Chapter 61 Linus
sixty-one
Linus
Eighteen Months Later
Fireball is still burning brightly.
Though it’s been years now, the headlines still say resurgence.
The awards say something stronger. Multiple Grammys. Songwriting accolades. Crowds we once dreamed of now showing up early and staying late, singing every word back to us.
The new record cuts deeper than anything we’ve ever made. Cleaner. Smoother. Honest. Music built for long drives. Sitting alone with your thoughts. Critics call it mature.
I call it earned.
We tour, but carefully. Short US runs. Select European festivals. The money is excellent, steady enough to make choices instead of sacrifices.
Padraig’s still in, but on his own terms. Present, professional, no longer mentally bound to the band the way he once was. The band began as twin brothers and now is centered on Liam and Avonna, the creative gravity shifting without announcement.
Success creates space to ask challenging questions. Should Fireball continue in its current shape, defined by history and loyalty? Or will the next chapter belong to something new. Built from the ground up without dragging the past along.
No decisions yet.
Only awareness. Futures can change.
Liam carries it deeper than he ever lets on.
I see it after shows, when the stage goes dark and he lingers at the edge, staring as if something important might still be waiting there.
Offers keep landing in his inbox. Fashion houses asking him to front campaigns.
Luxury brands dangling endorsements. Stylists pitching covers and spreads.
He’s done a few. Smiles for the camera. Wears the clothes. Takes the check.
The spotlight isn’t what he thought it would be.
He talks about the future now without mentioning songs or tours.
His thoughts drift toward home. Toward the girls.
Toward mornings instead of soundchecks. He wants to build something lasting, something quiet enough to breathe inside.
The attention follows him everywhere, but it never fills the space music once did.
When Avonna and I reach for him, he holds us longer now, grounding himself in the weight of us, in the warmth of what we’ve built.
The three of us have grown into an impenetrable unit in ways I always hoped. Not only lovers. Parents. Protectors.
Sloane and Quinn move through our lives with a steadiness born from routine and vigilance. Shannon is a steady presence. A private tutor comes to the house now, guiding them through kindergarten and into first grade. Their safety is our first priority.
Always.
The threats directed at Avonna changed everything.
Federal agents speak in measured tones and long timelines. Rumors circle about the sect losing its grip. Investigations widening. Doors finally closing.
None of it moves fast enough to ease Avonna’s fears, so we build walls where we can. Choose privacy. Control.
Avonna takes the weight with grace I still don’t fully understand.
Her voice carries across worldwide stages in so many forms. Strong and unflinching, impossible to ignore.
NPR invites her back again and again, not for promotion, but conversation.
Journalists clamor to interview her about art, motherhood, faith rebuilt on her own terms. Vogue photographed her barefoot in linen, a woman who refuses polish for permission.
Late-night hosts stop joking when she answers, realizing she isn’t there to charm. She’s there to tell the truth.
Podcasts line up. Women-run panels. Creative collectives.
She sits across from activists and other artists who recognize something familiar in her eyes.
Survival. Clarity. Refusal. Her words travel faster than Fireball’s songs now, shared in memes and reels and handwritten quotes taped to mirrors and notebooks.
Wherever Fireball plays, the crowds lean in. When she sings, it feels personal. Not performance. Confession. Communion. Women cry openly. Men stand still, stunned. The songs land somewhere deeper than sound, in places people forgot existed.
The world wants to name her. Icon. Survivor. Feminist anthem. Spiritual rebellion. They circle closer to the three of us, curious about the men she chose. Hungry to define what we are, to label the shape of our family and turn it into something digestible.
We don’t indulge. Not to hide.
To live. Our lives belong to us.
Love. Family.
It hasn’t been easy to get back here. The harassment from the sect nearly broke Avonna. Nearly broke all of us.
Scripture bent into weapons. Promises of punishment wrapped in prophecy. Fear followed her everywhere, into dressing rooms, onto planes, into bed at night. We lived on edge for months before the trail led back to her former sect.
Federal investigators stepped in. Procedures began. Interviews. Paperwork. Long silences between updates. Nothing moves quickly when institutions protect themselves.
The damage didn’t wait.
Stress does things to a body. To a heart. To hope. We lost three pregnancies in the span of a year. Each loss carved something out of her. Out of us. She blamed herself, even when logic told her otherwise.
Liam and I watched helplessly when she’d flinch at sudden noises. Cringed at the way her hands shook when unfamiliar mail arrived. We talked about stopping. Protecting what we already have. Hunkering down with the family we’ve been lucky enough to build.
Then she’d sit at the piano again. Late. Quiet. Fingers trembling, voice cracking open, grief pouring into melody. She never said she wanted to keep trying. She didn’t have to.
We knew.
She wasn’t finished dreaming.
As for me, Isis Management is thriving. I salvaged the profitable parts of Niamh’s father’s firm after it collapsed and let the rest fall away. LTZ signed with us this year. It’s been a strange kind of full circle.
With my stellar roster of managers, mostly I mentor careers instead of chasing mine. Every night I come home to Liam, Avonna, Sloane, and Quinn. When Fireball tours, so do I. Otherwise, I have staff to cover the rest.
