She faced him then. ‘Afraid? What on earth do you think I’m afraid of?’ She tried to laugh it away, but there was a bitterness in her mouth.
‘I think you’re afraid of ever having another ounce of joy in your life, Alex. Because you’re not entitled to it.’
‘What I’m not entitled to, Finn, is to swan around like I don’t care.’
‘Do you honestly think anyone thinks that you don’t care, Alex? Don’t confuse swanning around with celebrating the fact that you have a life to live.’
‘How can I celebrate that, Finn? When Dill can’t?’
‘You start by celebrating his life, Alex. Enjoy the things that would bring him pleasure. Laugh at the things he’d find funny. I know you’re still in there, Foster. I saw the girl I know stand up to a meathead in the Parsons’ front garden. I miss that girl. And I know Dill would’ve looked up to that girl too.’
Alex carried on walking. Finn had all the answers. He always did. Black and white. Right and wrong. He didn’t bother with all the grey there was to wade through.
Alex kicked through the grass. She didn’t even know where she was going, the track home was downhill, not up. The earth began to get wetter the closer to the first waterfall she got. Dill wouldn’t look up to her. There was nothing left to look up to. They would have all just been one disappointment after another for him, Alex, her dad, even Jem creeping around with Mal. Blythe was the only good one amongst them.
A hand reached firmly around hers and snared her from behind. ‘Alex?’
She would not cry. ‘Don’t follow me, Finn. When are you going to get it? None of us are good for you.’
Alex could feel the cold from the water cascading down the rocks beside her, a film of wet forming over her shoulders. Finn hadn’t let go of her hand. His face was serious, resolute. Wet hair plastered haphazardly across his forehead. ‘That’s my mistake to make. Let me make it.’ His fingers were finding their way between hers. They fit as if they’d been made to.
Alex looked at their hands intertwined. ‘Finn, I can’t.’ It hurt her to look at him, the wounds she could see in guarded green eyes, the tension through his shoulders.
‘Can’t what?’ he whispered. His voice was almost lost to the sounds of water washing away behind them. Finn brought his other hand up and nestled it against her neck. Alex felt the cold press of his wet clothes against her. Her skin was alive, a million sensors relaying to her brain all at once that something wonderful and dangerous and beautiful was happening. Like lightning.
Alex closed her eyes and felt his breath over her mouth. His lips pressed over hers and she was falling again, down, down, down into her bottomless heart. She tasted him. Sweet and earthy and she knew then that she wouldn’t find her way back to the surface again. Finn’s mouth moved tenderly over Alex’s while the water fell around them. She was breathing him in, inhaling great sweet lungfuls of him after all this time holding her breath, all these empty years convincing herself it didn’t matter. That she didn’t ache for him. That she hadn’t been suffocating without him.
Alex felt Finn’s hands drop to her waist. His fingers skimmed the edge of her hip. Goosebumps rose all over her body. He lifted her from the ground, her body instinctively wrapping around his, holding him against her with everything she could before she had to give him up again.
Finn pressed her gently against the cool rock face. He laid a kiss over her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, nuzzling into her like a forgotten song. He’d missed her too. She was his. She’d always been his.
‘You’re shivering,’ he said quietly against her ear.
I know, she wanted to say, but her body wasn’t her own.
Finn pulled back, just enough that she could feel his words against her lips. Alex swallowed. She didn’t want him to say anything. She just wanted to be here like this. Enveloped in him. Hidden behind a curtain of water, where the world wouldn’t find them again.
Finn laid his forehead gently against hers and whispered, ‘I used to wonder how it might have been different for us, Alex. If I’d have got to him in time. If your dad would have asked me to dinner … or to help him at the garage … or let me take you out. If he’d have been grateful, every day, that I was in love with his daughter, instead of hating me for it.’
Alex felt a heaviness pulling her way again. Finn sensed the change, his hands loosened. Alex let herself slide back to the rock beneath her. The lightning was burning out, that’s what lighting did. It disappeared leaving only the damage in its wake as any sign that it ever even existed.
Alex swallowed. They weren’t kids any more. There were consequences. They couldn’t play at this like it was all a bit of fun to be dabbled with when they felt like it. She’d felt this way before. She’d taken her eye off the ball because she’d felt this way before.
