Page 99 of 56 Days
“And I could do without this whole conversation.” Her sister sits back, folds her arms. “What’s this about? What’s going on?”
“It’s just that... I only know what’s on the internet. Which is what was reported, back then.”
“So?”
“So that’s what the public were told,” Ciara says. “But he was mybrother. If you only know what was reported too, and Mam didn’t tell you anything, well then... time is running out to ask questions, isn’t it?”
“To askMamquestions? Don’t you fucking dare do that.”
“I wasn’t going t—”
“Weknowwhat happened.”
“In general, yeah, but I mean, like...” Ciara searches for the right words. “The ins and outs.”
“Theinsandouts?” Siobhán repeats in a loud enough voice to attract a couple of head turns from surrounding tables. “He’s dead, Ciara. Nothing’s going to change that. We can’t bring him back. Why would you even...? What iswrongwith you?”
Over her sister’s shoulder, Ciara sees the hostess turn toward their table with a frown on her face.
“People are looking, Shiv.”
“So what’s new?” Siobhán twists around to throw their nearest audience members—amiddle-agedcouple two tables away—a filthy look.
“I do remember one thing,” Ciara says. “From back then.”
“Just the one? Aren’t you lucky?”
“I remember Mam saying, over and over, that it couldn’t have happened the way they said.”
All this earns is an eye roll from Siobhán.
“Look, I’m not trying to upset anyone here, Shiv. Quite the opposite. What if we could get something for Mam, some information, that would make her feel better? That would give her some peace before she goes?”
Siobhán scoffs at this. “Like what?”
“What actually happened.”
“Weknowwhat—”
“Maybe we do,” Ciara says. “But maybe we don’t. The woman has been tortured, for years, by that one afternoon. Even all these years later, she can’t understand what happened to her son. The official story, what that detective said in court—it never answered her questions. And what the newspapers wrote, they say what happened before and what was found afterward, and that the two—that the boys had conflicting stories about what went on in between. But that’s it.”
“Because no one wanted the gory details of what two children did to anotherchild. Because they werenormal. Unlike you, apparently. And you’re wrong about it not answering Mam’s questions. The problem was she never got answers sheliked.”
A beat passes.
“I know what you’re doing,” Siobhán says then, her tone gentle now. “Trust me. I’ve done it myself. But you’re looking for something that isn’t there. Yes, their stories contradicted each other. But they weretwelve. They were in more trouble than they even knew. And the ending of both stories was exactly the same: murder. That’s what matters. Not the gruesome details.”
“That wasn’t what—”
“You can’t bring him back from the dead, Ciara. And do me a favor: stop pretending that this is about Mam.”
A waiter arrives with their Cokes, his eyebrows rising slightly as he seems to catch the end of what Siobhan said. After he leaves, she announces that since she’s spent the morning inspecting biohazard waste facilities at the Bon Secours hospital—Siobhán works in medical waste management—it’s probably no harm for her to wash her hands one more time before the food arrives.
“And when I come back,” she says, “we talk about something else.”
As Siobhán walks off toward the bathrooms, Ciara turns to look out of the window.
Thenose-pickeris counting out coins for a tip with the same hand he’d been picking with.
