Letting You Go. Anouska Knight
would love it. Her face had lit up like one of the kids’ when she’d seen the pup, that smile she seemed to put her whole body into. A smile she didn’t have to think about. At this time of year to bring that smile back into the house was nothing short of a blessing.
The pup cocked her head the other way.
‘If you were smarter, dog, you’d have tried my daughter’s room,’ Ted sighed. The girls had always gone gaga for puppies, just like Blythe. Ted wasn’t one to shout it from the rooftops but he’d always quietly beamed when somebody remarked how alike his girls were to their mother. Daughters should be like their mothers and Blythe and their girls were the most beautiful creatures in the Falls. He’d challenge anyone to say they weren’t. Of course, the same folks had said on occasion how Dill got his looks from Ted, but it was easy to tell the difference between true observation and politeness. Besides his dirty blond hair Dill had looked very little like him, Ted knew that. No matter what the heart wanted to be true, there was no disputing what his eyes told him every time he’d walked passed the photographs of Dillon hanging in the hall downstairs.
Blythe had taken herself off into the frozen garden and cried for an hour straight when he’d taken down the Son from the garage sign. He shouldn’t have climbed up there, yanking it away with his own hands, he realised that now. But he couldn’t bear seeing it any longer. It would be a lie to have left it up there, calling out an untruth to everyone passing by. The Fosters’ name would come to an end when the girls married, they all knew that. There were some people who’d known it before Ted had.
That same old hollowness began to yawn like a chasm inside him. The puppy squeaked for attention again but Ted was resolute. ‘You’ll have to wait, little one. I have something to do before breakfast.’ The bastard was good and dead now. No more a part of the town, no longer a thorn in their sides. And when Ted made it to the churchyard, by God, he hoped he’d find that the old son of a bitch had finally taken the last of his poorly kept goddamn secrets with him.
Alex felt him tense, harden like her clay; Finn’s whole body beside her suddenly off limits, no longer hers to touch.
‘That’s not it. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to know, Finn. I just can’t upset him again, he’s my dad. I’ve already put him through so much.’ Finn took his hand back, slow enough that it wasn’t like a punishment. Only it was. Alex stopped herself from grabbing it and bringing those fingers back to her again. ‘Now’s just … it’s not good timing, Jem’s getting into trouble at school and—’
‘So how long, Alex? I’m ready to get my lights punched out to stand up for the way I feel about you, how long until you’re ready to stand up for how you say you feel for me?’
Alex’s palm was still lying against Finn’s chest. Should she move it? Everything about him was starting to feel defensive. The way he was pushing his hair away from his face, the tension through his arms.
‘I do feel that way, Finn. I love you.’
‘Do you?’
She was losing him. She could already feel it. ‘You know I do. You’ve always known.’
‘So tell him. Tell him, Alex. Tell him we’re young and in love and we’d do anything to change what happened. But we can’t. All we can do is keep moving forwards and sometimes that means moving against the current.’
Something had shifted in the air between them. It was a similar feeling to watching one of her clay pots lose its shape when it had stood to be so beautiful before she’d cocked it up. Maybe if she was careful, deft enough, she could bring it back again, coax it all back into shape. ‘He’s my dad, Finn. I can’t keep pushing him. I love you, and I love him too. I need him to have the chance to understand.’
‘Understand what?’
‘How sorry I am! It happened on our watch, Finn! I can’t be sorry for that and ram you down his throat at the same time. You know what he thinks we were doing!’
It was all coming flooding back. She didn’t want to go there right now. It would spoil everything, the candlelight, the snow outside. The taste of him still on her mouth. She was going to wear that taste away with these awful words.
Alex spoke quietly. ‘I just think we should keep things private, just for a while.’
‘Hide our relationship, you mean?’ Finn was not speaking quietly.
‘Not hide, just … take our time.’
Finn propped himself angrily against the headboard. ‘You want me to love you in secret, Alex? Hide how I feel, like I had to when my dad skipped out on my mum and me?’ Alex took her hand back. He couldn’t feel her now anyway. ‘That was no fun, Alex. Pretending I hated my own father because if I didn’t I’d be reminded of all the reasons why I should. I knew he hadn’t checked those brakes properly for your dad, I knew he’d rushed Mrs Fairbanks’ service to get to a shitty poker game, but I didn’t know how to tell anyone that I still loved him anyway because he was still my dad, or even how what he’d done to Millie Fairbanks and her mum wasn’t enough to stop me still wanting him home with us again.’
‘Finn …’ Alex felt herself shrink away in her too-small bed. Suddenly she felt totally, shamefully naked.
‘I know what my old man did, Alex. I know what he did to Millie, and your dad’s business and to my mum and me. But I still loved him. Only I had to do it in secret. I had to hide it.’ Finn shook his head. ‘I’m not signing up for that again, Alex. You don’t do that with love. You stand up for it and you take the blows and you bleed for it if you have to.’
‘I’m responsible, Finn. Don’t you get that? I lost Dill, I lost him! He was just a little boy, and I didn’t protect him. I stopped watching and I lost my baby brother. Their only son! I can’t just go home and—’
Finn’s eyes were greener with anger. His arms flailed wildly. ‘He died Alex! He didn’t get lost, Dill died! I had him in my arms, I could feel the knot in his lace, how I could free him!’ Finn’s body rippled with angry heartache. ‘But it was too tight. My fingers were too big and I couldn’t pull him from the root in time and he died. And you’re right. It was on our watch. But what can we possibly do that will ever make that better?’
Alex felt the hurt inside begin to twist into something resentful. ‘Not ram our happy-ever-after down his throat, Finn!’
Finn was suddenly up on his feet next to Alex’s books and their abandoned clothes, a naked ringmaster in the circus of Alex’s life. His arms were aloft again. ‘Fine! Well, what about all this? What are you going to do when you get a first with your degree, Alex? Because you will. You’ll graduate with flying colours and get the job you’ve always dreamed of in a career you’ll love. Then what?’
‘Finn.’
‘Let’s see, what about when you want to get married? Or buy your first house, or have your first kid. Are those things off limits for Ted Foster’s throat too? Or is it just me you can’t ram down it?’
‘You’re being ridiculous.’
‘No, you’re being ridiculous, Alex!’
‘No I’m not!’ She heard the tears in her voice. They were coming, they were en route. ‘Dill won’t get to do any of those things because of me.’
Finn pinned his hands on his hips and shook his head.
‘Don’t shake your head! Dill won’t ever bring a girlfriend home for my mum to cluck over, or help my dad out at the garage so he’s not breaking his back working on his own all the time. He’ll never grow up and have a laugh with Jem instead of only ever pissing her off! Dill won’t graduate, he won’t even flunk!’ Alex’s voice wobbled.