Chapter Nine ~ Fiona #2
“Murph taught me to play about five years ago,” Nathan says.
He stares straight ahead at the framed photos on top of the piano.
He can look anywhere he wants if he’s actually willing to have a conversation with me.
“He came over to my place one day and heard me playing guitar. He suggested we play together, and I agreed, even though playing had always been something just for me.” He flicks a glance my way, and I’m certain we’re both thinking the same thing: Nathan would always play for me when I asked him.
“He said his Irish blood craved music in a communal way,” he continues. “After the first few times we played together, he said what a shame it was that no one else ever used this piano. You know that tone he had when he was fishing?”
He doesn’t look at me, but I give a jerky nod anyway.
Dad was charming and self-assured, and he had a way of convincing people to do things and making them think it was their idea.
Not in a conniving or manipulative way, but because he thought it was what they needed.
He wanted to help people grow and be their best selves.
“In what I later considered a moment of insanity, I asked if he’d teach me to play,” Nathan says.
“I hated it at first, and I was terrible, but we kept at it, even when I wanted to quit. Murph assured me I could stop at any time, but he knew I was stubborn enough to stick with it.” He gives a low laugh that loosens something inside me.
Whatever it is makes me want to crumple to the floor and sob.
“So we kept at it, and I eventually got the hang of it. Even started to enjoy it. Murph told me…”
“Told you what?” I whisper when he doesn’t continue.
Nathan’s throat works for several seconds before he clears it loudly. “He told me I was born to make beautiful things. Music, my woodworking, the things I build for others. His pride in me made it all worth it.”
His words suck the air straight out of my lungs.
Despite my best efforts to keep my emotions under wraps, I let out a pathetic little whimper followed by a sniffle as my eyes flood with tears.
Nathan still isn’t looking at me, although his jaw is clenched so tight I’m surprised his teeth don’t crack.
I stumble backward, intending to leave the room.
I don’t want Mum to see me fall apart. I’ve done my best to be strong for her these last few weeks, but I’m only human.
Sometimes the emotions come in such powerful waves, I can’t contain them, no matter how hard I try.
Whenever I see Mum’s face twisted in agony, or hear her soul-wracking sobs, it’s nearly impossible to keep the tears at bay.
She’s told me I don’t need to be strong for her, that I’m in pain too and I’m allowed to express that any way I need to, but if I can shelter her from my own pain even a bit, I will.
“When are you leaving?” Nathan’s voice is so quiet, it takes me a moment to realize he’s speaking to me, and another few seconds for his question to register.
“What do you mean?”
“When are you flying back to London or wherever?” he asks.
“I don’t have a flight booked. I plan to stay for as long as Mum needs me.”
He bobs his head slowly, his gaze still trained straight ahead. “She’d be fine, you know. She’d have all of us. We’d make sure she was okay and keep taking care of her.”
If it were anyone else, I might think this was a selfless gesture. An ‘out’ of sorts for me to feel okay about returning to my regular life. The fact Nathan is the one saying it gives it a completely different connotation. “You’re determined to make me some sort of villain, aren’t you?”
His head jerks in my direction. “What are you talking about?”
“You want me gone so badly, you’d be okay with Mum being hurt?”
“I’d never want Mae to be hurt,” he snaps.
His fists clench on his thighs, and he looks away again, taking a slow, deep breath in before pushing it out on a noisy exhale.
“I’m not trying to make you into a villain, and I’m not trying to be one either, Fiona.
I know how much you love Mae and that you want to support her.
But I also know that after three weeks in Honeywell, your feet must be getting itchy. ”
Itchy feet. That’s what my dad always called it when he got the desire to travel. It’s as if Nathan can see what I was thinking earlier, and he plucked the thoughts from my head to use against me.
Before I can respond, he says, “We all know you being here is temporary. Nobody expects you to stay. Like I said, I’m not trying to be some sort of bad guy here, I was just curious. Don’t forget I know you.”
“You don’t,” I blurt. “You don’t know me, Nathan. You knew me. There was a time when you knew me better than anyone else on earth, but not anymore.”
He’s back to nodding slowly, his mouth twisted to one side like he’s deep in thought.
“You’re right. I don’t know you anymore.
” He stands from the piano bench, and I expect him to walk away.
He’d say I’m an expert at that, but he’s good at it too, especially after dropping emotional bombs on my lap.
Instead, he moves closer to me, stopping a few feet away.
“Out of curiosity, do you still eat your pizza crust first?”