Finn’s stance shifted. The water roared behind him. He was waiting for it. Waiting for her to throw him away again.
‘I’m sorry …’ she started to say. I have to go. She could say it. So long as she didn’t feel his skin against hers again, she could say it. ‘We’re not kids any more, Finn—’ she rasped.
‘I know.’ Finn took a step closer. He was breathing heavily, waiting for her to choose the next step. He was giving her the choice. It was always her choice. Alex stepped towards him, as if she could, as if it wouldn’t matter. Her heart ramped up. Finn leant in to her and Alex felt their hands together again, unsure who’d reached for who. ‘Please, Foster. Don’t go back out there. Stay with me.’
CHAPTER 47
Jem’s black coupe was sat alongside their dad’s workshop when Alex walked up the track to the house.
There wasn’t really anything stopping her from going home now, Susannah had said it, Ted wasn’t whiter than white. No whiter than Alex anyway. Who knew, now that they were on a level playing field, maybe they’d finally be able to speak naturally to one another.
Alex felt a pleasant ache through her body; her back still wet where he’d pressed her against the rock shelter. She blinked against the afternoon sun and saw him again, eyes wild and startling, his body solid and gentle and sweetly frenzied. Alex’s heart reacted to the memory, a breath catching in her throat. Finn had offered to drive her back to the Longhouse but the lines had been blurred. She was going to walk back, and then she’d found herself walking in the direction of the farmhouse instead. Susannah will need the room back for the weekend check-in anyway, Alex had told herself. She could think about getting her truck later on at some point.
Sheep bleated in the near distance as the crop fields started to break into green pasturelands. Alex pulled at a piece of field grass and slowed her pace. Blythe used to let them walk down this lane into town to the sweetshop when they were younger. Blythe always knew when Alex had bought too many sweets because she would drag her heels getting home, so she had chance to eat them all before anyone could see. Alex was dragging her heels now. Finn had been her secret indulgence. She could still feel the evidence all over her. Finn was still in her hair, on her skin. She could still taste him on her mouth.
Alex checked her pockets for the keys. She felt the photograph she’d shown Jem last night. Maybe her mum had smashed the photo, maybe she knew that Ted had been sneaking off with Louisa and couldn’t bear to look at Louisa’s husband-stealing face.
Alex suddenly stopped dead on the lane. Did Mal know? Jem said that their dad had gone off at Mal at the hospital when he’d taken Blythe there, accused Mal of upsetting her in some way. Did Mal know about the affair? Could he have told their mum in the churchyard? Is that what had made Blythe ill?
Alex’s heart was flittering when she made it to the gatepost of her parents’ farmhouse. She glanced across the lawns.
‘Speak of the devil.’
Mal Sinclair’s police car came into view around the side of the house. Alex carried on walking while the front door opened and Mal stepped out onto the porch. He’d shaved for the occasion. His beard, all gone. He looked ten years younger for it to
o. Jem leaned in for a goodbye hug and Alex seethed a little. Nice touch, Officer. Even in broad daylight. He was as bad as his mother.
Alex followed the path up to the house. Norma padded out next to Jem’s legs then saw Alex from the porch and shot out across the lawn. Alex felt bad then for having not thought about her, Norma had been the most honest relationship she’d managed have while she was here.
Norma bounded across the grass and scrambled at Alex’s legs. Alex fussed her automatically. ‘Hey, girl.’ Norma wanted to play but there was a storm building in Alex’s heart.
‘Alex.’ Mal smiled politely. ‘I was just checking in on your mum.’
‘I’ll just bet you were, Mal. Maybe go check in on your wife and child instead?’
Mal looked at Jem. Jem’s mouth dropped open. ‘Alex?’
Alex noticed a sore patch of pink developing around Jem’s mouth. Blythe had gotten a similar rash once too, when Alex’s father had grown a beard so he looked like Kris Kristofferson in A Star Is Born. Aside from a burning anger beginning in the pit of her stomach, Alex was unfazed by Jem’s tone.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘Work, I suppose. I don’t know, why? I haven’t seen him since you went charging down to The Cavern last night. What did you say to him, Alex? He nearly knocked the door off when he got in. And why did you stay at the Longhouse all night? And why are you soaking wet?’
