Chapter 22 #2
With that, Nora—accustomed to audio-visual equipment from her work at the library—turned off the string lights and switched on the music.
Bob Dylan’s voice came crooning from the speakers.
It was Forever Young—a song I once caught my parents dancing to in the living room as a small child, tears in both of their eyes.
On the screen, a photo popped up. The crowd let out a collective breath, and my throat constricted.
The boy was around six, with a mess of brown hair and freckles.
His lopsided grin revealed a missing front tooth.
His arm was slung around a little toddler in a striped t-shirt, with the same grin, looking adoringly up at his big brother.
Seamus, looking up at Kevin.
A later photo, of Seamus and Kevin at around eight and four in a canoe with their dad; another with Kevin getting his knee bandaged by a pretty woman with long brown hair and big brown eyes.
The brothers wrestling; and later, grinning next to the same woman sitting up in bed, a platter of burnt toast and a droopy dandelion in a jar, looking as delighted as if the sad Mother’s Day breakfast was a gourmet meal at a high-end hotel.
Tears ran hot down my cheeks. I wasn’t the only one I saw as I looked quickly around. The woman closest to me was openly weeping. A man across the table had his fist to his mouth.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.
“Hey.”
Seamus.
But when I whirled around, it was Eli next to me, his eyes on the screen.
Disappointment washed through me.
But it didn’t last. I took in Eli’s own red-rimmed eyes, the tiny reflections of the images on the screen dancing across their surface. He glanced at me and smiled sheepishly.
“Hey,” I said, my whisper cracking.
Eli threw an arm around my shoulder, pulling me in against him. My aggravating, kind-hearted, heartbroken brother. He’d shown up for me more times than I could count lately.
I’d been furious at Seamus tonight, and Eli too, and neither of them deserved it.
I hooked an arm around Eli’s back, and we watched together, while on the screen, he appeared. A young Eli, maybe eight or nine, halfway up a tree while Kevin gave Seamus a boost at the bottom to join him.
The show kept going, dancing through the short years of a young boys’ life, until the song slowed, and I knew it was almost over.
In the final refrain of the song, I could tell the image up there was the last one.
It felt like an ending. The photo was of Seamus and Kevin down by the Quince River.
Kevin looked more like a man here, or at least on his way.
He wore a shirt of a very specific turquoise color that struck me as familiar.
Then my eyes went to Seamus. He was still a boy here, one right on the edge of that shift into maturity.
I remembered him from that age.
Tall. Knock-kneed. Quick to go pink with attention on him and even quicker to step into the background while Eli took up room with his killer grin and already booming voice.
In the photo, Kevin had one arm around Seamus, the other around a dog that looked strikingly like Lola. It was Lois, of course, the dog Seamus told me had died just after Kevin. The two dogs could have been interchangeable, with their floppy ears and silly grins, and even their names so alike.
As the photo faded away, it hit me.
Kevin’s shirt.
That familiar turquoise: I’d seen it the first day I turned up at Seamus’s house. That fabric had faded over the years, having spent years knotted on a cross and tucked against the slope of the hill by Seamus’s place.
For a moment, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I thought of my mom’s gravestone, the flowers I knew my brother Griffin replaced whenever he was in town, and had someone do for him when he wasn’t. I hadn’t been there in months.
Was Kevin in that cemetery? Did someone do that for him, too?
As the song ended and the screen faded, Eli dropped his arm. I know my brother didn’t want me to see him all messed up when he’d come over here to comfort me.
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, doing my best to wipe away my tears and streaked mascara.
When Nora turned the lights back up, I saw that Mia had appeared on my other side, red-eyed like the rest of us.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hi.” I gave her a wobbly smile. I was glad she was there.
Jamie was making his way back up to the stage while all around people sniffled, murmuring to each other.
Maybe Seamus had left. Maybe he couldn’t be here for that slideshow.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw him.
Seamus, striding across the roof, his face tipped down.
He was gorgeous. And I could practically feel the complexity of him; all the pain and heartbreak, the goodness and silence.
The crowd buzzed as he paused to say something to his father.
I looked awkwardly at Mia, not wanting to stare at the two of them as they embraced. I don’t know why.
“The dog in that last photo looked like Lola,” I said.
That was a stupid thing to say.
