inherited her red hair and her fashion sense. I heard the stories growing up of her garden parties in the middle of the summer, how people would show up in their best outfits just to be praised by her. Her word could make or break someone in their catty circle.
I don’t remember her voice or the feel of her hug. Those little things children cling to when the world turns dark, I never had them. There were times at night, right before sleep took me, that I would imagine someone coming in to tuck me into my large bed, press lips to my forehead and I would drift to sleep, silently imagining it was my mother giving me the strength to fight off the nightmares.
As I got older, those fantasies disappeared. Just like she did.
Because if my mother had been there, if she had lived, maybe she would have prevented so much from happening. Happening to me.
Staring down at the hole in the ground, the wet Boston weather turning the sky grey and heavy, I feel the weight of the atmosphere on my shoulders. Sadness and anticipation, maybe even a few coils of anger all lash into my gut. My dark umbrella fights off the pelting rain, the priest in front of me saying somber prayers of life and death and salvation, begging whoever is above to listen, but I don’t hear it. I can’t take my eyes off the casket, hovering over the ground.
My father, Ferguson O’Brien, lies before me and I can’t cry.
Shifting, I shake out my feet, the Grosgrain black heels sinking into the mud. I keep my eyes down, adjust the classic black pillbox hat and matching veil and fight off a shudder as a frigid burst of air tries to take my umbrella away.
Ferguson O’Brien. He was a giant among men, with a classic Irish temper, muddy brown eyes and dark locks that had turned grey in his age. His accent, still tinged with his homeland, always came through harsher when he was angry.
Which was the only time I talked to him.
My father and I had a complicated relationship. I wasn’t his favorite—that role belonged to my older sister, Collins. I wasn’t the eldest, and therefore his heir, like my oldest sister, Maeve. And I wasn’t his only boy, like my younger brother, Briar.
I was the middle child, the one with a temper to rival his own, who couldn’t do anything right and who he reminded constantly of that fact. I couldn’t finish college like he wanted, I couldn’t drive my car without crashing it, I couldn’t do anything in public without screwing up and getting the tabloids’ attention.
I also couldn’t just like men, like he wanted. Like a good Irish man, my father hated knowing his daughter— the one he proudly boasted had inherited his late wife’s hair—was bisexual. He hated that part of me and as the years went on, he hated me because of it.
Unfortunately, no one would see that part of our relationship. Only Maeve knew my father would scream and yell at me for screwing up—for being different in his eyes. For being such a sinful disaster. The verbal berating, the disgusted looks. But only I knew how those mallet sized hands would feel as his anger would boil over, resulting in various slaps and hits shown behind closed doors.
I shudder, thinking of all the times he would hit me, slap me for my sass or my incompetence. One time, for a very compromising picture that was leaked to the press. I couldn’t leave the house for a week, my black eyes too telling that if I went out into public, everyone would know what happened.
I never questioned why the hits stopped. Just one day they did. And I was grateful for it.
Although, I have to admit, the abuse was better than the silence. Ferguson gave me the silent treatment most of my life, only yelling if I did something really stupid, keeping me in the dark about our life—or maybe I reminded him too much of my mother that he couldn’t bear to look at me—and if anything, that was worse than the hits.
When I learned he died, I thought I’d be able to shed a few tears. He was my father, he provided a home over my head, an education, the best clothing and jewelry. But my eyes have stayed dry.
He was an awful man. The clothing and jewelry, the extravagant presents weren’t done to make me feel special—for any of us kids to feel special. It was a way to own us, to use us as his walking trophies. A literal billboard sign promoting his wealth. I pawned most of what he gave me, used the money for drugs and booze or gave the stuff to my friend Danica to wear. I never wanted anything from him. Because it was never given freely, out of love, there was always a catch.
The mahogany casket is laid with brass knobs, a few Gaelic blessings carved into the wood. The hole is black, compacted with wet dirt, the fake grass covering the top a bright contrast to how dark everything is. Even the sky has darkened, the grey turning charcoal, as if my father is showing his displeasure from the grave.
I wouldn’t doubt it.
For a man larger-than-life, who was used to getting everything he wanted with power or force, it’s a rather anticlimactic ending.
He deserved so much worse. A heart attack at his desk, a cigar in one hand, a glass of aged whiskey in the other? Most men would hope to go out that way. He got off easy.
