Her eyes go to the ocean again, and with them fixed there, she murmurs, “Did you remember me? I heard you were here when…”
When they found her. She can’t say it.
I swallow again, and take her hand.
“You sure you want to talk about that, Siren?”
“I asked.”
My thumb strokes her smooth hand.
“Yeah, I do.” When she says nothing, I go on, trying to tread lightly. “That’s a lot of what stuck with me. I guess just like…the mood of people. How focused they were. How everybody tried to sort of stay busy. There was like…this weight hanging behind things. Things like making bread. Nobody told me exactly what had happened, so I didn’t really know.”
Dad told me someone had gotten lost, someone important. And I could tell he was upset. He was upset the whole time. I remember feeling kind of nervous about that. Because I didn’t know what was wrong. Just that something was.
“I saw you,” I finally say. “When you came back. Dad was on that boat.”
Chills cover my skin as I remember how everybody looked when the boat pulled up to the dock, and someone stood up, holding her. I don’t know how many people were there standing on the dock with me, but I’d imagine probably at least a handful, despite it being nighttime. And I guess at that first glance, when they first saw her, they all must have known that it was only her.
I remember everybody crying, but trying not to. And someone was holding her. My dad was right there by her, too, and he looked really weird. Really upset.
I look at Finley’s face and find her eyes a little wide. That’s all, though; besides that, she looks impassive as she stares out at the ocean. “Didn’t know that. I didn’t know you two were here at all. Not for several years. I suppose it didn’t seem quite relevant—or perhaps a shade too relevant. Your father’s presence here then.”
I want to tell her how the glimpse I got of her eyes was my first time ever seeing agony: that bright blaze roaring like a fire in her dead, sallow face. I couldn’t place it, so I rolled that memory over like a pebble in my hand for years. Till after my own shit, when one day I caught the same soundless blaze in my eyes in a mirror.
“When I thought of coming back here, I thought about you.” I manage to keep my voice steady.
She looks at me—for just a second, her eyes touch mine, asking, What? Then it’s back out at the ocean. I squeeze her hand.
“I heard you were still here. And I wondered how you turned out. How did you keep going? I wanted to know.”
She’s so still, so frozen, my hand on hers shakes from being worried I upset her.
Her lips tuck up, a barely-there motion. She still won’t look at me, but her hand in mine tightens. “There is no how.” The words are thin. Fragile.
“I think of my mum, and for her, too…I believe there was no how about it. Your father left. She wouldn’t go with him. Too frightened, I think. And so she married my father. And that’s the part that strikes me most, I believe.” Her tongue moves over her lower lip, her mouth pressing flat for a second, and her eyes grab at mine again. “There’s endurance, I believe. And within that, there can be no how.”
Twenty-Eight
Declan
Her voice trembles a little on those words, and I fold both my hands around hers.
“Ask me,” she says thinly. “What you’re thinking. Don’t just sit there sil
ently. I’m not so fragile.”
Her fingers thread through mine, as if she wants to reassure me that she’s not upset. I look out at the ocean, too, like she is. “What was your dad like?”
Her tongue darts over her lips; I see her in my periphery. “Truth be told?” She looks down before seeking my eyes with her watery ones. “He was horrid.”
My heart feels like it’s lunging out of my chest. I know Finley’s okay—she’s right by me—but I’m so fucking jittery and shit, I start to sweat.
She moves her hand off mine and draws a finger underneath her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve never spoken of this before, to anyone.” She sniffles softly. “No one asks about them.”
“Hey…there’s nothing to be sorry for.”
I wrap my hands more tightly around hers. With her chin up and her brown eyes spilling tears down her cheeks, she looks almost holy—like some sort of warrior saint.