Anouska Knight - Letting You Go

‘I know.’ He said matter-of-factly. ‘That’s too bad. Your work, all through college, I mean … you have a gift, Foster.’ He shrugged.

Alex swallowed again. Only her mother said that. Have. Not had. As if there was still discernible potential in her somewhere. Alex looked at her shoes, embarrassed if anything. Mum would’ve loved this, this meeting of theirs in the forest like two star-crossed nymphs, back when Blythe’s heart would have been still up for the excitement. Reality thudded home. ‘Actually, I have to go. I need to get to the hospital.’

The look on Finn’s face switched immediately. ‘Are you OK, Foster?’

‘Oh, no … I didn’t mean … it’s Mum. She er, she had a stroke last night.’ The words seemed to double back in her mouth and head straight back down her throat, clenching her heart in an angry fist. Suddenly there was a lump forming at the back of Alex’s throat, she could feel it coming. Don’t cry! Shit! Alex, if you cry now he’ll comfort you and then you’ll be dripping snot into his muddy chest before you know it and it’ll be all over.

‘I’m sorry, Foster. Is there anything I can do?’ Finn’s hand reached out for a second and grazed Alex’s elbow. Their skin touched briefly and she very definitely felt it, the same as before, exactly as Blythe would always describe it.

It felt like lightning.

Ted Foster had woken up an hour ago to the sound of muffled whimpers drifting in off the landing. For a few dazed seconds, he imagined he were still a young man, sitting bolt upright in bed ready to trudge wearily across the hall to check on each of his three children, see which one of them was having a restless dream. He stretched his back through and reached up to rub the greying bristles of his face, turning to see if Blythe had woken too. Her pillow was as neat and plumped as she’d left it yesterday morning after Jem had helped her change the beds. Blythe had been grumbling about engine oil finding its way onto the bedspread again. ‘Well what can I do,’ Ted had protested, ‘if some evenings I rush my shower because I can’t wait to climb into bed with a show-stoppin’ redhead?’ Jem had started grinning at her mother then but Blythe had turned that beautiful porcelain chin of hers away in mock disapproval.

God damn it, Blythe.

The dawn was finding its way along the top edge of the curtains, waiting respectfully to be invited in. Ted took his first deep breath of the day and set a hand on the piped edging of Blythe’s pillow. She’d disapprove of all the fuss last night. All those strangers talking over her with their penlights and charts, as if she weren’t there sleeping beneath them. They were just kids. What did they know about her? A woman whose laughter they’d never contracted, whose neck they’d never smelled, whose beautiful voice they’d never heard singing on a morning.

More impatient whimpering found its way through the gap under the bedroom door. Ted set two unwilling feet on the cool floorboards and went to find the source of all that disgruntlement. He quietly opened the door so as not to wake Jem down the hall. The door shushed open. Ted looked to his feet and the bundle of straw-coloured fur waiting expectantly there. The damned thing had sniffed him out and here it was, sitting there with its head cocked ready for breakfast no doubt.

‘Made it up the stairs then?’ This was their first Labrador, he’d heard they had more spring in them than most pups. Probably should’ve gotten something with less spring, not that he’d had any intention of having any more dogs, springy or not. The Cavern was an ale house, not a pet market. The damned thing had been what Blythe would call an impulse purchase, like half the stuff she’d bring home from the supermarket. Impulse purchase was about right. There it had been, all wide-eyed peeping out the top of Roger Muir’s coat. The runt, Muir had said. Ted knew instantly that Blythe would love it. Her face had lit up like one of the kids’ when she’d seen the pup, that smile she seemed to put her whole body into. A smile she didn’t have to think about. At this time of year to bring that smile back into the house was nothing short of a blessing.

The pup cocked her head the other way.

‘If you were smarter, dog, you’d have tried my daughter’s room,’ Ted sighed. The girls had always gone gaga for puppies, just like Blythe. Ted wasn’t one to shout it from the rooftops but he’d always quietly beamed when somebody remarked how alike his girls were to their mother. Daughters should be like their mothers and Blythe and their girls were the most beautiful creatures in the Falls. He’d challenge anyone to say they weren’t. Of course, the same folks had said on occasion how Dill got his looks from Ted, but it was easy to tell the difference between true observation and politeness. Besides his dirty blond hair Dill had looked very little like him, Ted knew that. No matter what the heart wanted to be true, there was no disputing what his eyes told him every time he’d walked passed the photographs of Dillon hanging in the hall downstairs.

Blythe had taken herself off into the frozen garden and cried for an hour straight when he’d taken down the Son from the garage sign. He shouldn’t have climbed up there, yanking it away with his own hands, he realised that now. But he couldn’t bear seeing it any longer. It would be a lie to have left it up there, calling out an untruth to everyone passing by. The Fosters’ name would come to an end when the girls married, they all knew that. There were some people who’d known it before Ted had.

That same old hollowness began to yawn like a chasm inside him. The puppy squeaked for attention again but Ted was resolute. ‘You’ll have to wait, little one. I have something to do before breakfast.’ The bastard was good and dead now. No more a part of the town, no longer a thorn in their sides. And when Ted made it to the churchyard, by God, he hoped he’d find that the old son of a bitch had finally taken the last of his poorly kept goddamn secrets with him.

Alex felt him tense, harden like her clay; Finn’s whole body beside her suddenly off limits, no longer hers to touch.

‘That’s not it. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to know, Finn. I just can’t upset him again, he’s my dad. I’ve already put him through so much.’ Finn took his hand back, slow enough that it wasn’t like a punishment. Only it was. Alex stopped herself from grabbing it and bringing those fingers back to her again. ‘Now’s just … it’s not good timing, Jem’s getting into trouble at school and—’

‘So how long, Alex? I’m ready to get my lights punched out to stand up for the way I feel about you, how long until you’re ready to stand up for how you say you feel for me?’

Alex’s palm was still lying against Finn’s chest. Should she move it? Everything about him was starting to feel defensive. The way he was pushing his hair away from his face, the tension through his arms.

‘I do feel that way, Finn. I love you.’

‘Do you?’

She was losing him. She could already feel it. ‘You know I do. You’ve always known.’

‘So tell him. Tell him, Alex. Tell him we’re young and in love and we’d do anything to change what happened. But we can’t. All we can do is keep moving forwards and sometimes that means moving against the current.’

Something had shifted in the air between them. It was a similar feeling to watching one of her clay pots lose its shape when it had stood to be so beautiful before she’d cocked it up. Maybe if she was careful, deft enough, she could bring it back again, coax it all back into shape. ‘He’s my dad, Finn. I can’t keep pushing him. I love you, and I love him too. I need him to have the chance to understand.’