I slowly clench and unclench my fists. I don’t feel especially like punching anything; the physical action calms me. And I need to be calm to figure out what’s next. I look at my cheap burner phone and see it’s a few minutes before noon. I have to be at the hospital at one o’clock.

“Can you drop me off at Ronan’s?” I ask.

CHAPTER NINE

Caesar drops me by the service door to Ronan’s and then drives off to meet with a bunch of contractors at his and Frankie’s loft.

Uncle Gavin named his bar after Cill Rónáin, the village where he and my mother were born. Cill Rónáin is on Inis Mór, one of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. Today the town and island are called by their anglicized names, Kilronan and Inishmore, but growing up in Uncle Gavin’s house, Ethan and I learned the original Irish names. When it came to naming his bar, though, Uncle Gavin went with Ronan’s because he wanted his customers to be able to pronounce it.

Ronan’s is on West Peachtree in Midtown and looks pretty much like a bar that also serves food—plate-glass windows, dark green trim, the daily specials etched on a chalkboard, a long bar with a brass footrail and high-back bar stools, a scattering of tables, booths along two walls, a dart board in a corner. Ethan worked here after school for a few years, washing dishes and running errands for Uncle Gavin, which is how he met Frankie. As a teenager I spent less time here than my brother did, occasionally picking up a shift for someone, but mostly I sat in a back booth, drinking an endless supply of lemonade or Coke and ostensibly doing homework.

Most importantly, I learned how to watch and listen, fading into the background, and I figured out early on that the business that went on at Ronan’s wasn’t all about selling beer and burgers.

The service door is off the tiny lot to the side of the bar, a lot that holds a dumpster and two parking spots, one for Uncle Gavin and one for Frankie. Usually Uncle Gavin’s Navigator is parked here, but Frankie retrieved it from the airport yesterday and left it at Uncle Gavin’s house in Grant Park. The parking space is empty now except for an oil stain and a couple of weeds growing out of a crack in the asphalt. It’s wrong that my uncle’s SUV isn’t parked there. I turn my back on the empty space and face the service door. The door is an ugly, scarred thing that looks like it’s been beaten and kicked more than a few times. But it feels solid enough when I bang on it with my open palm.