I stare at him, bewildered. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’ll take that as a yes. I bet the Italians love that.” He chuckles to himself. The sound is so foreign, it’s almost as surprising as his random question about pizza crust, of all things.
“What’s your favourite colour?” he asks.
I press my lips together. He thinks he’s so damn smart. This is a trick question, and we both know it. I’m tempted to pick a colour at random just to prove him wrong, but there’s clearly no point.
“All the colours,” we say at the same time.
I wouldn’t exactly call the lifting of Nathan’s lips a smirk, but he does look way too pleased with himself.
When we were little, I could never choose a favourite colour.
I liked nearly every colour and didn’t understand why I had to limit myself to just one.
Until I hit my teens, my bedroom looked like an explosion of one of those mega boxes of crayons that feature every shade you can imagine, along with ones you didn’t even know existed.
“I remember you telling me once that you didn’t want to pick a favourite because you didn’t want the other colours to feel left out.”
A surprised laugh spills from my lips. I can’t believe he remembers that.
“Do you still watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” every year, no matter where you are in the world? Still do the Snoopy dance too? Do you still cry at every single sappy commercial, and at the end of every movie, whether it’s happy or sad? Do you still—”
“Okay!” I say, cutting him off. I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. To bolt out of here or to concede that he’s right about every. Single. Fucking. Thing. “You win in this weird little game you’re playing, okay? I guess some things never change.”
He tilts his head, eyes narrowing as he scrutinizes my face.
“You have changed. You’re different and yet.
..deep down, you’re still the same person.
You’re still the girl I played Poohsticks with on the bridge out back, and drank stolen strawberry wine with in the treehouse.
You’re still the girl I held in my arms a million times and lost my virginity to. ”
Heat floods my cheeks as memories swarm like buzzing insects. That’s the last thing I expected Nathan to say. This whole conversation isn’t going how I expected.
“You’re the same in so many ways, but I suspect you’re different in just as many,” he says.
“Where are you going with this?” I ask.
He ducks his head and runs a hand through his hair.
It’s longer than it’s been in years, curling around his nape and ears in a way that somehow softens the sharp angles of his face.
“I don’t even know,” he says with a sigh.
“I guess I was trying to prove a point, but I don’t know what it is anymore.
I think there’s a part of me that wants to know the person you’ve become, but ultimately, you’re going to leave, whether it’s tomorrow, or a week from now, or sometime in the not-so-distant future. ”
“And that means we can’t get to know each other now?” I ask. “And continue to get to know each other going forward, even after I leave? There’s no reason we can’t stay in touch. You were the one with the all-or-nothing mentality. You were the one who didn’t want to stay friends.”
I hate the accusatory tone in my voice, but this whole conversation has me feeling like I’ve been turned inside out and all my nerve endings have been exposed.
Nathan opens his mouth to speak, but Mum’s voice comes from around the corner, calling, “Coffee’s ready, kidlets,” before she appears, struggling under the weight of a large cardboard box.
Nathan dashes across the room to take it, quietly admonishing her for not calling him to carry it.
He sets the box on the piano bench, and a thin cloud of dust flies up, tickling my nose.
“Nathan helped me bring up some old boxes from the basement before I asked him to play for me,” Mum says breathlessly, dusting her hands off on her pajama pants. Dad’s pajama pants. “This is for you, Fi.”
I lift the lid to find dozens of Dad’s old notebooks. Most of them are travel journals, but I recognize some of them as ones he wrote story ideas in or used for interviews and research.
“Oh my god,” I whisper. I feel like I’ve just opened a treasure chest and found something worth more than all the gold and jewels in the world.
“He’d want you to have those,” Mum says. The waver in her voice makes that familiar lump form in my throat. There are times lately when it gets so big, I don’t know how I can still breathe.
“Thank you, Mum.” I move around the piano bench to embrace her, burying my face in her neck, and closing my eyes as I inhale her familiar scent mixed with Dad’s Irish Spring soap.
The meltdown I felt coming on earlier stirs inside me, and I do my best to tamp it down, partly because I don’t want to set Mum off, and partly because of Nathan’s presence.
I release her and step back, avoiding her gaze.
“I’m going to go shower before I have my coffee. ”
“I’ll take the box up to your room if you want,” Nathan says.
For some reason, the words feel like an olive branch. After a moment’s hesitation, I nod. “Okay. Thanks.” I have a second to notice Mum’s small, pleased smile before I flee from the room.