“Aiden.”

Danny pushed back his chair and stood.

Quentin said, “I have rights as a husband, Cap’n. I do.”

“And those will be respected. But for tonight, I—”

“And what of her child, sir? What’s he to think of—”

“She has a kid?” Connor raised his head from his hands.

Ellen Coughlin blessed herself again. “Holy Mary Mother of Jesus.”

Thomas let go of Nora’s hands.

“Aye, she has a little nipper back at home, she does,” Quentin Finn said.

“You abandoned your own child?” Thomas said.

Danny watched her eyes dart, her shoulders hunch. She pulled her arms in tight against her body—prey, always prey, searching, plotting, tensing for the mad dash.

A child? She’d never said a word.

“He’s not mine,” she said. “He’s his.”

“You left a child behind?” Danny’s mother said. “A child?”

“Not mine,” Nora said and reached for her but Ellen Coughlin pulled her arms back into her lap. “Not mine, not mine, not mine.”

Quentin allowed himself a smile. “The lad’s lost, he is, without his mother. Lost.”

“He’s not mine,” she said to Danny. Then to Connor: “He’s not.”

“Don’t,” Connor said.

Danny’s father stood and ran his hand through his hair, scratched the back of his head, and let out a heavy sigh. “We trusted you,” he said. “With our son. With Joe. How could you have put us in that position? How could you have misled us? Our child, Nora. We trusted you with our child.”

“And I did well by him,” Nora said, finding something in herself that Danny had seen in fighters, usually the smaller ones, in the late rounds of a bout, something that went far deeper than size and physical strength. “I did well by him and well by you, sir, and well by your family.”

Thomas looked at her, then at Quentin Finn, then back at her, and finally at Connor. “You were going to marry my son. You would have embarrassed us. Besmirched my name? This name of this house that gave you shelter, gave you food, treated you like family? How dare you, woman? How dare you?”

Nora looked right back at him, the tears finally coming now. “How dare I? This home is a coffin to that boy.” She pointed back in the direction of Joe’s room. “He feels it every day. I took care of him because he doesn’t even know his own mother. She—”

Ellen Coughlin stood from the table but moved no farther. She placed her hand on the back of her chair.

“Close your mouth,” Thomas Coughlin said. “Close it, you banshee.”

“You whore,” Connor said. “You filthy whore.”

“Oh, dear Lord,” Ellen Coughlin said. “Stop. Stop!”

Joe walked into the dining room. He looked up at them all. “What?” he said. “What?”

Thomas said to Nora, “Leave this house at once.”

Quentin Finn smiled.

Danny said, “Dad.”

But his father had reached a place most sensed in him but few ever saw. He pointed at Danny without looking at him. “You’re drunk. Go home.”