Good. Let him sweat.

As he sat across the divide, he pushed a cup toward Liam. “Maybe you could let this warm you up instead of the old morning Bushmills.”

Liam regarded the tea with suspicion before his eyes flitted back to Aiden. “Go ahead and say what you need to say, boyo.”

Aiden swirled his teabag around his cup. “Where’s your next port of call?”

“It’s up to me, really,” his father replied. “Thinkin’ about stayin’ here for a while. I ain’t come down in the last shower, y’know? Ould codger like me can’t sail all his life.”

“That’s surprising to hear,” Aiden said, as he pulled the bag out and set it on his saucer. He picked up his cup, holding the steaming liquid before his face. “I wondered if even you were aware of that.”

“How’s your mother doing?”

Aiden’s grip tightened on his cup. That’s what Liam did; took the piss and wound his own children up with mean humor. “Now you’re concerned?”

“Still shriekin’ mad, is she?” Liam asked with a grin. “I’m only windin’ ye up, boyo. If I came ’round Hannigan’s house, she’d take a knife to me.”

Aiden’s lip quirked. “Kinda like my tenth birthday?”

“Jaysus, you remember that?”

He rolled his eyes before taking a sip of tea. “Of course I do. You ruined my birthday, coming home pissed with that damn stray dog.”

Liam shook his head as his laughter turned into a raspy cough. “I’d just come back from a long haul in Dublin and remembered it was someone’s birthday. Christ, a little old reverend mother couldn’t have saved me from the Hannigan wrath that night. Thought she’d pan me head in, but she pulled a knife instead.”

“You tried to convince us that you bought the dog from travelers, but the damn thing was so long in the tooth, he limped in the door like he’d just entered the pearly gates,” Aiden said, biting back a smile. “This ancient hound found his way to the kitchen and stuck its fuckin’ maws into the birthday cake Mam made.”

His father doubled over laughing at the story. “She screamed like the bean sídhe when that mutt dragged the cake off the table. Hollerin’, ‘we’ll never get the feckin’ fleas out the rugs.’ And wee Ryan just sat on the floor and started eatin’ cake with the dog.”

Liam’s coarse laughter shocked Aiden back to reality. He remembered his mother’s face in that moment. It hadn’t been funny at the time and no matter how much Clare apologized to her children, he never forgot the pain in her face when she understood the end-result of trying to maintain a normal household. Liam would just show up and make a mess of it again. My god, it feels more like a tragic anecdote from Angela’s Ashes. Perhaps there would be something to smile about if it had only happened once. Unfortunately, destruction was the one thing his father was consistent with. “Are you sorry, Liam? For any of it?”