“Sedric raised me, and since he brought me into his home I saw him not as my uncle, but as my father, who I loved…love dearly. Cheers,” Declan finished taking his shot before he stepped back to Coraline.
She hugged and kissed him before she went up. It was the first time I had not seen her bother to wear heels. “Hello,” she said into the microphone. “Many of you know me as Coraline Callahan, wife of Declan. Sedric and I weren’t very close. But he was kind to me. He made me laugh…he made everyone laugh without even trying. He had a dual nature to him; one moment he had this ability to freeze over the whole room, and the next, you forgot who he was. He had so much life in him, so much so that you almost forgot that he could die. People like him should live forever. Should live to see more grandchildren, more fights, more love. I’d like to think that he will, that he’s here watching us all right now talking about him with a bowl of kettle corn in his lap because he’s still afraid that Evelyn will find out that he got popcorn with extra butter and salt.”
I hear a soft cry coming from the end of our table and I looked over to find Evelyn in Neal’s arms, laughing and crying at the same time.
“Sedric Callahan was one of a kind, and the world is a darker place with him gone. We will never forget him. Cheers.” She wiped her eyes and downed the liquid before she moved back to the table.
Neal stood up walking to where Coraline had just stood with a bottle in his hands. I felt Liam tense beside me as though he wasn’t sure what to think of his brother speaking. Placing my hand on his thigh, he placed his hands over mine.
“I’m still at a loss for words,” Neal began. “To some of you, that might not be surprising. I’ve never known what to say or where to be or what to do. I just followed my father’s lead and hoped, and prayed that I was making him proud. There is no denying the fact that my father and I had issues, I dare you to find any father and son who don’t, but I knew he cared about me. Many men in his position don’t have time to take care of their sons, but he did. He always made sure to check up on me when he could.
“He thought that I didn’t know. Early every morning, before the sun was even up, he would check up on me. From the time I was eight until I turned eighteen…yes eighteen and I was not a tiny eighteen, he would come into my room and just talk to me about his day, about the stupid shit I had done. I looked forward to those brief moments when the door would open, and I was heartbroken when they stopped.”
He dropped his head and nodded as though he was being told what to say, but I knew that he was just trying to force himself to stay strong.
“When I was fourteen, he was seriously injured and he’d lost a friend. When he was feeling better, and after he’d come back from his friend’s funeral, he once again came into my room, leaned at the edge for the door and said, ‘I don’t plan on dying anytime soon, son, but if for some reason I do, you all better feast like Vikings and send me off like a fucking king. Oh, and you can let your mother know that I did trick her into dating me, and that I did kill her fish….but make sure I’m really dead before you tell her that.”
With a grin on my face, I rolled my eyes. Beside me, Liam snickered. Of course Sedric would’ve said something like that.
“I knew it,” Evelyn muttered shaking her head as even more tears fell. I wondered if they would ever stop.
“For him. Cheers.” Neal lifted the bottle up and took a long swig that would’ve made any Viking or Irishman proud. Everyone drank in response, even Liam.
Liam stood and moved towards his brother and they hugged for a moment before he stood up to the microphone himself. He regarded us all before he began his speech.
“Deartháireacha, deirfiúracha, máithreacha, teaghlaigh. (Brothers, sisters, mothers, family.)” He spoke in Irish, and then, much to my surprise he switched to Italian and said, “famiglia allargata (extended family), thank you all for coming. I have always known that my father meant a great deal to so many people, however, seeing it now is humbling. Many of you have dropped everything just be here out of respect, love, and let’s be honest, a little fear.”
There were a few snickers that spread throughout the crowd.
“But great men ought to be feared, and my father was a great man. Even his flaws were great. He is gone and I find myself staring at shoes so large that they could’ve only belonged to a giant. We are here because somehow he figured out how to unite us all. Irish, Italian, it did not matter. There is nothing I can say about my father that you didn’t already know. I have stories going back almost three decades, from the first moment he dropped me as a child to when he was twisting my arm around my back to marry an Italian…the feistiest one of them all at that.”
I wanted to take a shovel to his head, but that would’ve only proven his point. Evelyn leaned to me, took my hand and squeezed it.
“He told me that everything I did as the leader of family was not just for me, or my immediate family, it was to make sure that we all remain strong. He wanted me to be someone who not only cared about our heritage but also reminded the people that no matter where they are, if they need help they can come to us. I owe all of my strength to him, and I will use all of it to make sure that the man responsible for his death burns.”
Their cheers felt like thunder as they started to sing, holding up their drinks for Sedric. It wasn’t sad, but beautiful, arm in arm, as loud as they could, they sang up to the sky to him.
LIAM
We all sat in silence in the study of our house, drinking shots from two bottles of ninety-year-old brandy that Neal had brought up from the cellar.
“What did he name his first car?” Declan asked.
“Hennessy,” I muttered as I reached for my shot, but Declan blocked me.
“Wrong. It was Fiona. Where the hell did you get Hennessy?”
I looked to Neal, waiting for him to back me up.
“You said his first car, which was the Hennessy truck grandfather gave him when he was sixteen, not the first car he got after married.” Neal snickered taking two shots.
