Chapter 3 – Finn – To BeNot to Be #2
Outside, with no candle lights to warm us, it’s chilly. Beautiful, too. The stars are like needles pricking through velvet. I can never see them in the city. There’s nothing, either, like the lake as it holds the moon like a quiet secret.
Dad leans against the rail and looks at me the way he always has. In the face, not through me like he’s trying to study me. “I am glad you’re here,” he says again, softer.
“I know.” I toe at a groove in the old wood. “I’m not here to start a war this time.”
“You never were,” he says. “You just carried one.”
I breathe out through my nose and watch the white of it in the cold like I used to as a kid, counting ghosts. “How’s the board nonsense?” I ask, because he loves to be asked, and I can give him this, at least.
“Annoying, which means I’m alive.” He smiles, eyes crinkling. “They’ll grumble and then pass the budget. They always do if you explain it like they’re adults.”
“You’re good at that,” I say. It’s the only thing I envy him, the way people become more themselves around him, not less.
He pats the rail. “You could be, too.”
“Different job description.”
I let the quiet thicken. A light shifts in a window upstairs and Eleanor’s silhouette cuts past.
He follows my glance. “She’s happy you came, even if she can’t say it in a way you like.”
“I’m not here for her,” I say, then wince because it sounds harsher than I mean. “I’m here for the anniversary,” I correct, but he hears what I don’t say: I’m here for you.
He nods, like that’s enough. “That’s enough. Goodnight, son.”
“Goodnight, Dad.” The words sit strangely but I hang onto it anyway.
Back inside, the house has that after-dinner hush with plates stacked in the kitchen, the last clink of a faucet, and the whisper of a towel. Eleanor passes me in the hall with a smug look that could polish silver.
“No phones at the table tomorrow,” she says, like there was a phone at the table tonight.
“Noted.” I don’t tell her Eric could run a small country from my inbox. I built the system so I could be anywhere but here.
At the base of the stairs, I pause because halfway up, Ariane appears at the landing, fingers light on the banister.
The overhead chandelier scatters light across her collarbones like broken coins.
“Goodnight, Finn,” she says, her voice soft and almost sleepy.
“Night,” I answer immediately. And then, because I’m an idiot who opens doors he should leave shut, “How’s the mythology unit really going?”
Her mouth curves, the not-smile again. “They like the messy gods best. The ones who make mistakes and don’t apologize.”
“Sounds unhealthy,” I say.
“Sounds honest.” Her eyes hold mine longer this time. Then, because we can’t stand here looking at each other all night, she adds, “Sweet dreams, Finnick.”
She says my name, and it pulls at my chest. Finnick.
How long has it been since anyone called me that?
It lands lower than it should. I step aside so she can pass, and I take in her perfume, which smells crisp and slightly zesty.
Nothing like Eleanor’s roses. It snags at me, and I fucking hate that it does.
My feet take me to my old room, which suddenly looks smaller than it used to. I extend my hand to open the door and notice now that the paint has chipped into little moons around the knob.
A cracked lacrosse stick leans in the corner like it’s sleeping on watch.
I instinctively walk towards the self and look at the photo that’s been there for decades now.
Twelve-year-old me, sunburned and grinning, my mother’s arm hooked through mine.
Her hair is loose, wind-snatched and she looks like she believed in fairies.
The picture hits me the way it always does when I look at it, like a blade you forgot you were still carrying.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” I whisper to myself.
I strip my shirt off, leave my slacks on because the idea of fully settling in here makes my skin itch.
My phone vibrates on the nightstand. Eric’s name glows blue.
I don’t open it because, once I do, I won’t be able to put my work away.
He can manage like he always does. If the world ends, the email subject line will say so.
Instead, I walk toward the window and stand there.
The dock is a pale bone in the dark; the lake holds the moon like it’s considering whether to give it back. Somewhere out there, the boards remember the sound of bare feet. Stupid thought. I drink to wipe it out by pouring a glass of scotch that I keep stashed in my room.
“Three days,” I murmur to the glass. “Just get through the fucking three days.”
The scotch goes down slow, lighting a path that doesn’t lead anywhere.
The house gently settles around me, its bones creaking, pipes sighing, and the last door shutting somewhere like a gentle reprimand.
I lie back on my bed and stare at a ceiling that has nothing to say and count the ways this was supposed to be easy.
Fly in. Shake hands. Toast the anniversary.
Pretend I’m still the kind of man who can sit through a family dinner without looking for the exits.
I didn’t come here for Ariane.
She’s my step-sister. Little sister. Whether the blood matches or not.
That line’s been drawn since the wedding, and I know better than anyone what happens when you cross lines you can’t uncross.
I’ve had women… too many to count. They come and go, and they don’t matter.
But her? She’s not supposed to be in that category. She can’t be.
Yet, still, she’s a problem my head keeps trying to solve, even as I tell it to find a different target. She’s in the place you look when you say you’re not looking.
“You can keep your distance, Finn,” I tell the dark, and my own name sounds like a warning I’ve heard before. “Three days. You can make it three days.”