Danny put his drink on the desk. “What did you say?”

His father turned from the window. “I’m not blind, boy. You two may have told yourselves one thing, and she may very well love Con’ in a different way. And maybe it’s the better way.” His father shrugged. “But you—”

“You’re on thin fucking ice, sir.”

His father looked at him, his mouth half-open.

“Just so you know,” Danny said and could hear the tightness in his own voice.

Eventually his father nodded. It was the sage nod, that one that let you know he was acknowledging one aspect of your character while pondering flaws in another. He took Danny’s glass. He carried it to the decanter with his own and refilled them.

He handed Danny his glass. “Do you know why I allowed you to box?”

Danny said, “Because you couldn’t have stopped me.”

His father clinked his glass with his own. “Exactly. I’ve known since you were a boy that you could occasionally be prodded or smoothed, but you could never be molded. It’s anathema to you. Has been since you could walk. Do you know I love you, boy?”

Danny met his father’s eyes and nodded. He did. He always had. Strip away all the many faces and many hearts his father showed the world when it suited him, and that face and that heart were always evident.

“I love Con’, of course,” his father said. “I love all my children. But I love you differently because I love you in defeat.”

“Defeat?”

His father nodded. “I can’t rely on you, Aiden. I can’t shape you. This thing with O’Meara is a perfect example. This time it worked out. But it was imprudent. It could have cost you your career. And it’s a move I never would have made or allowed you to make. And that’s the difference with you, of all my children—I can’t predict your fate.”

“But Con’s?”

His father said, “Con’ will be district attorney someday. Without a doubt. Mayor, definitely. Governor, possibly. I’d hoped you’d be chief of police, but it’s not in you.”

“No,” Danny agreed.

“And the thought of you as mayor is one of the more comical ideas I’ve ever imagined.”

Danny smiled.

“So,” Thomas Coughlin said, “your future is something you’re hell-bent on writing with your own pen. Fine. I accept defeat.” He smiled to let Danny know he was only half serious. “But your brother’s future is something I tend to like a garden.” He hoisted himself up on the desk. His eyes were bright and liquid, a sure sign that doom was on the way. “Did Nora ever talk much about Ireland, about what led her here?”

“To me?”

“To you, yes.”

He knows something.

“No, sir.”

“Never mentioned anything about her past life?”

Maybe all of it.

Danny shook his head. “Not to me.”

“Funny,” his father said.

“Funny?”

His father shrugged. “Apparently you two had a less intimate relationship than I’d imagined.”

“Thin ice, sir. Very thin.”