“Hand me my prize,” I grinned as I took the shot.
“Did he ever give you the ‘be a man’ speech? Or was that just a Neal special?” Neal asked.
Declan groaned, leaning back in a seat. “That speech, I didn’t even get in half as much trouble as you two did—”
“Bullshit!” I yelled at him. “You just never got caught, you sneaky bastard. Compared to some of the shit you did, Neal and I were saints. He almost killed you when you had Coraline sit with us at church only after a week.”
Neal snorted. “At least he married her. Did you ever sneak two girls into your room only to be caught mid-go by Dad?”
“No,” Declan and I said at the same time, but he just nodded.
“What did he do?” Declan asked.
“How old were you?” That’s what I wanted to know.
“I was seventeen, and it was the night after mom had the Christmas Ball. There were these two hot girls all over me. Logically, I was super excited, and everything was going great till dad walked in. His face dropped; he gave me that emotionless stare and then just left. I, being the idiot that I was, finished up and had them leave. The moment he came in, I forgot what I was trying to say, but to sum it up, I was telling him that I had needs. He told me I was fool, that I was spilling my seed in women who only wanted our family’s money. That being a man wasn’t about fulfilling my needs but making sure the needs of everyone else around me were satisfied, and that if I didn’t understand that by now, I was a fool that would end up paying child support for the rest of my life. He ended it by saying ‘take a shower, you reek of desperation.’”
“Yep, that was the speech I got,” Declan said with a laugh.
“Nope, I never had that problem,” I lied as I leaned back in my chair.
“Yeah, sure. You do know we knew you before Melody, right? You slept with anything that had legs. I’m surprised dad didn’t cut—”
“Urgh! Shut up,” I cringed, but then nod
ded. “I don’t want to think about the women before Melody, mostly because I think she has ears all over this room and will kick my ass later. It was like Dad knew how it was going to be between us. I’m grateful he kept pushing even when I fought him on it.”
“You fought him on marrying Melody?” Neal asked me shocked. “I always thought you were the good little solider and did whatever he asked.”
“No, I was actually pissed that you got to marry a woman you cared about, while I was stuck with some Italian chick I didn’t even know. Then Declan here had to fall in love with Coraline in like ten minutes, making me feel worse. We fought about it often, and I finally accepted it, which led to me sleeping around. I think he only tolerated it because I wasn’t bitching at him anymore.”
“It wasn’t ten minutes,” Declan muttered drinking. Neal and I gave him a look. He was a goner from the get-go with her. I had no idea why he was even trying to pretend otherwise.
Neal shook his head and frowned as he knocked back another drink. “He told me not to marry Olivia. He said that she wasn’t the woman I needed. And I got so pissed off, I told him to back the fuck out of it, that I was happy.
“We had this major fight, and I demanded that he tell me if he really gave a shit about me or if he wanted me to be alone and bitter all of my life…he shook his head and turned around. Here I am years later, wishing that I’d just shut my damned mouth and listened to him. Now his death hangs around my neck.”
“Your neck?” He was blaming himself for this?
“You did kill Olivia,” Declan whispered as he poured us all another drink.
“True, but I was also the one who brought her into this family. What’s worse was the fact that I was blindsided by her. I never thought that it would get this fucked up. If I hadn’t married her, she wouldn’t have helped that motherfucking bastard, and dad might have still been here.”
“I wish I could put it on your shoulders brother,” I whispered as I took a deep breath and shook my head. “And as true as your statement on Olivia is, it was not your fault. It was mine. I take responsibility for it. It hangs around my neck, and my neck alone. Avian called me not even an hour before father was killed. I was the one who’d set a match under his ass, and it was my fault that he erupted.”
I paused as I took a final drink before standing. “If he thinks this is over, or that I’m down and out of this fight, he is fucking mistaken. I’m coming back with a vengeance, and I won’t stop until he dies in the worst type of way.”
There was silence before I took the one glass that hadn’t been emptied and poured it over the floor, spilling the drink in his honor.
Placing my hands on both of their shoulders, I leaned in. “Get some rest, brothers, because we start again tomorrow.”
Before I headed back to my room I stopped at my mother’s. I expected her to be in bed, but instead, she was sitting on the ground surrounded by photos, baby clothes, hats, and toys. They were everywhere as she slowly looked them all over.
Hearing me, she looked up, smiled, and reached out for me. Tip-toeing over everything, I made my way to the end of her bed and took a seat on the floor beside her. The very first thing she gave me was a picture of myself as a very tiny infant.
“He was so afraid that he would crush you.” She giggled. “But after you looked up at him, he never wanted to let you go.”
Swallowing, I looked to another picture of Neal and me. I was in Dad’s arms and he carried me with this look of wonder that was spread all over his face.
“You don’t know this, but I’m sort of a hoarder…a neat hoarder, but a hoarder nonetheless.” She lifted up the outfit I was wearing in the photo before looking around her room. “I kept a lot of these things because your father told me to. Every New Year’s he said he’d cheated death and one day he knew it would catch up to him.”
