His Daughter Hadn’t Seen Him in 20 Years. Her First Words Broke Him. (Part 2)

Previously: Jack Malone spent twenty years in prison for a murder committed by Declan Kilbride, the boss's son. When he came home, the gang handed him $5,000 and a job at a car wash. He learned his wife Maureen had died in 2015, and no one had told him. As he left the pub, old Ma Sheehan slipped him a note: "Nora is at Mercy. Ask about Kyle."

UPMC Mercy Hospital never sleeps.

At 2:40 in the morning, the emergency room smelled of disinfectant and burnt coffee. A drunk man with a cut on his forehead was singing in Bay 4. A baby was crying somewhere behind a curtain.

Jack Malone stood at the front desk in his old brown overcoat, holding his paper bag like a man who had come to the wrong country.

"I'm looking for Nora Malone," he said. "She's a nurse here."

The receptionist looked him up and down. "Are you a patient, sir?"

"I'm her father."

Something in the way he said it made her pick up the phone.

Nora

She came through the double doors four minutes later, in navy scrubs, a stethoscope around her neck and her dark hair pulled back tight. Twenty-seven years old. Tired eyes. Her mother's mouth.

She stopped ten feet away from him.

Jack had imagined this moment every night for twenty years. In his head, she ran to him. In his head, she was still seven, and she still had the gap in her front teeth.

The woman in front of him did not run.

"Well," Nora said. "You got old."

"Nora…"

"Don't." Her voice was quiet and very steady, the voice of someone used to telling people bad news. "Don't say my name like you know me."

The drunk in Bay 4 stopped singing. The receptionist suddenly found something very interesting on her screen.

"I wrote to you," Jack said. "Every Sunday."

"I know. Mom kept them all in a shoebox. I read them after she died." Nora folded her arms. "Do you know what's funny? In nine years of letters, you never once said you were innocent."

Jack said nothing.

"I asked her once. I was twelve. I asked if you did it." Nora's jaw tightened. "She said, 'Your father made a choice, sweetheart. He chose them.'"

"That's not…"

"Then what is it?" For the first time, her voice cracked, just slightly. "Because from where I stood, you picked Tommy Kilbride and his son over Mom and me. And then they forgot you existed. And so did we."

The bill

"They promised me," Jack said. "Tommy swore you'd be taken care of."

Nora laughed. It was not a happy sound.

"Taken care of? Two hundred dollars a month, for two years. Then nothing. Mom cleaned offices at night so I could go to Catholic school. When she got sick, she called Declan Kilbride herself. You know what he sent? Flowers. With a card that said Thinking of you."

She took a breath.

"I paid for her funeral with a loan from St. Rosalia's. I was sixteen. I'm still paying it off."

Jack felt the floor shift under his feet. In prison, men had come at him with sharpened toothbrushes and broken broom handles, and he had never once felt like this.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I'm sure you are." Nora glanced at the clock. "I have a patient with chest pains in Bay 2. Please don't come back here."

She turned to go.

"Nora." He hadn't planned to say it. It came out on its own. "Who's Kyle?"

She stopped.

Her back was to him, so he couldn't see her face. But he saw her shoulders go rigid. He saw her hand reach for the edge of the nurses' station and hold on, hard, the knuckles white.

For three long seconds, she didn't move at all.

When she finally turned around, all the color had drained out of her face.

"Who told you that name?" she whispered.

"Does it matter?"

"Who told you?"

"Somebody who thought I should ask."

Nora looked at him, and for just a moment, Jack saw something underneath the anger. Something frightened and very young. The seven-year-old girl was still in there, somewhere.

Then it was gone. A wall came down behind her eyes.

"Go home, Jack," she said. "Whatever you think you know, leave it alone. You've been gone twenty years. You don't get to come back now and start fixing things."

The double doors swung shut behind her.

Dev was waiting in the parking lot, the Toyota's engine running for the heat.

"How'd it go?" he asked.

Jack got into the passenger seat this time, not the back. He didn't answer for a long while.

"Dev. You grew up around here?"

"Hazelwood, born and raised."

"You know a man named Kyle Brennan?"

Dev's hands went still on the steering wheel.

"Why?" he said carefully.

Jack turned and looked at him. Dev was twenty-three years old, and he had a bad poker face.

"You know him."

"Everybody knows Kyle." Dev swallowed. "He owns Brennan's Taproom on Carson Street. Sports bar. Big TVs, cheap wings. Half the cops in the city drink there for free." He hesitated. "He also runs the betting. Football, basketball, whatever. If you owe him, you pay him. One way or another."

"Do you owe him?"

Dev didn't answer. That was answer enough.

"Take me there," Jack said.

Brennan's Taproom

At 3:30 in the morning, the bar was closed, but the lights were still on. Through the front window, Jack could see a man stacking chairs and a TV replaying highlights of a Steelers game.

He didn't go in. He just stood on the sidewalk in the cold, looking through the glass.

The walls were covered in framed photographs. Kyle with a Steelers linebacker. Kyle shaking hands with a city councilman. Kyle with his arm around a police captain in dress blues. Kyle smiling the same smile he'd worn in the doorway at Kilbride's.

And near the end of the wall, almost hidden behind a neon beer sign, a group photo. Brennan's Taproom Staff, Summer 2018.

A dozen young waitresses and bartenders in matching black T-shirts, all grinning at the camera.

In the middle of the second row stood a nineteen-year-old girl with dark hair and her mother's mouth.

She was the only one not smiling.

And standing right behind her, one big hand resting on her shoulder, was Kyle Brennan.

Jack stared at the photograph for a long, long time.

Behind him, a car door closed.

"Hell of a night to be out walking, old man."

Jack turned around slowly.

Kyle Brennan was standing by a black pickup truck, keys in his hand, the streetlight shining on his buzz-cut head. He was smiling.

"You must be Nora's dad," Kyle said. "She used to work for me."