Keeping 13

A father's fists leave Shannon dying while her brother holds a knife

Shannon sits at the kitchen table with blood flowing from her mouth, ribs screaming, as her eighteen-year-old brother Joey demands their mother choose between her husband and her children.

A father's fists leave Shannon dying while her brother holds a knife

Shannon sits at the kitchen table with blood flowing from her mouth, ribs screaming, as her eighteen-year-old brother Joey demands their mother choose between her husband and her children. Marie Lynch kneels on the floor beside her husband, mute. Their father Teddy turns his fury on Joey, slamming his face into the tiles. When Teddy pins Joey's throat to the floor, eleven-year-old Tadhg pulls a knife from the drawer and presses it to their father's neck. The blade draws blood. Teddy releases Joey and leaves. Shannon cannot stand, cannot breathe—her father kicked her so hard he collapsed her lung. Joey carries her limp body to a car while their mother calls Darren, the eldest brother who vanished five years ago. Shannon slips in and out of consciousness as the ambulance races to beat her fading heartbeat.

Drugged in Dublin, Johnny decodes Shannon's secret from fragments of memory

Recovering from groin surgery in a Dublin hospital, seventeen-year-old rugby prodigy Johnny Kavanagh spends days sedated and raving, haunted by one word: father. Shannon visited him before surgery, and something she whispered won't leave his subconscious. His best friend Gibsie reveals that Johnny, while high on morphine, told Shannon he loved her and begged her to have his babies. But Johnny's fixation isn't romantic embarrassment—it's dread. With Gibsie's help, he bluffs Shannon's friend Claire into confirming his suspicion: Shannon's father is beating her. Johnny dials emergency services from the hospital bathroom, giving Shannon's address and begging them to help the girl he cannot reach. His father, a barrister, begins making calls of his own.

Five years absent, the eldest Lynch brother arrives with a plan and conditions Shannon wakes in the hospital to find Darren—her brother who left for Belfast at eighteen—sitting at her bedside in a designer suit. He explains that their father fled after the beating and a protection order bars him from contact. Social workers are circling. Darren has a strategy: present their mother as a victim of domestic violence, rally around her, and keep the family together. Joey erupts at this demand to sanitize their mother's decades of inaction—the woman who stood by while they were beaten. The brothers clash viciously. Darren argues foster care is worse; Joey screams that Darren abandoned them and has no right to dictate terms. Shannon sits between them, knowing she'll do whatever keeps her younger brothers from being separated, even…