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mom the little that I can, and then I cast about the room for a red-haired toddler in a

black velvet dress.
    I see MC in the corner, still with her mom, and then spot my precious pal Macklin Mullen and his

handsome grandson Jack over by the makeshift bar. Jack, a lawyer like myself, wanders off as I

approach. Okay, fine. I was going to congratulate him on getting married, but whatever.
    Mack is sipping a whiskey and leaning heavily on a gnarled black-thorn shillelagh, but when we throw

ourselves into each other’s arms, his embrace is as warm and vigorous as ever.
    “I was fervently hoping that would never end, Katie,” he says when we finally release each other.
    “For God’s sake, Macklin, cheer me up.”

“I was about to ask you to do the same thing, darling girl. Three boys dead-tragic, pointless, and

mystifying. Where you been keeping yourself all this time? I know about your many accomplishments, of

course, but I’ve been waiting to toast you in person. Actually, I’ve been waiting to get you drunk! Why in

Christ have you been such a stranger?”

“The standard explanation includes long hours, parents in Sarasota, and brothers scattered with the wind.

The pathetic truth, I’m afraid, is I didn’t want to run into Tom Dunleavy. Who, by the way, I just ran into.”

“The truth is always pathetic, isn’t it? That’s why I avoid it like the plague myself. In any case, now that

you’ve gotten over the dreaded encounter with Dunleavy, why don’t you come out here and put the little

shit out of business? Not that it would be much of an accomplishment. I hear he bills about a hundred

hours a year.”

“Better yet, why don’t I just forgive him and move on? It’s been almost a decade.”

“Forgive? Move on? Kate Costello, have you forgotten that you’re Irish?”

“Macklin, you’ve made me laugh,” I say, and just then, none other than Mary Catherine wobbles across

the room and flings herself at my legs.
    “Drivel aside, Mack, this is the true problem for me and Montauk. Of my two favorite people, one is

twenty months old, the other eighty-four.”

“But, Kate, we’re both just hitting our strides. This shillelagh nonsense is nothing but a corny piece of

atmosphere.”

Beach Road

Chapter 19
    Tom

THE NEXT DAY, to sweat out the funeral, I head to the beach, my four-legged personal trainer, Wingo,

nipping at my heels. It’s the first Monday after Labor Day, the unofficial start of townie summer, and

most of the insufferable New Yorkers are gone.
    On a cool, brilliantly sunny day, the greatest stretch of beach in North America is empty.
    Running on the damp, packed sand close to the water is no more difficult than running on the track behind

the high school. To punish myself, though, I stay on the soft stuff that sucks at your feet with every step.
    In five minutes, everything that’s attached to me hurts-legs, lungs, back, head-so I pick up the pace.
    In another five minutes, I can smell the whiskey from last night as the sweat pours off my face. Five

minutes after that, my hangover has nearly vanished.
    Later that afternoon, Wingo and I are recovering from our midday workout, me on the couch and Wingo

asleep at my feet, when a knock on the front door rouses us. It’s about four, still plenty of light outside,

and a black sedan is parked on the gravel driveway.
    At the door is young master Van Buren, the detective who ran the show on the beach the other night.
    Barely thirty, he made detective early this summer. Considering his age, it was quite a coup. He

leapfrogged half a dozen pretty decent cops with more seniority, including Belnap, and it didn’t win him

any friends in the station house. So guess what Barney’s nickname is.
    “Tom, I don’t need to tell you why I’m here,” he says.
    “I’m surprised it took this long.”

Still dehydrated from my run, I grab a beer and offer him something, just to hear him say no.
    “Why don’t we