Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

“I’d like to go downstairs,” Kathleen said, sharply.

Deirdre looked at Max. He shrugged, ever so slightly, then told her, “The lawn and garden below look stunning. Does it require a lot of upkeep?”

“My Lord, man,” Deirdre said with a laugh. “Try to keep the greenery from growin’ on our famous Emerald Isle. It requires constant ‘groomin’, wouldn’t you know?”

On that they clambered back down the wooden stairs, sounding like a home invasion crew.

“Deirdre,” came a man’s voice with an Irish lilt, “there’s a car in the drive, have you—?”

They collided at the bottom of the stairs, Deirdre still on the first step and taller than the man who looked up at her. Max higher still, looking down on a man’s head of thinning rusted gray hair.

“We have company,” the man told Deirdre. “I didn’t know.” His hand waved a wrench apologetically.

Guests, Max guessed, weren’t to meet the maintenance side of this rural paradise.

The man backed away to let them all descend, Max turned to take Kathleen’s hand for the last steep step. Her fingers were ice cold. Her adrenaline had kicked in at peak performance. Max tried to look the newcomer in the eye, but the guy was looking down, pulling screws from his work belt.

“I’d best be back at it,” he mumbled, moving around the corner to what must be the kitchen.

“Wait,” Kathleen said. “Someone’s here to meet you, Sean.”

Deirdre’s stance immediately stiffened. Max recognized a defender as surely as if she’d been a Doberman. His gut tightened. If this was Sean, he hadn’t escaped the pub bombing without serious damage. Max felt like someone about to walk into a burn ward…bracing himself to face people who’d suffered horrible hurt and disfigurement, but desperately trying to see and show the humanity that could look past that to the person.

“Sean,” he said, far sooner than he’d wanted to.

The man froze, giving Max time to recognize his right profile and rejoice at the slim slice of normality. The receding hairline itself was an amazing alteration. Then he remembered their uncle Dennis. Sean’s appearance had always skewed to the Red Irish side of the family, while Max was a poster boy for the Black Irish model.

So different they had looked, so linked they had been. First cousins, blood brothers, best friends.

“You’re Michael, aren’t you?” Deirdre accused, stepping between Max and Sean. “You turned traitor and disappeared, and now you’re back?”

There Max was, between Kathleen at his back and Sean’s defender at his front. He sensed Kathleen relaxing as the gladiator games between family began.

“Sean,” Max said. “All the evidence and witnesses said you hadn’t survived. That’s what the Ulster government cabled to your parents, our parents. We all believed it and grieved.”

“This is one witness,” Deirdre said, her yellow eyes blazing like topazes on fire, “who didn’t stick around to testify. I’d seen him, an American boyo in the middle of a bloody war zone. He wouldn’t leave,” she told Max. “He wouldn’t leave without you , although you’d had no such qualms. I had to drag him away from the pub bar, and wasn’t fast enough.”

She lifted her left arm and pulled up her cardigan sleeve, exposing burn scar tissue that resembled a Jackson Pollock painting.

“And you!” She turned on Kathleen before Max could react, black pupils overwhelming her pale-ale eyes as she recognized her. “You, acting like a true daughter of Ireland and then flirting like a whore to turn two naive boyhood friends into rivals. You, playing God, and luring one from the bombing site, and not the other, saving one and not the other. Well, I saved Sean, banshee witch! I got him away.

“They say you became a money machine for the IRA, but I always knew your kind. You were just a slut lookin’ to ruin men for your own pride and pleasure. I should take your eyes out.”

And she lunged to do just that.

Max reached out an arm to stop her a second earlier than Sean did the same. Their forearms crossed like swords, straight and tense, and Deirdre rebounded as the men’s eyes met.

Right arm works , thank God , Max tallied. Left side … iffy .

The men stepped back as Deirdre did.

“We should talk,” Max said.

Sean knew whom he was addressing. “Deirdre, watch the woman here in the front lounge. We’ll be in the rear one.”

Sean turned without revealing his full face, or his left side, and limped around the corner. Max evaluated Deirdre and Kathleen. Deirdre was standing with feet wide and braced, fists on hips. Kathleen had turned sideways to her, watching the woman, as poised to move in any direction as a snake.

Each stood tensed, broadcasting hate, showing the defensive fire of a bear defending her cub. He knew his she-bear wanted the opposite outcome for him. Kathleen wanted Max to be devastated, and welcomed any confessionals between the cousins that would drive the thumbscrews deeper.

Her motives didn’t bother Max at all. The would-be bond-breaker had become an inadvertent matchmaker. It was down to a wrestling match between him and Sean with the angels of their better beings. Between the two careless, impulsive teenagers they had been and the wounded men their separate lives had made them. They needed to know how, and why, and why not.

And the women, however well or ill intentioned, couldn’t affect or change a moment of that.

Sean kept his back turned as Max entered the room. “Close the door,” he said.

His voice was deeper now, a reminder of how young they’d really been that Irish summer of long ago.

As Max complied he heard the two metallic pings in sequence. A paranoid would think of a gun being cocked, but Matt wasn’t surprised to see two open bottles of beer standing on the kitchen counter. An under-counter cap remover explained the pings.

“We drink home-style,” Sean said, holding out a brown bottle.

“Fine by me.” He knew pouring beer into glasses would be clumsy for Sean.

“There.” Sean pointed. “Take that stool. The kitchen’s been redone with all-American bells and whistles, breakfast bar and stools.”

“Impressive. It’s a stunning location,” Max said, leaning his hip on a stool.

“This valley is beyond pleasant, and handy for tourists, being equidistant from Belfast and either coast. How’d you hook up with Kathleen again? In America? How did you find me?” Sean sat on a stool near the kitchen’s farmhouse sink.

“I can’t say I’ve looked for you all this time. Some human remains left were powder and bone. Your DNA was found in the pub wreckage. I accompanied what seemed to be all that was left of you home to Racine for a funeral and burial.”

“With Father Flynn officiating.”

“The same.”

“Must have gone on for hours.”

Max shrugged. “Long enough. So. Why weren’t you at your own funeral?”

“Deirdre’s right. I stayed too long at the Fair. She did too, on account of me.”

“On account of you waiting for me?”

Sean ignored Max’s self-blaming interjection. “I didn’t believe Deirdre at first, that it was so urgent I leave. I’d been drowning my sorrows at you waltzing off with Kathleen. Got stubborn and tipsy. Got Deirdre injured as well as my damn self.”

“I’m sorry, Sean. I’ve been sorry for all these years.”

“Your problem. I’ve got plenty enough of my own.”

“Such as?”

“It’s not pretty.” He turned his full face toward Max finally, Max braced for his worst nightmare, a badly burned face, ear gone, eye perhaps damaged, with the familiar red-brown color floating within a skin and bone setting melted into a mask of scar tissue.