Prologue

It had been fifteen days, six hours, and thirty-six minutes since his mother’s heart had stopped beating. He couldn’t help but mark the time.

Cancer had ravaged her body a second time. Initially, she’d fought it and gone through the chemo and surgeries. The cure was worse than the disease, so when the cancer came back, his mom opted for just pain management and signed a ‘do not resuscitate’ order.

Knowing she didn’t have much time, she’d provided for him. His mom had written a will that left everything to him and arranged for him to live with his godparents, Chris and Katherine Freeman. His godfather owned a gym called The Training Ground, which specialized in mixed martial arts, boxing, and kickboxing. Katherine did the books for the gym and raised their four girls, ages 4, 6, 7, and 9.

During his mother’s illness, working out at the gym had kept him sane. Pounding a heavy bag with his fists was the perfect stress reliever.

His mother had also put him in charge of her medical care. Technically, Katherine was named as having his mom’s medical power of attorney because he was only fifteen. But when the time came, Katherine made it clear he had to decide.

He’d been shocked that they muted the heart monitor when they took his mom off life support. The continual beeping sound suddenly vanished. Rory held his mother’s hand as she took a deep breath, then seemed to relax. The room was utterly silent when the only person who’d ever truly loved him departed. It was quiet and deafening, both at the same time.

Since that moment, he’d been aware of every minute the world kept spinning without his mother in it. The last fifteen days, six hours, and thirty-seven minutes had otherwise been a blur—he was only conscious of the clock and his mother’s absence. Rory silently thanked his mom for making the funeral arrangements in advance because he wasn’t sure he could have handled all the details in his state of mind.

It just seemed crazy that the universe would take his mother. He wondered if he could even go on without her.

He was in the basement, sorting the last of the house’s contents. He put them into four categories: what he would keep for himself, what would go into the estate sale, stuff to donate, and a pile for the trash.

“Rory! There’s someone here to see you,” Katherine called from the top of the stairs.

He had an appointment in an hour with the realtor his mother had picked out. Could she be early?

The realtor had worked up some numbers and assured him that Beverly, a community on the southwest side of Chicago, was a hot market. Somewhere around twenty thousand people lived there, of whom a large percentage were Irish-American.

Rory’s mom had moved them there when he was first born so they could be close to her family. The only members left were his grandmother—who was in assisted living—and his piece-of-work aunt, who couldn’t stay sober long enough to hold a job.