‘How do you know I stayed at the Longhouse? If you haven’t seen Dad this morning?’
Jem glanced sheepishly at Mal. ‘Lucky guess.’ Jem was shacked up with the local law enforcement, she probably knew every bugger in the town’s movements now.
Alex turned and faced Jem squarely. She felt her nails biting into her palm. ‘You know when Granny Ros was trying to teach us poker? Do you know how we always used to know when you were bluffing, Jem? Your lip twitched.’ Jem almost reached up to feel the evidence, or maybe it was her rash from Mal’s beard. Alex hoped it bloody hurt.
‘I think I better be going,’ Mal said shiftily.
‘You do that, Mal. And say hi to your family when you see them.’ Alex could taste the words like bile in her mouth. Goddamn Sinclairs.
Alex got a good look at Mal’s new look as he stepped down on the front porch towards her and her blood turned cold. A small dimple appeared on one of Mal’s cheeks when he smiled. She couldn’t see it before he’d shaved. A single indentation, as if the other dimple had gotten lost somewhere.
Alex felt a spur of sudden, dizzying nausea. Dill’s dimple had been the other side. They could’ve had the pair between them, Dill and Mal. The photograph in Alex’s back pocket felt heavy as she remembered the likeness between a younger, blonder Mal and her brother.
Oh God. Oh God. Her dad had been sleeping with Louisa Sinclair. Had he … the thought stabbed at her mind … had their dad fathered Malcolm? But … that would make Malcolm their half-brother. Alex looked at her sister and saw the puzzlement in Jem’s face. But … but Jem, and Mal … Shit.
Alex rushed up the three timber steps to the door but didn’t even get inside before it erupted all over the seat where Ted liked to take his morning coffee.
‘Alex! What’s wrong?’
‘Is she—’
‘Just go, Mal. I can handle this,’ Jem said firmly.
No you can’t! Alex thought, the horror of her realisation brought on another violent cramping in her stomach. Alex wretched again. Oh God, Jem … you’ve been sleeping with our half-brother.
CHAPTER 48
‘It’s just not acceptable. We understand it’s delicate, but if everyone’s husbands started hiding out at the end of visiting time, we’d be overrun with them. And he really can’t keep lying on the bed with her in those overalls. Oil is a terrible nuisance to get out of the sheets.’ The nurse hadn’t wanted to embarrass Ted so she’d collared Alex as soon as she’d walked onto the ward instead. Alex had gotten one sweaty palm on her mother’s door before she’d been intercepted.
Alex nodded apologetically. The nurse kept tapping her clipboard against her chest. ‘How often has he been doing this?’
Ted had been lying next to Blythe when the nurses thought everyone had gone home. So much for hospital security. So much for the behavioural patterns of a typical philandering husband. Sneaking around so he could lie next to her mother each night? Before slipping away again for a nightcap at The Cavern? Alex wondered if her father’s dedication had been born from love, or guilt.
Alex remembered what she now realised had been Louisa Sinclair’s Aston Martin rolling out of Foster & Son’s the day she’d thrown milkshake all over Finn. Was it still going on? ‘Dad’s never been very receptive towards Mal,’ Jem had told her.
Alex fixed on the movements of the clipboard. Had he known that Malcolm was his child all along? Was that why Ted hadn’t wanted Mal around Jem? Not because Alex had conditioned him to distrust his daughters’ boyfriends but because he couldn’t face his own illegitimate child? The potential for something unnatural to blossom between them?
Alex put a hand over her stomach. She was still experiencing sporadic bursts of nausea. Some father he’d been to Mal. He’d been distraught for Dill, but his other son? Ted had treated him like he treated his other vices, he had a preferred brand of tobacco, preferred brand of whiskey … Mal was just the wrong brand of son.
‘And he wasn’t here last night because we were already on to him. But put it this way, nearly every morning your mother’s bed sheets have had oil on them, and every day they’ve been changed again for her.’