I kick out my feet, willing the coldness in my limbs to leave. A wave of pins and needles radiates up my legs and arms, pinching my nerves until my entire body shivers uncomfortably. The congregation is silent, listening to the last remaining prayers. Even the crows have stopped cawing, taking a moment of silence.
I’d rather be anywhere than here right now. Anywhere but here, fighting off the last bit of winter as spring tries to shine, and fighting the overwhelming urge to run; or the urge to find the closest person and fuck them until neither of us know what day it is.
My father thought women should be seen and not heard. We were meant to be married to men, produce children, and care for the home. Under no circumstances were we to enjoy sex—or God forbid—have sex outside of marriage.
Pops hated me because I am not a typical woman. I like sex, I enjoy booze and have used more drugs than I know what to do with, while having relationships with both women and men. I was the opposite of what my father wanted—and he hated that he couldn’t change me.
That hate he gave me, threw at me as if my choices, my life, were the reason for his spite, grew into something deeper than shame. Deeper than guilt. I became numb to everything. Numb to life, to his rants and abuse. Numb to the neglect and avoidance. Just numb.
Right now, that numbness is fighting for dominance as I scan the crowd, take in their weary and wet faces. The rain seems to grow harder, dousing the candles by the rows of flowers, pelting into the priest who prattles on about heaven, about how my father will be at rest.
I’m not religious, but I know that’s not the case. Not with who my father was.
I hold my mother’s simple gold cross at my throat and tuck it back into my warmth. I don’t care that it was a woman who I don’t remember—I can pretend. I can pretend I remember this as being hers, and pretend to feel her presence when I’m in need of comfort. Comfort I didn’t get from anyone else in my family, comfort I need right now to not feel so alone.
As if pulled, my eyes drift, locking with Maeve in the back of the crowd. She stands resolutely, a ghoul surrounded by mourners, staring across their heads as the wind sweeps her dark hair behind her shoulders. She doesn’t move, doesn’t smile, just stares at me, seeing things too deep for me to cover.
I try not to shudder. Her eyes are so cold, yet she sees everything. She’s always been like that.
When I was younger, I desperately looked up to Maeve. She was strong, unflinching. I knew Pops let her into the clan business, let her know things he would never tell me. I wanted to be just like her—just as strong and unbreakable.
That was when I was little, though. Now, after Pops used his hands to try and mold me into the perfect daughter and she never stopped it? A burning ball of rage glows into my stomach whenever I see her.
She never stopped him. Never intervened. She just let him yell and hit and throw things. She never protected me and it sours all those childish fantasies that put her on a pedestal. Now, I see her for the raging bitch that she is, unable—or unwilling—to protect me from our monster of a parent.
Green eyes flash as she reads something on my face before looking back to the casket.
Cool delicate hands grip my umbrella, a slender body sliding under with me. The scent of freshly baked macarons on a warm morning overlooking a busy Parisian Street, wraps around me like a hug. I inhale, basking in the scent of my older sister, Collins, and lean into her warmth.
She’s always so warm. I wish I could suck it up and get rid of this inner numbness.
“Heard from Briar?” she asks, keeping her voice pitched low.
I sigh, kicking out my toes again. They’ve gone numb just like the ball of emotions in my gut. “No. Not since I told him about Pops.”
Briar hasn’t been home in almost four years. My younger brother by ten months, he doesn’t remember our mother and had a tense relationship with Pops too. I wish I knew why, but one day after he turned fifteen, he stole a bunch of stuff from Pops’ office and left. The only reason Pops never went after him was because it would be seen as a weakness; Ferguson O’Brien couldn’t control one of his children, how would that look for his Irish clan, his criminal enterprise? He’d be ridiculed – or worse.
So he let Briar leave and forbade us from ever speaking to him again.
As far as I knew, I’m the only one he answers via text.
“Are you okay?” Collins asks, tone worried. I can barely hear her over the clap of thunder behind us. The priest is still going, the storm not stopping his fervor. Will he ever stop?
“Oh, you know, just fantastic,” I quip, frowning down at my shoes. “I always wanted to ruin my Chanel heels while burying my father.”
She rolls her familiar green eyes, pushing her thick rimmed glasses further up her nose. The same eyes our mother had, the same ones all of the kids inherited. Maeve’s eyes are always cold, but Collins looks at me now, a mixture of light and sorrow pinching her brow, aging her beyond her young twenty-three years of life.
