16. Cillian #2
“I’m not done.” Her jaw is tight and her eyes don’t leave my face.
“You know what she said to me last night? She said she gave you everything. She said she let you in. Do you know how hard that is for her? She let you in completely and you lied to her.” She shakes her head in disbelief.
“Why, Cillian? Why couldn’t you have just told her the truth?
This…this woman was before Valentina. Do you think she would have cared?
Or are you that much of a control freak? ”
There’s a painful tightening in my chest, and I fight to keep from rubbing it, as if that will help the pain.
“And I want you to know,” Emma continues, and now I hear it, underlying pain that’s not about Valentina; it’s from her, “that this isn’t just about Valentina.
You know that. You haven’t talked to me in over a year, Cillian.
Ever since I married Leo. You showed up at our wedding and gave Valentina an ultimatum.
I will never forgive you for that.” Her voice is steady and she doesn’t look away from me.
“You have always been my favorite cousin—you and Bridget. But now? Now I don’t even know you. ”
I open my mouth. I close it and feel like the biggest asshole.
There is nothing in the world I can say to that, no argument that has any weight against it, because I have done exactly this to people who deserved better.
The worst part is that I knew.
Both times I knew what it was going to cost and I did it anyway because the alternative was harder and I was a coward.
“Emma,” I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I intended. I clear my throat. “The wedding—I have never—I’ve always been sorry for that. I need you to know that.”
“I know you’re sorry.” Her voice is softer now, as if she’s said the hard thing and now she’s drained too.
“You’re always sorry after. That’s not actually the part that matters.
” She looks at me for a long moment, and for just a second—beneath a year of complicated feelings about me—I see my cousin.
The person I have known since she was small enough to fit in a blanket.
“The paternity test,” she says gently. “Give her until then. Give her actual space, Cillian, not just until you feel ready to try again. She gets to decide what she does with this, not you.” She searches my face for something and seems to find enough of it to continue. “You hear me?”
“Yeah,” I say numbly. “I hear you.”
A baby cries and Emma glances back toward the interior of the apartment. She returns her gaze to me, her lips pursed. “Leave, Cillian,” she orders.
The door closes.
I stand in the hallway, trying to wrap my brain around what just happened. But all that keeps going through my mind is: she’s right. She’s been right about me for a long time.
I just keep making her prove it.
My phone rings at three and it’s Claire. I stare at her name on the screen for four rings, unsure if I should answer.
But I do.
“Finn has some questions,” she says abruptly. “About you. About—everything. I think it would really help him to see you in person. He’s been asking since yesterday.”
I’m sitting on a bench in a park off Columbus because walking turned into sitting at some point and the sitting turned into staring at pigeons.
I have not eaten anything since the eggs I didn’t touch this morning.
“Where?” I ask.
She names a park in Queens. Forty-five minutes, she says. If I can.
I can’t. I’m a disaster. I want to say no, but there is a kid involved and whatever else is happening, there is a real eight-year-old kid in it who didn’t choose any of this.
So I get a cab.
Finn is on the swings when I get there, pumping his legs with serious determination, staring up at the sky. I glance around at the park. It’s seen better days.
The basketball court has a cracked surface, there’s a climbing frame with one broken rung someone has wrapped in yellow tape, benches that have been repainted once too many times and have that thick-coated look.
Claire is on the nearest bench with her jacket zipped up against the breeze, her hands in her pockets, watching Finn. She waves when she sees me crossing the grass.
“Thank you for coming,” she says.
“Sure,” I respond simply because I don’t know what else to say and I’m still so pissed at her for showing up unannounced.
We sit there for a moment watching Finn on the swings. He’s spotted me. I can tell by the way the rhythm of his legs changes, as if he’s suddenly unsure of himself, but he doesn’t come over yet. I get it.
“How is he doing?” I ask, gesturing to the boy. “With all of this.”
“He’s resilient,” Claire says. Then she pauses and glances at me.
“He’s excited, honestly. Nervous but excited.
” Something in her voice shifts and goes softer.
“He talked about you the whole way back to the hotel last night. What do you think he does for work? Do you think he likes football? Do you think he’ll want to meet me properly? ”
Something about that lands strangely, but I’m too out of it to really examine it.
Finn drags his feet in the dirt eventually and climbs off the swing. He walks over cautiously, eyeing the space between his mother and me. Claire pats the seat by her and he sits down, his eyes never leaving mine.
It’s funny.
We are two people who have been told we might be connected in the most fundamental way and don’t yet know what to do with that.
Whatever is happening here, this kid is real. His nerves are real.
“Hi,” I say, a bit awkwardly, unsure if I should wave or not. I’ve never been good at talking to kids. What do I even say to him?
“Hi,” he repeats, then immediately, “Do you support anyone? In football, I mean. Like a club.”
And that’s the start of the conversation. For the next twenty minutes all we talk about is football. Not American football, mind you.
He tells me about his position—midfielder, he tells me—and a goal he scored last month.
He describes it in specific, passionate detail, the kind of detail that only exists when something actually matters to you.
The way the goalkeeper went left when the ball went right. The sound it made going in.
His coach’s face afterward.
I listen to all of it and I ask questions when appropriate. Finn answers them and his face goes more animated with every exchange and it is—it’s nice. Whatever complexity surrounds it, sitting on a park bench in Queens listening to an eight-year-old talk about football is simply nice.
Then his face settles back into a wary look. “What do you do for work?”
“Business,” I say smoothly, the same answer I always give.