Chapter 17
Seventeen
Sweeney stared at the envelope, a tiny flutter of excitement kicking to life in the centre of her chest. Was there a letter inside? ‘Fin?’ she murmured. ‘Isn’t that your dad’s handwriting?’
‘Yeah.’
But he didn’t move to pick it up. ‘So, what are you waiting for?’ She stepped around him, examining the writing as she scooped it off the ground. There was definitely a letter inside. Or folded paper, anyway. ‘This is the day before he died, right?’ She thrust it at him. ‘You have to open it.’
Sweeney frowned as he took it and just stared at it—with trepidation. Like it was a live snake instead of words from beyond the grave. She was trying to understand his hesitation but … she’d give anything to have had a letter from her father.
‘I mean … the day before he dies he just happens to write you a letter?’ Sweeney gentled her voice. ‘Was that coincidence or did he maybe sense something was about to happen and write to you, just in case? Don’t you … want to know what it says?’
He looked up then and the grimness of his features clawed at her chest.
‘I know it’ll be hard emotionally to read. But Fin …’ She tried to temper the excitement in her voice because this wasn’t about her and her father, it was about Fin and his. ‘You get to hear from your dad, again.’
Fin looked up from the envelope. ‘We argued.’ The two words crashed like boulders into the space between them. ‘The day before he died.’
Sweeney sucked in a breath. Well, shit … so probably not a coincidence. And probably why Fin was looking like he’d been punched in the gut.
He stared at the envelope again as he turned it over and over in his hands. ‘I’ve never told another soul about it.’
She understood his hesitation now. Fin had to be wondering what his father had written.
An apology. Or had it been composed in fresh anger?
And how would Fin—her dear friend who had clearly been beating himself up about that argument for the past two years—handle that?
Maybe he didn’t want to tell her any more—but maybe he did, now he’d taken the first step?
‘What did you argue about?’
‘It was so …’ Fin shook his head. ‘So stupid. I’d come back to Ballyshannon for the weekend and been out the night before with Donny and a couple of the other guys I used to play with, and I’d just broken up with this woman I’d been seeing for a couple of months and was massively hungover.
Dad had the mower out at seven in the morning, deliberately, I’m sure. ’
Sweeney smiled. ‘That sounds like him.’
‘Mum had gone to church. The night before, I’d told her I’d go with her, but did I mention my hangover?’
‘That bad, huh?’
‘Severe. Donny is a beast.’ He gave a half laugh but it just sounded sad. ‘I think I emerged from my room about eleven in the morning, pretty irritated over the mower. We were meeting Mum out for lunch somewhere, I can’t remember where, and Dad was not impressed at my sloth.’
‘Your father wasn’t much of a fan of sleeping in, was he?’
He fully laughed this time and Sweeney joined him. Michael Murphy considered lie-ins a wealthy person’s fancy. ‘Anyway …’ Fin shook his head as if to clear it. ‘He started. Asking me about Carys—’
‘The girl you’d broken up with?’
‘Yes. They’d met her a few weeks beforehand in Melbourne.
She’d arrived late to dinner and then she was rude to a waiter, which didn’t exactly curry favour with my parents, or me.
Hence the break-up. He kept asking why I was choosing women who were more flash than substance.
And then he went on about my job. He’d had a bee in his bonnet about me working for a bank for a long time, and every other day he’d text or email me some position vacant somewhere because he was convinced I wasn’t happy and I was just treading water. ’
‘Was that true?’
‘In hindsight? Yeah.’ Fin shrugged. ‘But I liked the money and the lifestyle and it was easy and all I really wanted right at that moment was for my head to stop throbbing and to sit still and quiet until it did. Even over two years later I can still remember the almighty hammer at my temples and silently vowing to never drink with Donny again.’
Sweeney laughed. It sounded brutal.
‘Dad, of course, took my silence as a signal to continue, and he kept going on about a friend of his who worked at the Melbourne Zoo who had told him about some position that was vacant in their finance department. I don’t know why he thought the zoo was better for me.
I think he liked the image of me working with furry animals more than me cosying up to big money, given his mortal working-class mistrust of them.
Like I was going to be in the fucking platypus enclosure or something. ’
He drew a breath and shoved a hand through his hair and Sweeney could see how hard it was for him to recount his father’s words.
‘He said my job was soulless and he was disappointed in me.’
Sweeney sucked in a breath. ‘Sheesh.’
‘Yup.’
Sweeney didn’t have to ask how gutted Fin had been—she could see it written all over his face.
He’d been a good son—polite, likeable, did well at school, active in community sport.
He worked at the IGA part-time during high school while also helping out on a volunteer basis at the club and then gone on to university and got a degree.
Sure, he’d never been perfect, had got into his fair share of trouble. Sweeney knew that because she’d usually been up to her neck in it with him. But any essentially good kid who loved and valued their parents’ opinions knew that a parent being disappointed in them cut the deepest.
‘So … I snapped at him about not wanting to work at the goddamn zoo and could he please just stop trying to live my life and that my soulless job was an important part of the economy and to butt out. And then I grabbed my bag and left without even saying a proper goodbye, barely even acknowledging him when he asked me to ring Mum and tell her I wouldn’t be able to make lunch. I even slammed the front door.’
