Live by Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

been, how irrepressible and full of beans. In his father’s retelling, they were whimsical stories fit for the Hal Roach shorts at a Saturday matinee. His father left out how the stories had usually ended—with a slap or the strap.
    Emma smiled and chuckled at all the right places, but Joe could see she was pretending. They were all pretending. Joe and Thomas pretended to be bound by the love between a father and son and Emma pretended not to notice that they weren’t.
    After the story about six-year-old Joe in his father’s garden—a story told so many times over the years Joe could predict to a breath his father’s pauses—Thomas asked Emma where her family hailed from.
    â€œCharlestown,” she said, and Joe worried he heard a hint of defiance in her voice.
    â€œNo, I mean before they came here. You’re clearly Irish. Do you know where your ancestors were born?”
    The waiter cleared the salad plates as Emma said, “My mother’s father was from Kerry and my father’s mother was from Cork.”
    â€œI’m from just outside Cork,” Thomas said with uncommon delight.
    Emma sipped her water but didn’t say anything, a part of her missing suddenly. Joe had seen this before—she had a way of disconnecting from a situation if it wasn’t to her liking. Her body remained, like something left behind in the chair during her escape, but the essence of her, whatever made Emma Emma, was gone.
    â€œWhat was her maiden name, your grandmother?”
    â€œI don’t know,” she said.
    â€œYou don’t know ?”
    Emma shrugged. “She’s dead.”
    â€œBut it’s your heritage.” Thomas was flummoxed.
    Emma gave that another shrug. She lit a cigarette. Thomas showed no reaction but Joe knew he was aghast. Flappers appalled him on countless levels—women smoking, flashing thigh, lowering necklines, appearing drunk in public without shame or fear of civic scorn.
    â€œHow long have you known my son?” Thomas smiled.
    â€œFew months.”
    â€œAre you two—?”
    â€œDad.”
    â€œJoseph?”
    â€œWe don’t know what we are.”
    Secretly he’d hoped Emma would take the opportunity to clarify what, in fact, they were, but instead she shot him a quick look that asked how much longer they had to sit here and went back to smoking, her eyes drifting, anchorless, around the grand room.
    The entrées reached the table, and they passed the next twenty minutes talking about the quality of the steaks and the béarnaise sauce and the new carpeting Cregger had recently installed.
    During dessert, Thomas lit his own cigarette. “So what is it you do, dear?”
    â€œI work at Papadikis Furniture.”
    â€œWhich department?”
    â€œSecretarial.”
    â€œDid my son pilfer a couch? Is that how you met?”
    â€œDad,” Joe said.
    â€œI’m just wondering how you met,” his father said.
    Emma lit a cigarette and looked out at the room. “This is a real swank place.”
    â€œIt’s just that I’m well aware how my son earns a living. I can only assume that if you’ve come into contact with him, it was either during a crime or in an establishment populated by rough characters.”
    â€œDad,” Joe said, “I was hoping we’d have a nice dinner.”
    â€œI thought we just did. Miss Gould?”
    Emma looked over at him.
    â€œHave my questions this evening made you uncomfortable?”
    Emma locked him in that cool gaze of hers, the one that could freeze a fresh coat of roofing tar. “I don’t know what you’re on about. And I don’t particularly care.”
    Thomas leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee. “I’m on about you being the type of lass who consorts with criminals, which may not be the best thing for your reputation. The fact that the criminal in question happens to be my son isn’t the issue.