“He told me he didn’t believe in death. That he had a plan.” I logically knew that that couldn’t be true, but I didn’t realize how much the mere idea of his argument had comforted me up until now.
She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Horseshit. He thought about it often and he worried you all wouldn’t be old enough, should he die. He’d had a lot of close calls, but he said he just had to make it long enough for you to take over. Not because he’d die, but because you were ready to step up. He was thrown into this, but he wanted you to choose it.”
“It didn’t feel like a choice.” I’d never known anything but this life. He had sculpted me and trained me for this life.
“If you truly didn’t want to do this, he would have taken over again. He would have focused on Neal or Declan. All you had to do was let him know, but he knew you were different. He had a lot of faith in you. He came in sometimes saying that he’d felt like he was holding you over a giant cliff and watching as men bowed at your feet.”
That certainly explained why we watched the Lion King as much as we did when I was a child. She pulled a small music box from under her bed. Opening it, I saw that it contained a small pile of letters. She selected a single one and handed it to me.
“Every year your father wrote you all a new letter just in case. I asked him to keep the old ones but he would burn those. His feelings and thoughts changed each year, and he wanted you to have the last, and best, version. He wrote this one a few weeks ago when Mel asked for him to create the new lives for us all,” she said, as I took the letter from her hands.
“Did he write you one?”
“Yes. But I’m not ready to read it yet.” She smiled sadly before grabbing another batch of photos.
“Will you read this one with me?”
She shook her head and kissed my cheek. “Go read it with your wife and son, Liam.”
“Mom, can you promise me that you won’t—”
“Kill myself?” She raised an eyebrow at me and frowned. “I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Your father made me promise that I would never do it no matter how bad I felt…what an asshole.”
The tears built in her eyes again. “He will probably say that again in his letter and with my luck, I’m going to make it until I’m hundred and two.”
Kissing her temple, I pulled her into a one-armed hug. “Ethan’s going to need his grandmother. He has no other grandparents left…no pressure.”
She laughed and squeezed me back before letting me go. “Okay, go. I don’t want to break down again right now.”
She wiped her tears and went back to looking at her photos.
“I love you so much, Mom,” I told her when I stood up.
“I know. I love you too,” she replied as I moved to the front door.
Stepping out, I closed the door and came across two maids.
“Have someone listen in on her every hour until the lights are off or you no longer hear anything, then check on her,” I directed.
I trusted my mother, just not in this state, and I wasn’t burying her too. She could be pissed off at me if she wanted, but I would rather be safe than sorry.
Heading to my room, I entered in time to watch Mel feeding Ethan his applesauce while she listened to the news. She had changed into one of my shirts and looked absolutely beautiful.
“Hey.” She smiled at me as Ethan stretched to take a bite of the applesauce. Moving to them, I took a seat beside her.
“Can you read this while I finish feeding him?”
She nodded as we exchanged; the applesauce for the letter.
“What is it?” she asked while opening it.
“A letter from my father,” I said, smiling at Ethan.
She said nothing else as she pulled the folded sheet of paper out of its envelope.
“Liam, if you’ve killed me I’m going to haunt for the rest of your life.”
I laughed. Of course he would start off like that. “Ass.”
“And don’t call me an ass, that’s disrespectful.”
I froze as I looked over her shoulder, and sure enough there it was. Even in death, he knew my next move…I wasn’t sure if I s
hould’ve been pissed or in awe.
“Everyone else’s letters have always come easy to me with the exception of you and your mother. Maybe it’s because I can put myself in both of your shoes. I understand the pressure that you feel is now on your shoulders, how heavy you think every step is, and I understand how it feels to not have a father to turn to. I’ve made it my life to be there for you, and to give you the tools you need to make it without me.
“One of those tools was in fact Melody…and yes I am calling her a tool, a weapon, your leg to stand on when you need help. I knew who she was, I knew that she was the one running her family, I knew that Orlando was dying. It was one of the reasons why I pushed so hard for you two to marry. As nice as it would have been to have peace with the Italians, I cared more about having you both matched up equally. That really is the secret to making it; having someone at your side to willing fight for you, die for you, kill for you…so I’m not sorry I lied to you both. I’ve watched the both of you in sheer awe and wonder. Never have I seen a pair so matched, so loved, and so insane. This is the best letter I have ever written because I know now, without a doubt, that you no longer need me.”
That wasn't true.
“I take comfort in knowing that I leave this world with no regrets. I’ve seen my son grow from a boy to a man, and have a son of his very own. I know it hurts, or at least it better hurt you a little, you brat, because it hurts me too. I’m proud of you. I love you dearly, and I want you to check up on your mother. I want you to stop and breathe, have a moment for yourself every day, God knows you will need it. I want you to remember to laugh, remember that it’s okay to be happy without me.
“Remember your wife and son, and the lives that you want them to have. But all of that happens after you take care of Avian. Wipe that motherfucker off the face of the Earth and then make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. I’m sorry that this letter isn’t longer. But your letters were never long. I never want you to dwell on me. Goodbye, son. Stand firm and know that there is nothing you can’t do. I hope these will help you if you ever need my advice in the future. Love you always, your father.”