The Book of Illumination Read Online Free Page B

euphoria over Italy’s winning the World Cup or the Patriots’ winning the Super Bowl, but I can’t. It was the fatal … No, fatal is not a word I could ever use in a sentence that leads directly to Henry. Nothing ended that night. In fact, just the opposite.
    It was the …
irresistible
combination of eyes the blue of faded jeans, a spring sea breeze wafting sweetly up Hanover Street, and, well, let’s just say
more than two
whiskey sours, a throwback of a cocktail choice I later had reason to regret. Briefly.
    A violin maker from North Bennet had introduced us. He knew Declan from a soccer league.
    “How are you?” Declan had asked, with his soft Galway lilt.
    “Can’t complain.” Or wouldn’t dream of it, when standing in front of a dead ringer for Gabriel Byrne.
    “Sure you can.” He had smiled.
    “Who would listen?”
    “I would.”
    That’s all it took. That and the crooked little smile I now see on Henry every so often, when he’s pretty sure I’ll appreciate the humor in a sticky situation, or at least forgive him without a lot of drama.
    When the Wild Cherry nail polish, for example, that he was secretly using to paint in the heart on a card he was making for me accidentally tipped over onto my expensive, handmade Italian paper, paper that took weeks to arrive.
    Well, he
was
making me a card.
    I took a sip of my wine. Declan had opened his door, and rather than exiting through the door on the passenger side, Henry was sliding across the seat. He liked to hang out in the driver’s seat for a minute or two, hands on the wheel, just getting the feel of things. I knocked on the window, but they didn’t hear me.
    Declan had been truthful that first night. He and Kelly were separated, they’d been unhappy, they were trying to work things out. They didn’t have Delia and Nell at the time, or I like to think I would have exercised a little more restraint.
    What can I say?
    I was weak.

    “Hi, sweetie!” I called down as they clomped up the stairs to our second floor apartment. “How
was
it?”
    His face told me a lot: that it had been great, but he wasn’t great right now because it was over. He appeared to need what I knew hewould want the least: a hot bath, an early bedtime, Mommy love. The cannelloni might revive him for a while, but it wasn’t going to be an easy night.
    In the past few months, ever since starting kindergarten at St. Enda’s, he’d become acutely conscious that he lived with—a girl. And Delia and Nell were girls. So was Kelly. The only two guys in the whole sorry picture were him and his dad. This had made the weekly return to Mom-land all the more difficult.
    I wasn’t sure where this was coming from. He’d had very little awareness of boys and girls—or rather, boys versus girls—at the touchy-feely preschool he’d attended for two years. In fact, he’d been shocked to learn that his best friend, Carey, who’d had the cubby next to his for two years and whose Lego-building skills were universally admired,
was
a girl.
    It didn’t come from Declan, either; I was pretty sure of that. Though he
is
a police officer, which might lead you to draw certain conclusions, he had only one brother in a house full of girls. He got it. His sisters had made very sure of that.
    “You must be starving!” I said as Declan swung Henry’s backpack onto the kitchen table.
    “We had McDonald’s,” Henry said.
    “At one o’clock!” Declan added, seeing the look on my face.
    I really wanted to kiss him (Henry, that is) but I could tell this would not be a good idea. I ruffled his hair a bit, and he pulled away.
    “Go dump your stuff and wash up,” I said. And then, in an attempt to cheer him up, I added, “I have a surprise for you after supper.” I didn’t, but I’d think of something.
    “What?” he demanded.
    “Never mind,” I said.
    “Come on!” he wheedled.
    “After supper,” I said in a singsong voice. He made a face butheaded off toward the bathroom. I heard the