But something passed over Mia’s face. Angst? Guilt? She hesitated before nodding with a weak smile. “Yeah.”
Maybe she was just as moved by the slideshow as the rest of us, but I didn’t think that was it. There was more, and my stomach seized, needing to know.
“What is it?” At first she didn’t answer, and my heart felt squeezed to the point of shattering. “Mia, is Lola okay?”
“I meant to tell you,” Mia whispered as Jamie handed Seamus something, preparing to go back on stage. “Mike and I broke up.”
Mia swallowed.
“Without me there to help, he said he’d have to give her up.”
“What?”
My heart cracked then. I could almost hear it splintering, like glass. On stage, Jamie was at the podium, Seamus standing next to him.
Seamus was looking right at me.
“He told me he surrendered her to the shelter in Greenville,” Mia said, though I could barely hear her anymore.
“I’m sorry, Chelsea, I know how much you cared about her.”
Jamie began to speak, but I missed the beginning; my heart beat too loudly in my ears. I’d lost them both.
They were never yours to begin with.
“… and while this company will always be Reilly and Sons to me,” Jamie said, his words hitting me as if on a delay, “Seamus and I signed the paperwork this week for our official rechristening, as the Reilly Contracting Group, with Seamus as our new CEO.
Jamie looked over at Seamus like he was supposed to do something. He had something shiny in his hands. But his eyes were still on me. How could he see me back here? How did he know?
I took a step backward. This was Seamus’s moment. This was all about him and his family and I was making this all about me. I couldn’t. I couldn’t be here with my stupid pain; so insignificant next to theirs.
I took another step back, my whole body shaking as my back pressed up against the back of the bar. My eyes went to the exit, at the side of the roof. I could get there in thirty seconds, if no one saw me. I began to move, striding fast to the side of the bar.
“Chels!” Eli whispered.
My heel caught on a cord and I stumbled, nearly falling. “Careful!” Eli said, too loud. Heads turned—lots of them.
Somewhere, I heard a thud of something falling, then footsteps, but I was already running; stumbling, knocking against people in their chairs as I ran past.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, even though no one could hear me. Everyone was staring, talking behind hands, their eyes on me.
Look at that crazy girl with the scar, making this all about her.
It was only when I reached the door that I realized Seamus was standing in front of it. He’d cut over here, knowing what I was doing.
I came to a stop, chest heaving. Vaguely, I heard the crowd murmuring behind me.
Jamie said something on stage that drew a scattering laugh, but mostly they were murmuring, staring at me.
“Let me go, Seamus,” I said.
Nora or someone else turned on the music.
Seamus looked over at the people staring at us, his face steely. “Please, give us a minute.”
“I don’t need a minute,” I said.
Seamus tipped his face back down to me. “Chelsea, you don’t need to leave.” Rolling gravel.
“No, that’s what you’re doing.” God, I hated myself now. Hated how childish I was being. This was horrific, what I was doing.
“Chelsea, please. I want you to stay.”
“I can’t,” I whispered, my heart in pieces now. “I can’t stay, Seamus.” I’m a mess. I’m not what you need. You saw that and you selflessly cut it off before I could make it go sideways myself. “Goddammit, please move out of the fucking way!”
I didn’t say any of those words in between, but I knew he could see them on my face. In my wild eyes and hair, in my knocking knees.
Seamus looked down. “I fucked it up.”
That rolling gravel felt like rolling rocks now, dancing under the surface of the Quince.
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “Not now, and not back then.” I thought of my mom, stroking my hair, trying to calm me after that failed art show.
I never told her what happened, but she found me curled up in my room, refusing to come out, refusing to speak.
Hiding might feel safe, Peanut, but we’re just putting off the feelings for later.
Sometimes the fastest way to heal is straight through the pain.
Those words hit me now, all too clearly. Tears ran down my face.
I looked down at Seamus’s hands, at the thing he’d been holding. Keys. The keys to the company his father had given him. A symbolic gesture. I thought about how Seamus never locked anything, not his house, not his car. Not even his heart, for me.
But these keys didn’t mean locking. They meant a new beginning.
For him.
I closed his hand over them, remembering the first time he’d taken my hands, in his office. When he’d blown on my wounds, making them better with just a breath.
“You’re going to do great,” I said, gently guiding him to the side.
Then I let him go and ran past him into the glowing stairwell.