Chapter 43
43
In the end it was Jess who broke the trance and picking up the rag she rubbed so hard at the bird poop on his shoulder she was in danger of rubbing a hole in his sweater.
‘Put that down, Jess.’
She did so unsure where to put herself now her hands weren’t busy. Fortunately Owen knew exactly what to do as he pulled her toward him and lowered his mouth to hers.
For someone as gruff as he was, his lips were incredibly soft, and his caresses were so gentle – too gentle. Jess pushed her body up against his, trying to convey the urgency she felt for them to be closer. Then she pulled away, took him by the hand and led him through to the bedroom.
Afterwards, she lay exhausted with her head on his shoulders. Her hand rested lightly on his chest, and she could feel the sweat their lovemaking had left behind cooling beneath her palm. She’d read somewhere once that happiness was in those perfect moments captured briefly, fleetingly throughout life. This was happiness, she decided, as Owen stroked her hair rhythmically.
As the anaemic rays of autumnal sunlight faded from the room, he did what she wished he’d done from the start – he began to talk, and this time, he let the complicated layers that manifested themselves in that hard shell he’d let grow around him peel away.
‘I know I’ve behaved like a moody shite, but I wasn’t sure I could open myself up to feeling anything romantic for anyone again.’
Jess lay listening as he confided his fears of being unable to put the past to rest and of wearing his sister’s untimely death like an oversized suit for the rest of his days.
‘What made you come today then? What’s changed?’ she asked, leaning up on her elbow and tracing a line down his cheek. He needed to shave, but she liked the roughness of the prickles beneath her fingertips.
‘I missed you, and I knew I’d have to step up to the mark or I’d lose my chance with you for good. That’s mostly why I came, but I also realised that at some point since I met you, I have moved on. Maybe it was all the talking about what happened and seeing it typed out so I could read it objectively for the first time. You know, take a step back and put it in the past, or maybe it was simply time that did it? It’s supposed to be a great healer, isn’t it?’
Jess nodded. She didn’t have first-hand experience with the grieving process, but as a writer, she was familiar with that and all the other wise old adages.
‘Whatever it was, I feel now that she’s at peace up there.’ He raised his gaze to the ceiling, and Jess followed suit, unsure what she expected to see other than the smattering of fly poo that adorned it.
‘I feel like I’ve done right by her, and I know she wouldn’t have wanted me making a pig’s ear of the rest of my life because of what happened to her.’ He smiled at the little joke meant to lighten the weight behind his words, and Jess punched him playfully on the arm.
‘That’s the second truly terrible pig joke I’ve heard you drop now.’
‘Aye, sorry; it goes with the territory, and I couldn’t resist.’ He cuddled her closer to him, breathing in the scent of her hair for a moment. ‘You know, reaching that thirty-year marker and rereading our family’s little bit of history yesterday – well, it was like a chapter in my life that’s coloured things for far too long finally closed. Talking to me da yesterday, I realised it’s different for him. He’s given up and accepted that he’ll always live with it. Amy was his girl, and he won’t get over Mam’s passing either, but I have to move on. Neither Mam nor Amy would have wanted me to bury myself in the past.’ He paused to wipe away a tear that had escaped from the corner of Jess’s eye.
‘Don’t cry. It’s a good thing you’ve done, coming into my life the way you did. I’ll always remember them both, of course I will, but for the good stuff from now on. Not the one bad thing that came to pass and shaped everything else that came after it. That would be nothing but an insult to the people they were. I can see that now.’
He sighed – and if he’d been wearing them, it would have come from the bottom of his boots – before exhaling slowly. ‘You know, I hope that reading how Amy was killed might just make someone – whoever – think before they go down a road they’ve no business going down.’
Jess understood what he meant – if one person took on board that no good came from fighting a fight no one could really win, then it had been worth sharing his family’s pain. It was her sentiment, too.
She lay there listening to him breathing, thinking over what he’d just told her. He’d said everything she thought she needed to hear him say, but there was still something bothering her – the ex-wife. ‘What about Sarah? Is she still part of that oversized suit you’ve been wearing all these years?’
Owen turned to look at her in surprise. ‘Did you think that?’
‘I don’t know; you haven’t exactly been an open book.’
‘Neither have you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You were seeing someone, weren’t you?’
So he had registered her call from Nick the day she’d done her mercy dash to see Wilbur. ‘Is that why you turned cold on me after we’d kissed at the barn?’
He looked a little shamefaced at that. ‘Aye, I suppose. I was jealous, and like I said, I didn’t want to put myself in a position where I might be exposed, but then I decided you were worth getting burned by.’
‘I’m not going to hurt you, Owen, not ever.’ She kissed the tip of his nose. ‘Believe me, he wasn’t worth being jealous of, and it was over before anything really got started. It’s been you all along.’ She’d fill him in one day on what had happened with Nick, but not now.
‘I’m glad.’ He kissed her and then pulled away to look at her, his expression serious. ‘The way I’ve been was never anything to do with Sarah. When that was finished, it was over, and I walked away from her and our marriage, that life, without a backward glance, and so did she.’ Owen shook his head. ‘We were just a bad fit, Sarah and I. I think we both knew we’d made a mistake the moment we said “I do”, but it was too late then. The problem all along has been that from the moment I picked you up at the bus stop and watched you being harangued by Mad Bridie, I knew you were going to be a very good fit.’
Jess had never known that kind of certainty – the instinct that you’ve met the right person – before either. It was overwhelming, but as she lay in the darkened room enjoying the contentedness it had brought with it, a thought sprang to mind unbidden.
Bugger! She’d forgotten about the oversized-suit problem of her own that was heading her way – her mother. It was only two days until she set foot on Irish soil.