Chapter 20 #2
We sit on the curb in front of the ice cream shoppe. We smoke one cigarette in silence. Then we talk about how I got there, and how I wound up on the news. It’s so fucking bizarre, I still feel like I’m dreaming. But at the same time, it feels comfortable, like not a day has passed.
“So,” I say when we finally fall silent, not even knowing how to talk to her, where to begin with the rest of it, the last four years. I’ve imagined this a million times over those years, but the amount of shit that’s gone down is overwhelming now that I’m sitting next to her. “What’s new?”
She laughs quietly, tugging at the cuff of her leather jacket. “That looks new,” she says, nodding at my arm.
“It was my way of resisting arrest.” I skim my thumb over the gnarly cut running the length of my forearm. The bandage got some of the doctor’s blood on it, so I figured it was better to take it off and toss it with my gun than get arrested for his murder.
Her brow rises. “A bit dramatic, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I would have died if some horny couple hadn’t walked by and seen me on the ground right after it happened. They wrapped my arm up and called 911. Still probably would have bit the dust if they’d been two minutes later.”
“Well, I’m glad you made it,” she says quietly.
“I had to get transfusions,” I say. “It’s weird, y’know? Knowing a bunch of random strangers’ blood is running through my veins.”
She rubs the heel of her boot against the pavement. “I would have given you mine.”
“I know,” I say, shoving my shoulder against hers. “Same for you. Anyway, it’s not all foreign juice. Mom was a match. Must be that Finnegan blood.”
I shoot her a grin, and she smiles back a little, her eyes crinkling at the corners. She got the Finnegan eyes, some recessive trait that mom carries, but that, according to family lore, only shows up once per generation.
“She kept telling them to take more even when they told her she’d given too much,” I say. “She’d just yell at them to keep going. When they finally refused, she stood up to give them a piece of her mind and fainted dead away.”
“Sounds like Mom,” Eternity says, sniffling a little.
“Can I ask you something?” I say after a minute.
“Are you going to ask why I didn’t come home?”
“Yeah, I was.”
“I couldn’t,” she admits. “I left everyone on the island. I had to go back, help them get out. I’ve been doing it for a while now, watching from the shore, sneaking over to get one or maybe two people at a time.
And then you came along and blew it all up at once.
If I’d known that was an option, I’d have been home already. ”
“Would you?” I ask, tilting my head to look at her.
She won’t meet my eyes. “I thought about it,” she says.
“If you think I forgot y’all… I didn’t. I just…
It’s like that was someone else. That part of my life was unreal.
It was so far away. If you asked me, I’d say of course I was going back.
But first I had to get through this day, and then this day, and then this day…
That’s how you survive. I don’t know how to unlearn that.
There’s no past, no future. There’s just today. ”
I nod slowly, trying to understand something I can’t begin to comprehend.
“How long has it been?” I ask, trying not to be hurt that she didn’t even call.
“A little under a year. Don’t be mad, Heath. Please. I would have gone home, I just… I just didn’t. Maybe I was scared.”
“Scared of what?” I ask. “Nothing’s been the same since you left. Our family, our friends… We were devastated. You think we wouldn’t want you to come home? No matter what happened to you, you can always come home.”
“It’s not that,” she mutters. “It’s just… I’m not the person I was then, Heath. I’m not the person you lost. You’d welcome her back, but me? I don’t know if you’d like who I’ve become.”
I nod, thinking that over, remembering what Duke Dolce said outside the church after Christmas.
I lean toward her, and she leans in, and we press our shoulders together.
“I had that same fear about you,” I admit.
“We’ve all changed. We were all changed by it, even if we didn’t have to know the same horrors you did.
Mom and Dad too. But we’re still blood.”
“Even if yours is tainted,” she jokes half-heartedly.
“Finnegans forever,” I say, linking my pinkie through hers.
She squeezes tight. “Finnegans forever.”
A drop splatters onto the pavement, leaving a wet circle.
“No matter who you are, you’ll always be my sister,” I say, anchoring myself to her, our fingers locked together. “I love you no matter what, E.”
“I know,” she says. “Same. No matter who you are now.”
“About that,” I say. “I wanted to tell you something.”
She nods and takes out her pack of cigarettes again.
“I… I’m bi,” I say. “I like guys too.”
It feels strange saying the words aloud, the ones I’ve rolled around in my head for years but never told anyone, not even the people who know. I want to say it again, to try it out again and see if it’s easier, more normal and less awkward.
“Cool,” she says, nodding as she lights up.
“I like guys, and girls, and… Really anything works for me. I’m an equal opportunity fucker.” I’m babbling, a giddiness having taken hold now that I got to say it out loud. I didn’t expect it to feel so good.
She’s quiet a minute and then, “My turn?”
“Are you going to ask if I’m a top or a bottom?”
“No,” she says, scowling. “I was going to ask if you’re seeing anyone right now. I figured that’s why you told me.”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” I say, unable to keep the smile from my face.
I must have been nervous for her reaction, for the judgment I’d get when I said it aloud.
That’s what held me back from saying it to anyone for so long.
I like that she’s the first person I’ve told.
Now that the pressure has lifted, I feel myself expand, filled with euphoria. So I add, “A couple someones, in fact.”
“That sounds… Messy.”
“Or lucky,” I say with a wink. “I get the best of both worlds.”
“If that’s what you call it,” she says, seeming to have relaxed into this new revelation with me. “Still sounds messy to me. I know I couldn’t do it.”
“Well, lucky for you, you don’t have to,” I say. “Guess we both have that Irish luck.”
“Yeah, sounds like it,” she mutters, blowing out smoke. “I don’t do mess. But you know, it sounds like just the kind of chaos you always loved. So I think it’ll work out great for you.”
“Don’t act like this is goodbye,” I say. “You’ll be around to see all the chaos firsthand. Won’t you?”
This is the first time I’ve considered that she wouldn’t want to come home with us. We were coming to rescue her, after all. I never considered she didn’t need rescuing. The pit in my stomach is back, and it’s not just a chasm, it’s a black hole. I can’t lose her again. I just found her.
She rubs her heel against the pavement again and flicks the ash off her cigarette. “I have a few things to take care of here,” she says. “But then…”
“What things?” I demand.
“I just want to make sure everyone got off the island.”
“They did.”
“I just want to make sure,” she says. “Plus, I have a job here, a life. I have some things going on that I can’t just walk out on. Just give me a few months to sort things out. It won’t be forever, Heath. I promise.”
“Really?” I ask. “You’ll come home? You promise?”
She shrugs. “I mean… It’s home.”
I throw my arms around her, and she laughs into my shoulder, and then I’m laughing too, though my eyes are wet suddenly. “You better,” I say. “You’re too young to be the town witch living alone on the seashore.”
“We both know that’s not true,” she says. “You remember Mom’s stories from when we were little.”
I laugh through my tears. “I’m never letting you go again.”
“You gotta let go sometime,” she says. “I have to go back to work.”
“Nope, sorry.”
She laughs and wrestles free of me. “Come with me,” she says, climbing to her feet and holding out a hand to pull me up. “We can catch up more while I close. I have to mop and shit.”
“Sounds thrilling,” I say, shaking my head.
“I’ll let you sample every flavor,” she offers, like she has to convince me to go with her.
“I do like all the flavors.”
Eternity throws back her head and lets out that bawdy, throaty laugh I never thought I’d hear again, and my eyes blur with tears.
As I blink them away, I wonder if I died in that hospital bed and this is all a dream on my way to hell.
There’s no way a heathen like me is getting into heaven.
But if my little reward on the way to eternal damnation is getting to hear my sister laugh again, I’ll take it.