Alex nodded briefly, relieved she’d been too much of a wuss to moan about the grubby sheets. ‘I’ll speak to him.’ It would be a breeze compared to the conversation she needed to have with Jem. Sorry, Jem! You can’t keep having an affair with Malcolm, I’m afraid. He’s our half-brother. Shall I get you the peanut butter?
The nurse cocked her head and looked warmly at Alex. ‘I don’t want to be a killjoy. It’s actually rather romantic, really, your dad still needing to cuddle up to your mum at their age. How long have they been married?’
Alex rubbed a circle over her stomach. She felt drained. ‘About thirty years.’
‘My goodness. They must love each other dearly. That’s rare these days. We live in such a throwaway society, don’t you think? Toasters, marriages … nobody makes do and mends any more. Anyway, I’ll leave you to it. Go on in, she’s feeling much better now for those antibiotics.’
Alex tried to shake some of the tension from her shoulders. She stepped into her mother’s room. Blythe turned her head slowly from the light streaming through the window. She looked serene, her silken red hair all about her against the pillow as if she were a mermaid suspended underwater.
‘Morning, my dar-ling.’
Alex felt her mood buckle. She could cry for her mother’s voice. Did Ted feel that too when he was here? Did it make him feel better to clamber up next to her? Alex wanted to bundle up onto her mother’s bed and cuddle with her until she felt better too. Hurry up and get better, Mum! She wanted to say. You’re the key! We all need you, you’re the only one who can fix us.
‘Hey, Mum. How are you feeling?’
Blythe managed a smile. She looked tired, but that desperate glassiness in her eyes had gone. She was Blythe again. How could he have betrayed her?
‘I’m good, my darling. Come … sit by me.’ Alex did gratefully. Blythe’s left hand was occupied with an IV but she pressed it weakly over Alex’s as if she was trying to anchor her there. ‘I love you, Alex,’ she said clumsily.
Alex’s felt a pain in her heart. ‘I know, Mum. I love you too.’
‘I want you to …’ She seemed to lose energy. Like a toy in need of winding up in between sentences.
‘It’s OK, Mum. Take your time. Would you like some water?’
Alex looked around for her mother’s cup but Blythe increased the pressure between her hand and her daughter’s. Alex gave her mum her full attention.
‘I want you … to tel
l your father … that I love him too.’
‘He knows, Mum. You tell him all the time.’ Alex felt the shame of knowing something hideous her mother might not.
‘Promise me … you’ll remind him.’
‘Of course I will, Mum. You can remind him yourself.’
‘I love you both … so much.’
Alex smiled weakly. ‘We know, Mum.’
‘And Jem … and Dillon.’
Alex looked up at the new bag of chemicals filtering into her mother’s hand. They weren’t working, she was delirious again. ‘I miss him so much … I miss you too … I miss the family we were.’
Alex watched a few escaped tears begin steadily from her mother’s eyes.
‘It’s all right, Mum. Don’t get upset. We’ll all be all right.’ But it was an empty promise; Emma Parsons had probably made similar empty promises to little Poppy every time that monster had left their house with all their money.
‘Be patient … with your father. He needs you.’
Her mother always knew how to shift the earth with just a few small motions. ‘If I’m ill … another stroke … all I want … from you … is to be close to … your father again.’
She wasn’t delirious. She was asking for the impossible, but not from delirium.
‘Promise me, Alex.’
Alex could see the effort it was taking for her mother just to squeeze Alex’s hand. How the hell was she going to pull that one out of the bag? Blythe increased the pressure slightly.
‘All right, Mum. I promise.’
CHAPTER 49
Jem was frenziedly chopping salad; her shoulder blades rising and falling in uncomfortable jerky movements. Alex took another long drink of the tea Jem had ready for her when she’d got back from the hospital. It was odd, seeing the shoe on the other foot, Jem nervously toiling away while Alex sat here at the kitchen table, Norma on her lap, in a mist of calm understanding.
Alex knew what she had to do now. For the first time since she’d been home her role was clear. She had to stop this. This thing between Jem and Mal. And she had to do whatever was necessary to get along with her father. It was the only thing her mother had asked of her and she was going to damn well do it. Somehow.
Letting You Go Page 26