I went for her hand and she put it under the blanket — not because she was angry with me. Because she was ashamed of shaking.
“You never had to protect me from the truth.”
“I wasn’t protecting you.” Her voice went. “I was trying to get to the delivery without losing our house, or your family, or you.”
I told her the locks would be done before she came home. I told her nobody was coming through that door without her saying so.
And then I asked why that night — why six people had stood in a room and watched.
And she shut her eyes and said: “They weren’t all watching. Dermot took my phone and stood between me and the back door.”
And the room moved.
And then she looked straight at me and said the sentence that is the actual beginning of this.
“Niall. She’s already told them you’ll agree.”
What that meant.
I did not understand it for about four days.
I thought she meant that my mother expected me to side with her on the night — that it was an assumption about my loyalty, made out loud, in a kitchen.
It was not an assumption. It was a position my mother had been building since the March, and she had been building it with material I gave her.
