Just Last Night(89)

“We’d both head back and tell Susie to look the other bloody way though, right?” I say, bluntly, the pain of this thought making me graceless.

“Yes,” Finlay says, throwing me a glance. “We both would.”

After another brief silence he says: “Thank you.”

“What for?”

“Assuming I didn’t want my sister to die.”

“That’s . . . obvious, isn’t it?”

“The relative of mine we met, prior to my father, would beg to differ,” Fin says, as he adjusts his grip on the steering wheel, and narrows his eyes at the road. He made such a good model in that picture because of his ability to turn into a hardened blank. You never know what he’s thinking.

“She accused you of neglect but she wouldn’t think you’d want Susie to . . . ?” It’s such a grotesque idea, I can’t finish the sentence.

“Yes, the bar’s really that low,” Fin says, voice thick. “I thought this was the basis of our conversation afterward. The Spanish flu still killed millions of people.” He takes his sight line off the road to give a wry smirk as he says this.

I begin to heat at my words in emotion being repeated back to me, out of context.

“That was your analogy, I didn’t mean you were literally capable of murder! I’ve never thought for a moment you wished harm to Susie,” I say, glad this at least is true, if not the “Finlay Hart’s a killer” insinuations, made in coffee shops, only half in jest, and only a few short weeks ago. I was privately likening him to an assassin on the drive up here. “That’s mad.”

Fin glances and smiles, sadly. “As I say, sorry to expose you to my family,” he says, diplomatically drawing a line, as he changes lanes.

I feel a twinge of complicated affection, and a distinct sensation of regret.

“Can I ask something, personal?” I say quietly. “Tell me none of my business, usual rules apply.”

“Yes,” Fin says, eyes still on the road.

“Why did your mum not tell you she was dying?”

There’s a dreadful pause where I worry this is a terrible thing to have asked.

“. . . Because I was the last person she wanted to see with the time she had left, I guess,” Fin says. “Quite literally, as I was only informed when she’d been moved to the hospice. I was so angry and hurt, I waited a week before I flew over. And then she’d gone. My aunt was right. What Susie said was true. I only came over for the funeral.”

I risk a quick glance at him and, for a split second, his eyes shimmer with what I think could be tears, but in one blink, they’re gone.

“Sorry,” I say quietly, and insufficiently. I want to ask But why didn’t she care about you? but that is too great a question to level, if an explanation’s not being offered.

I now know why there was such an emptiness to Mr. Hart turning up—he was the point of our mission, yet he ended up feeling like an interruption. I was unraveling something, and the process came to an abrupt halt. I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what was behind the screens with Finlay.

Count yourself lucky then.

For the first time, I’m irritated by the interjection of imaginary Susie. I want to challenge her—I can’t fit her Fin together with this Fin. There’s something missing in this story, and I’m going to commit to an opinion: I don’t think it’s his heart.

“This you?” Fin says, as the car rolls along my street, toward my house.

“Yeah, this is me,” I say, in resignation. He pulls up, turns the engine off and for a second I think he’s going to say something, but he’s snapping his belt out of the lock so he can get out of the car, handing me my bag from the trunk.

“Thanks for your help,” Fin says, after he slams the lid shut again.

“I didn’t, did I? Sorry about that.”

“You really did.”

“Thank you.”

“Take care of yourself, Eve. And if you’re ever in Brooklyn and need a place to stay . . .”

“Ditto, Carrington,” I say, motioning toward my house, and we both laugh.

“Careful, might take you up on that,” Fin says, and I hope my expression stays steady and neutral as he looks at me from under his brow.

I put my hand out for him to shake, as much to find a moment to end on as anything. Fin looks at it, takes it, uses it to draw me into a quick, hard hug. I can’t put my other arm around him due to my luggage, so I submit by pressing my face into his shirt. He smells indecently fragrant for someone who’s been driving for five hours, I think. Why is he grateful to me? Ostensibly it’s good manners, but I know in my guts and bones that it’s more than that. Is it because getting along with Susie’s best friend is the closest he’ll come to reconciling with his sister?

He leaves without another word, or a look back, and I’ll never know the answer.





36


Edinburgh’s awkward timings mean I return to work on a Wednesday, like no one, ever, and have to act like that was the plan, without discussing what “the plan” might be.

“I thought you weren’t back until next week!” Lucy says, innocently and inconveniently. Fortunately, my mumbling “We got the hotel deal on Wowcher, so we couldn’t pick the dates” seems to do the trick.