Collins was Pops’ favorite. She’s the smart one, the kind one, the one who was still pure in his eyes. Maeve was a hardened killer, and I slept with half the football team before the end of freshman year of high school, but Collins? Collins was perfect.
At one time, I used to be jealous of her. Jealous of the easy way her and Pops communicated, how he never laid a finger on her. How he seemed to light up when she entered the room but would glower when he saw me.
It wasn’t Collins’ fault, though. None of us knew why he took to Collins, why she seemed to get the mantle of favorite. Why she got away with everything, while I didn’t.
Alright, maybe I’m still jealous. But I try not to let it show, wrapping my arm around her thin, bony shoulders. My older sister has always been thin compared to my plump curves, but now, it feels more pronounced. Bones poke through the wool coat and there’s a moment of sheer worry that she’s not been eating with all that’s happened.
“How are you holding up?”
She sighs, eyes closing momentarily in grief. But it’s a brief pause, a moment to collect, before she straightens, pushing that sorrow away.
As the middle sister, Collins has always been the makeshift caretaker. The worrier. The mediator. Her whole life has been about making sure others are alright before taking care of herself. A trait I do not share.
Comforting others isn’t in my wheelhouse. I’m better at giving you a shot to chase away the pain than holding you while you cry.
Maybe she’ll tell Maeve. They have that type of relationship. Something I’ve always been bitter about, even though I won’t admit to it.
“I’ve been better,” Collins says slowly, tasting her words. “I’m not looking forward to going home.”
“Yeah. It’s been a bit surreal,” I add. “At least with all the preparations, we didn’t have to think about it. About how he died in his office. Now, without that distraction…” I trail off, and Collins just nods.
Would he haunt the home now? It would be just like our father to haunt the mansion, finding ways to torment me from the afterlife.
I look up, noticing Maeve is surrounded by a group of older, white men, various shades of grey hair hidden under caps and high collared coats. Their faces are twisted with concern, but I notice one man, the youngest of the group, looks downright nasty.
The way he speaks, the anger in his jerky movements, clearly, he’s upset. But she doesn’t react, doesn’t move. Just endures.
“What’s that about?” I jerk my chin to the group. “Who’s the angry man in the wool coat?”
“Huh,” Collins mumbles. “Probably the Board.”
“Board?” Vaguely, I know I’ve heard the term before but it doesn’t register.
“Our benefactors. They backed Pops when he ran our clan, and now they’ll back Maeve.” She pushes the glasses back up, the lens dotted with rain. “Being with Pops so many times, running the business, she already knows the rules, but I’m sure they’re just laying them out again.”
“One looks pissed.” The man in question cuts a glare my way and my heart stops.
Angry men don’t scare me—I’ve dealt with my father and he was bigger than this gentleman. But it’s the heat in his eyes, the way he sneers at me, then Maeve that gives me pause. There’s something dark in his eyes, something sinister that tells me to never be left in a dark alley with him. I won’t like what he does.
“Pops has been in league with them since he was a teen. They brought him over to America, set him up. They might just be mad to lose a longtime associate,” Collins explains, her voice taking on the clinical tone like whenever she’s reciting medical facts. As a resident, she slips into her medical persona far more often than not.
“There’s mad and then there’s… mad.”
“Whatever is going on over there, you need to remember what is expected of you now.” She cuts me a look, one that she used to give me when she found out I was sneaking out to go skinny dipping with a group of kids from school.
Rolling my eyes, I shift, pulling my phone from my pocket to check the time. “And what is that, Col?”
“Maeve’s in charge now. That means you follow her rules.”
Just the insinuation that I have to follow my oldest sister, the woman who never protected me a day in her life, fuels that ball of anger in my belly into a burning wildfire.
Sneering darkly, I snort. “Right. Because Maeve is now Captain. The mighty Ace.” I roll my eyes at the horrible childhood nickname. Who even gave that to her?
“You were at the will reading last night, the same as me. Pops left the clan to her. It’s her rule. That means—”
“Get in line or get out.”
“Sloaney,” she says tiredly, pulling me to look into her eyes. In my heels I’m a few inches taller than my sister, her cinnamon locks hanging in soft curls along her shoulders. “Listen, please? Maeve is in charge. If you do anything to test her, to do what you did to Pops—”
“What I did to Pops—”
“You’ll be out. Maeve has the power to take all of this away.” She gestures to my designer grey trench coat, the muddy black heels. “Her word is law. She’s not like Pops. She won’t give you second chances.”