Sweeney winced. ‘Ouch.’
‘Yeah. I’d never done that before, even though as a kid there had been times I’d wanted to. Just hadn’t been game. But in that moment I realised I wasn’t a kid anymore and I could damn well walk out and slam the door.’
Sweeney smiled, understanding the sentiment. How many times had she wanted to walk out the door after her dad had died? ‘Did it feel good?’
‘For a moment.’ He gave a small smile. ‘Aunty Catherine rang the next morning at seven minutes past six to tell me he’d died.’
‘Oh, Fin.’ The guilt and bleakness in his voice was overwhelming, and Sweeney wrapped her arms around him. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.’
Her body pressed into his, trying to convey the depths of her sorrow, and when he slid his arm around her back it felt right to rock gently from side to side.
‘It’s fine,’ he murmured, rocking to her rhythm.
‘Did your mum know?’ Sweeney asked eventually, her voice muffled a little, before she tipped her chin back to look at him. ‘About the argument?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I didn’t tell her because I felt so sick about it and she never mentioned anything to me after he died and I think she would have if she’d known?’
‘Yeah.’ Sweeney nodded. ‘She definitely would have, because your mum would have understood how bad you would have been feeling about it and she’d have told you what I would have told you, had I known.
That your father loved you and was proud of you in a way that no one argument could ever erase. He was so proud of you, Fin.’
‘It didn’t really feel like it that day.’
She shrugged. ‘He was crotchety, you were hungover. You argued. People who love each other argue and sometimes, when things get heated, they say things they don’t mean.’
‘And sometimes,’ he said grimly, ‘when things get heated, they tell the truth.’
‘No.’ Sweeney shook her head. ‘They tell the truth of the moment, not of the whole. I remember when we were in grade nine and you’d won the maths prize.
I’d gone with your family that night to the awards ceremony and you went up on stage to collect your scroll and I was sitting next to your dad, who was practically leaping out of his chair in excitement and clapping the loudest of everyone, and on the other side of him was some random guy who your father, surprisingly, didn’t know—’
Fin snort-laughed and Sweeney smiled, happy that she could make him laugh amidst all this emotional turmoil. It was funny because his father pretty much knew everybody in Ballyshannon.
‘And he turned to that guy as you shook the principal’s hand and said, “That’s my son,” and I was so jealous of you in that moment to not only have a dad but have one that clapped the loudest and talked about all your achievements at the bar and the club to his mates and told random people that you were his son. ’
‘It’s easy to be proud of a kid who’s achieving.’
‘Fin.’ She bugged her eyes at him. ‘He was proud of that damn penguin.’
‘What penguin?’ Realisation dawned and he shot her an insulted look. ‘It’s a puffin.’
‘Exactly. I swear he went on about it like Rodin himself had sculpted it.’ Sweeney let out a noisy breath.
‘My point being, your dad loved you. He thought the sun shone out of you. And sensing your unhappiness would have been drip torture for him. He was a doer. A fixer. And his entire life he only ever wanted the best for you and your mum. Do you think, if he’d known that was going to be his last day with you, his last conversation, he would have said those things? ’
‘Of course not.’
‘And you and I both know after he’d simmered down, that he would have hated that angry words between the two of you had resulted in you leaving.’
Michael Murphy had always been slow to anger and quick to apologise. Sweeney had liked that best about the man. I’m a lover not a fighter. That had been one of his favourite sayings.
‘Now why he chose to write you a letter, I guess we’ll never know.’ She lay her head on his chest, her cheek to his sternum, listening to the steady thump of Fin’s heart. ‘But I bet it says something to that effect, as well.’
‘What if it doesn’t?’
‘It will.’
Sweeney tightened her arms around his waist and shut her eyes as Fin’s hand slid to her nape. She didn’t know what else to say to convince him, or even if she should, she just knew it felt right to be his person to lean on in this moment.
‘You read it.’
Sweeney’s eyes flew open. ‘What?’ She lifted her head, searching his eyes. Was he mad? ‘No.’
‘I can’t.’ He shook his head. ‘I just couldn’t bear it if …’ His hands slid to her biceps. ‘But I do want to know.’
‘Fin …’ This she had not expected. ‘Don’t you think this should be private?’
He barked out a half laugh. ‘Please, like I wouldn’t show it to my fiancée.’
Sweeney humoured him with a smile, but still didn’t think she should be privy to what should be such a personal moment. ‘How about I open it, give it a quick scan and if it’s what I suspect it’s going to be, I hand it over to you?’
Rolling his eyes, Fin took a step back and offered her the envelope. ‘Good compromise.’
It was Sweeney’s turn to look at the letter like it was a live snake, but she knew however hard this was for her, it had to be ten times harder for Fin. Her fingers trembled as she pulled the letter out, unfolded it, then read.
She didn’t need to go far to know that it was going to be okay. Moisture gathered at the backs of her eyes as she looked at him. ‘It’s good,’ she confirmed, her voice husky as she handed the letter over.