One part of my life has never settled. My family back home. I’ve kept them looped in as best I could. It’s a goddamn void. Photos sent into silence. Updates on the girls met with nothing. Invitations to Fireball shows in Europe go unanswered.
I’ve tried. Never stopped.
Now, everything’s fractured.
My father died three days ago.
A massive coronary. Sudden. Final. I didn’t hear it from Mum, a cousin called instead already assuming I knew.
I didn’t.
Liam and Avonna immediately offered to come with me without hesitation, but I couldn’t add to everything else going on. I already knew they weren’t welcome. My mother made it clear years ago.
I’m on my own.
The plane cuts through cloud and drops low over the water. Dublin Bay comes into focus, slate and steel and familiar in a way my body recognizes before my mind does.
I missed the wake. By hours, not days, but it might as well have been a lifetime. Irish rituals happened without me. Stories shared. Pints raised. Doors closed.
Instead, I arrive for the service.
St. Patrick’s is full but hushed, quiet built from obligation rather than grief.
I slip into a back pew. My sisters sit together near the front, shoulders angled inward, a unit I’m no longer part of.
My brother keeps his gaze fixed ahead, hands clasped as if prayer might excuse him from acknowledging me.
Mum wears black like armor. Veil pinned just so. Spine straight. She doesn’t look back once. Probably would be shocked to see me here.
I walk forward when it’s time. Kneel beside the coffin. The wood is smooth under my palm, polished to a shine my Da would’ve appreciated. I press my hand there anyway, grounding myself in the weight of him, of what’s finished. I whisper goodbye under my breath. No one hears but me.
At the graveside, the wind cuts sharp. Soil thuds hollow as it hits the casket. I stand apart from the family cluster, close enough to be seen, far enough to be separate. A cousin nods. An aunt touches my arm briefly, then pulls away, as if contact might be contagious.
I wonder, standing there, if my da would’ve wanted me present. If pride would’ve outweighed disappointment. If his love for me could’ve survived the truth of who I am. Rather than reframing my sexual preferences as a choice.
There’s no answer waiting, now or ever.
When it’s over, people drift toward the gates in loose groups. I overhear someone mention lunch. A reservation at a local restaurant. My sisters and brother load into a car with Mum. No one looks in my direction or invites me.
Mum pauses before she gets in. Hands folded, gaze fixed somewhere past me. For a second, I think she might make eye contact.
She doesn’t.
Afterward, I walk.
Past the hotel where I worked after college. Past the first cramped office where Isis Management existed in name only. Past the flat Avonna and I bought, where we seduced Liam and never looked back. Past clubs where my bands played to little pubs and restaurants that made up my life back then.
Each place holds a version of me I needed to experience. None of them fit anymore.
Dublin doesn’t judge. It simply remembers.
By the time I turn back toward the hotel, my legs ache and my breath comes easier. Grief permeates my body, but it’s no longer sharp. I did what I came to do. Showed up. Was present where it mattered.
I can live with the effort I made. When I leave, I won’t carry regret with me.
Even if no one else wanted me there, I showed up anyway.
For him.
Two days later, I go back. My mother opens the door and steps aside. Not an invitation. Not a refusal. An obligation fulfilled.
The house feels smaller than I remember. Narrower. As if grief has closed all the walls in. We stand in the hall. Coats still on. Neither of us moves to sit.
“I wanted to say goodbye,” I tell her. “To him.”
She nods once. “So you did.”
“And…” I hold up my hand, “ to you.”
“Well, then, there’s nothin’ more left to say.” Her mouth presses thin. “You’ve chosen a path.”
“I’ve chosen to be true to myself.” I shake my head in frustration.
She turns then, and really looks at me. Not with anger. With something colder. Resolution.
“Linus. I can’t accept your life,” she states plain and final. “I won’t pretend I can.”
The words land heavy, clean. No cruelty in them. No softness either.
“I didn’t come to ask you to pretend,” I reply. “I came to tell you I’m happy.”
“Happiness isn’t always proof of being right.” Her hands fold in front of her.
“I’m not askin’ to be right.”
Silence draws out between us, deep and unbridgeable.
“You’re my son,” she says at last. “But I’ve already mourned your loss.”
Wow. There it is. The truth I came for.
“I won’t ask you to change,” she continues. “I won’t change myself.”
“I understand.”
She steps aside and opens the door.
“Take care of yourself.” She looks straight ahead. Not unkind. Not loving. A farewell.
I hesitate at the threshold, waiting for something else. Anything.
Nothing comes.
Outside, the air bites cold. I don’t look back. In her world, the son she raised no longer exists.
In mine, I am alive. Loved. Building something real.
I walk away carrying both truths. Her God is unforgiving.
My God allowed my beautiful Avonna to escape a sadistic religious cult.
Placed her in the very room where Liam and I fell in love.
Years later brought her here to Dublin to mend my broken heart and, as fate would have it, bring Liam back into my—our—lives.
I'll take my God every day of the week.
I know I’ll never see my mother again. She's not my family.
In the car on my way to the airport, I text Liam.
Headed home.
He responds immediately.
We’ll be here.
The plane lifts again. Los Angeles waits. My family waits.
Fireball still burns.
It may not be the closure I want, but at least I’m not split between who I was and who I am.
I know where I belong.
I’ll be there soon.