Chapter 22
I stared blankly at Shea’s headstone. I’d managed to keep myself distracted lately, doing a few days at Dad’s office to keep up my cash flow, joining mam for her sea swims and relaxing beach days with Ella and Niamh, just shooting the shit.
And obsessively checking in on Sinéad’s plans.
It seemed Niamh had been dead serious about joining her in packing it all in, and it made the temptation burn even stronger in my chest. Sinéad was holding off on booking her ticket until I decided, telling Niamh she was gathering funds instead of revealing I might feature in their plans too.
I heaved a deep breath as the smell of freshly cut grass tickled my nose.
“I did it Shea. I finally graduated, and I wish more than anything you had been sitting in that row with the rest of them. Sorcha is glowing, she’s been in much better form since she stopped puking every five minutes.
Mam talks about you non-stop and how this baby is your gift to us all.
Dad still cries a lot, but he says it’s happy tears some of the time because he’s thinking of his favourite memories of you.
Fionn is seeing a counsellor and has started doing ice baths; Mam told him he’s a clown and if he’d just get up early enough to swim with her it’d do the same trick.
And I’m… I’m still mad at you… But only because I miss you so much.
And I really need you right now. Everything is a mess, and I don’t know what to do.
You’re the one that would have given me advice and helped me figure all of this out. And now I’m all alone.”
I let the tears streak freely down my face, feeling that unbearable weight in my chest drag me down as it had so many times before in the past few months.
The grief of losing Shea was incomprehensible, and yet it was like something I was experiencing at a surface level.
As though it hadn’t penetrated my haze of panic and the responsibility I felt for everyone around me.
As if in the kaleidoscope of feelings, mine didn’t even register on the priority scale.
And that made me feel so tired. Tired and sad.
I loved my family and friends with everything I was, but it was exhausting to feel like you were everyone else’s safety net.
The shoulder everyone could cry on and the safe harbour where they could all come ashore - while never having a facet of that for yourself.
Shea had been that for me; he would always be there to pick up the heavy load and carry me when I couldn’t be strong for myself.
Ella, Niamh, Sara – over the past year it had felt like I gathered everyone else’s problems like collectable Pokémon cards but had no one to trade with.
No one I could unburden myself to. They would all be there if I asked them to, but that was the point – how could I ask that of them when they were all suffering through their own stuff?
And were coming to me to help them through it?
The thought of confiding in Connor or Ronan was laughable.
They both believed they were in love with me, but they loved a version of me they thought they knew.
They didn’t understand that this ‘strength’ they all perceived wasn’t strength at all, it was survival.
I didn’t have a choice in the matter. God didn’t ask me what I thought of his plans when he took away the person that made me feel safe.
It left everyone around me admiring something that didn’t exist - how could I be strong when it felt like my soul was slowly dying, slowly fading?
The burden of pain and responsibility was crushing me underneath it and the only thing that made me feel like I could breathe was the idea of running away, away from here and everyone I loved.
Somewhere no one knew Róisín Tierney. It made me imagine what it would feel like to be free.
********
The next morning, I sat on the beach with Fionn as we watched a spectacular sunrise, Mam’s strong arms cutting through the surf as she got her morning sea swim in.
“Penny for your thoughts, Rosie?” Fionn nudged me out of my musings, and I smiled back at him.
“Just contemplating what the fuck to do with my life, the usual.” He laughed. “What about you and Ella?”
They’d been going strong since they’d come clean about their relationship, and I couldn’t deny how cute they were as a couple.
While it had been a major shock to find out they were together, the more I watched them over the last few weeks, they seemed made for each other.
And they were happy - what else mattered other than that?
“She’s just flat out applying for entry roles at the minute. And I need to get the head down and finish the last year of the apprenticeship, world’s our oyster after that I suppose,” he shrugged.
I wished I had more of that ‘go with the flow’ mentality the two of them had seemed to adopt, instead of the see-sawing inside my brain.
Another year studying for a masters? The unpaid internship Professor Walsh arranged?