That anger grows into a near inferno.
Second chances? Getting a black eye was a second chance?
It’s never been more apparent than now, that Collins and I were raised wholly differently by the same man. Just like Maeve, Collins never stopped what he did to me. Did she even know? Did she care?
“So get in line, right?” I seethe, glaring at my older sister. “Be nice, say thank you, and kiss her ass so she doesn’t take away my credit card?”
“Sloane,” she pleads, shaking me slightly. “If she kicks you out, that’s it. You don’t get to see us anymore. Can you really go on without a family?”
A family that always made me feel like an outsider? An older sister who lived in a perfect bubble, the one I wished for? The oldest who always left me to fend for myself? A nonexistent brother who couldn’t bother to show up to a funeral, just so I could make sure he was alright?
I turn away, watching the priest drop wet dirt on to the casket, a final cross being etched above my father’s dead body. Rain pours and it hits the casket in an easy beat that echoes in my head, as my blood pounds.
Swallowing that anger, I can’t stop it from tainting my words. “Don’t worry, Col. I won’t embarrass you or Maeve. I’ll be the perfect sister.”
Collins sighs. “It’s not about embarrassing us, Sloane. It’s about what you do. How many times have the papers caught you snorting something or in compromising situations?”
I can’t even count that high. Too many times.
Instead of asking why I did those things, care about my reasons, my sister just judges. She doesn’t care that all those times out were from my fights with Pops, or a way to drive away the numbness. The numbness that always seemed to sneak in, reminding me of how abandoned I felt. How alone I am.
No, Collins only saw what Pops did. That I’m a fuck-up.
“Right. Sorry we’re not all perfect like you.”
Collins clears her throat, used to my lashing out. “I’m not perfect. But if you could stop getting so messed up that you can’t find your way home, or stop making out with Danica—”
“Pops isn’t even cold yet, Col,” I interrupt, glaring at a few onlookers, turning to catch our argument. “Let’s save something for the ride home.”
My sister huffs out a breath, cursing under her breath. “You know she’s not good for you. She never has been. She’s toxic, always getting you into trouble or drugs—”
“And you look terrible in brown, but yet you still continue to wear it.” I take in her designer Mary Janes, the brown wool jacket critically, letting her see my irritation.
She winces, tugging her coat closer, giving me space. Mission accomplished.
I am not in the mood to deal with another argument about why my friend-turned hookup is bad for me. She’s been the only constant in my life, since I came out to Pops. Sure, she isn’t the most trustworthy and is self-centered, but she’s been the only person to not judge me for anything I’ve done. Most of it with her.
With Danica, I’m not the resident fuck-up. I’m not too loud. Too much. I’m just Sloane.
Everyone starts dropping roses on to Pops’ coffin, pulling us from our heated debate.
Shaking her head, Collins mumbles something under her breath as she leads us over. We’re almost to the casket before our oldest sister cuts us off, her chin dripping with rain, clothes soaked.
She looks windswept and storm-beaten, but her shoulders don’t fall, her spine doesn’t bow. In fact, she stands straighter. Looking around, I see most of the crowd is gone, including the three board members, leaving just the three daughters of Ferguson O’Brien in the cemetery.
Her cold eyes rake over my form, assessing, before doing the same to Collins. Her gaze tears into us. Looking for weaknesses. Because that’s what we are now to Maeve. Liabilities.
We’ve gone from family to nothing more than clan members she has to watch.
“Ready to go?” Behind her, the blacked-out G-Class sits in the rain, her best friend Hayes Monticello waiting for us.
Tall, broad shouldered with chestnut locks tied into a high bun, he screams power and purpose. And he’s the right kind of distraction I need to beat back this numbness and avoid my sisters. Too bad he doesn’t bother with me.
Maeve doesn’t wait for our answer, turning on her heels. She doesn’t even look at Pops’ grave, doesn’t throw a flower in with him, doesn’t say a final prayer. Nothing.
Collins grabs two red roses, holding one out to me. When I take it, she turns, offering a quiet goodbye before taking the umbrella from me.
I stand looking at the casket, the dirt crumpling in along the edges. There’s a piece of me that knows I should say goodbye—this will be my last chance to do so. But I can’t bring myself to do it. He was a monster and he never truly cared for me.
So instead, I drop the flower beside my feet, ignore Collins’ worried gaze and hurry into the waiting warm car. Ferguson doesn’t deserve a goodbye.
