Just Last Night(59)

I feel like a cowgirl for a moment, like a tableau in a film.

Without knowing I’d started crying, I feel a tear drip from my chin.





24


I could’ve waited my standard, if arbitrarily imposed, week to visit Mr. Hart again, but I’ve got an expensive brand of Florentines in a cardboard box that I think he’ll love.

So four days later, I walk up the street to the Hart home, listening to a true crime podcast about an unsolved murder that changed one small mid-American town forever. This isn’t only about being the Good Samaritan, though I’m glad to do it. Seeing Mr. Hart makes me feel connected to Susie, it helps me fill this time that I suddenly have so much of, and so little use for.

I pause my podcast and ring the bell. My stomach does a revolution as moments pass, and the interior door is wrenched open by Mr. Hart. Junior. Oh shit. I should’ve anticipated Finlay might be here—his texts, the ones I’d left unreplied to, said: Next week. Here we are in next week, and unfortunately, here he is. The letters. My rash move. My stomach now feels like a cake’s being mixed inside it.

He has the hollow-eyed, stubble-shadowed, and slightly swollen look of the jet-lagged, and yet has the kind of bone structure where dishevelment only enhances him. The way a fresh haircut looks better when riffled by wind. The T-shirt and hooded zip-up top say “came straight from the plane.”

“That’s odd, I’ve just this minute been trying and failing to phone you,” Fin says, without a hello. His expression: sardonic j’accuse.

“Oh,” I say, taking my AirPods out like I’m removing clip-on earrings with a flourish in Dynasty, “I didn’t hear, I had these on, sorry.”

I feel guiltily grateful this is evidently true, even if absolutely nothing’s going to get better for me from here on in. I don’t have the letters, shit. I don’t HAVE them . . . I remember how angry he was I was simply holding them back.

I hear Justin saying: It’s not for us to play judge and jury. I played judge, jury, and executioner.

I hard swallow.

“Come in,” Fin says, standing back. “My dad’s not here.”

“Oh, I’ll not bother you then . . . ,” I say.

“We have things to discuss,” Fin says.

I expect he’s going to round on me about the letters and start wielding frightening New York City law firm names. Unless you want to hear from Carver, Cutthroat & Strank.

What do I say? Do I come clean? Do I spin him along, until a moment I’m not in front of him?

Instead Finlay heads off to the kitchen and comes back with a piece of paper. He holds it out to me, mouth a straight hard line. I take it, and read:

Ann, Sorry not to see you this week, but I’m on a jolly, as we used to say.

That nice friend of Susie’s with the black hair—name escapes me—suggested I visit my brother, Don, in the motherland, and I thought, why not! Reckon I’ll do the tourist spots first and see the old family pile, then call in on him. Here’s the cash and don’t worry about the ironing in the spare room, nothing that can’t wait. See you next week.

Iain

“Oh no . . . ,” I say, limply.

“You encouraged my dad to travel to another country? Can I ask why?” Fin says. He’s not out-of-control angry but he’s on a war footing, in his black Converse boots.

“I didn’t encourage him,” I say, uselessly, in the face of hard evidence. “He showed me a wedding photo of his brother and I asked if he’d seen him lately . . . and your dad said no, and I said, erm.” Finlay’s gaze lasers holes into me. “. . . I’m sure he’d like to see you.”

Spoken out loud, in the silence of the hallway, I can hear how foolish I sound.

“I asked you not to visit, not to confuse him further,” Fin says, glowering intimidatingly from under his mussed sweep of private-school, pretty-boy hair. (Even though he wasn’t privately educated. Is that what he really hates me for, knowing where he came from?)

“I didn’t think he’d take me literally,” I say, gabbling, feeling oily with heat under my coat. “It was a figure of speech, like, oh perhaps it would be nice to . . . Not, absolutely, yes, crack on, go to Scotland immediately.”

“My father has Alzheimer’s. He doesn’t have the same responses to social niceties.”

Neither do you, to be fair.

“Is it really bad that he’s in Edinburgh, if he gets there safely? You could call your Uncle Don and explain he needs care . . .”

“He and Uncle Don didn’t speak to each other,” Fin says.

“Oh . . . right. Maybe your dad will have forgotten why, and Don will sense he’s not himself . . .”

“And Uncle Don’s dead,” Fin says. “So I’m not putting much hope in a reconciliation.”

“What?! Shit . . .”

“Are you going to be there when my dad finds this out, for the second time? Or the first, as far as he’s concerned.”

Oh God.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and Fin shakes his head.

He’s not a person you want to be in the wrong with.

“How long ago did he die?” My voice is small, the house is quiet.

Fin folds his arms.

“About five years.”