Chapter Ten

Ciara

Now

Mammy sits wringing her hands together. ‘I knew it. I knew there was something wrong and he wasn’t telling me. I could feel it in my waters.’

My mother has never stopped loving my father. She might say she has, but her feelings are written across her face every time she hears a mention of his name.

‘I didn’t think you saw much of him any more,’ I say.

She blushes, looks down at her hands, where she still wears the plain gold wedding band he put on her finger almost thirty-six years ago. ‘I don’t. Well, not much really, but I stopped mentioning it to you because it only seemed to annoy you. I can’t believe it, Ciara. He’s dying.’ Her voice breaks, but she composes herself quickly, taking a deep breath. ‘And he wanted to see you? That’s good, isn’t it?’

‘Mammy, he has always wanted to see me. It’s me who hasn’t wanted to see him and I’m not sure that’s changed.’

She bristles.

‘He’s a dying man, Ciara. I’m sure all he wants is to make things right. You know he adores you. The pair of you were so close when you were little. “Me and my shadow,” he used to say. I’d be jealous of it sometimes, you know. You were my little girl but you much preferred going on long walks out the back roads with your daddy than you did baking with me or playing with all the dolls I bought you.’

‘Well, I never have been a very girly girl,’ I say.

‘No, I suppose you never have been,’ she says, looking me up and down as if she still can’t quite get her head around my gayness.

‘But I’ll tell you this, Ciara McKee, once he’s gone this time, that will be it. There won’t be any more chances to say the things you want to say, or hear the things you need to hear. Not everyone gets the chance to know when their time is coming. It’s hard, but it’s a blessing in its own way. Don’t spend the rest of your life wishing you’d said or done something differently.’

The only thing I wish I’d done differently was not to let him have so much power over me and my happiness. Letting him manipulate me and hurt me. And this? Now? The desires of a dying man, this was a masterstroke in manipulation.

‘I know I raised you well, Ciara,’ my mother continues. ‘I know I raised you to be the caring, loving woman you are now. I can’t tell you what to do …’ Her sentence trails off.

She doesn’t need to finish it. She is right, she can’t tell me what to do, I think. Not that it will stop her.

‘For all his faults, he’s family,’ she says. ‘And goodness knows he doesn’t have much of a family around him what with your auntie Kathleen being over in England. So maybe he needs us, and he needs you most of all.’