Blow it all up and run away with Sinéad?
I knew which one I wanted, I just didn’t know if it was the right thing to do.
For me or for everyone else. And on top of that, two incredible men seemed to be waiting in the wings for me to make the decision I didn’t want to make.
To let someone fully into my heart and hand them the power to destroy it…
or put it back together depending on which way I looked at it.
“You seem to be stopping by the grave more,” Fionn said as he stared out at Mam’s form cutting through the waves. I just shrugged in response, and he turned to face me.
“We’re all going to be okay you know Rosie. I know it didn’t seem like it for a while and it still….. well, it still hurts like a motherfucker to try and live with him gone. But we’re coping. I know you’ve been worried we wouldn’t, but we’re all coping”.
I saw the truth and concern shining from his eyes and appreciated so deeply how attuned Fionn seemed to now be to the vicious vultures circling in my mind.
“I was just worried about ye all, to be honest you were the one I ended up worrying about the least. You’ve seriously shocked me with how healthily you’ve been dealing with everything Fionn. You should be really proud of the way you’ve faced your emotions. Not a lot of men can do that”.
He smiled his Hollywood smile at that and scoffed.
“Pain is pain I suppose, burying it doesn’t make it hurt any less. If anything, it probably makes it ache deeper and longer. Mam and Dad have started speaking to a grief counsellor too you know?”
I blinked in surprise at that, no one had told me but given they had lost their child I was relieved.
Sorcha’s pregnancy may have shone a light on our family as we cowered in the deepest pits of hell with the loss we faced, but it couldn’t be our answer to living without Shea.
His baby needed to be something we could adore despite the agony we felt without him, not because of it.
I turned back to watch Mam as she made her way out of the freezing cold water, a smile beaming on her face as she came towards us. My phone buzzed and I checked my message.
Sinéad - Sorry Róis, I couldn’t wait anymore. I leave in two weeks!
My heart stalled at the image of the itinerary she sent through; a one-way ticket to Hanoi in Vietnam. Frantic, I pushed to my feet just as Mam joined us.
“I have to go,” I blurted out, as Mam and Fionn looked at me in confusion.
“What do you mean? Give me a chance to get a coffee and warm up first, love.”
“No sorry, it’s an emergency,” I said in a rush as I power-walked back to my car.
“Rosie, you drove us here!” Fionn shouted, pushing to his feet.
But I spotted Tosspot and his dog Patsy meandering towards the carpark and shouted back, “Tosspot will give you a spin,” before I hopped into my car to their furious glares.
Mam was likely going to murder me for that; Patsy wouldn’t be put into the back of that Berlingo, even for Mam.
********
I tried not to overthink it as I broke every speed limit known to man on the country roads into the city, pushing poor Finnula past her limits.
But it was hard not to spin everything around in my mind.
The rising tsunami of emotions and feeling trapped, the burning need to escape, Fionn telling me only today that they were okay - Sinéad’s message felt like divine intervention.
The only niggling feeling that kept pulling on my gut was Ronan and Connor.
Two perfectly imperfect men, who laid their hearts bare for me.
I was in love with them both. I couldn’t bury my head in the sand about that fact anymore, but that didn’t mean I trusted them to love me.
That I would ever feel like I could let them in.
There was a constant feeling that they wanted something from me.
Maybe it was their burning desire to break down my walls, but it seemed to me like once they were in, they’d be donning the snicker pants and getting to work on fixing me.
Like they loved my sharp edges because they just wanted to get to the poor damaged centre of me and glue me back together piece by piece.
Sculpted to the form they thought I should be.
I knew this gut feeling could be driven by my own insecurities, but even their behaviours while pursuing me gave me little flags of what they wanted out of me.
Connor felt like he wanted to dominate me, consume me, fuse himself to my soul so I couldn’t function without him.
Ronan felt like he offered so much independence and trust that he’d happily let me walk away without a scrap of fight for me.
Like it would just be grim acceptance and maybe just on to the next, respecting the decision of poor damaged Róisín who couldn’t let a man love her right.