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Jesus.
I jump into the car, still in my pajamas, and drive down the road. I catch him walking on the shoulder, cake wrapped in a plastic bag in his hands. He is soaking wet. I slow and roll down the window.
“Mal!” I yell.
His hair drips water into his face. His eyebrows are crinkled in determination. He is also a very unnatural shade of blue. “Get in! I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“No, thank you.”
“Mal!”
“Go back home, Rory.”
“Please. I didn’t know…”
“Home.” He stops, turns around, and stares me down.
The finality of the word strikes me somewhere deep. Wherever he is going, I really am not welcome there.
“You can’t come with me, and I’m going no matter the cost. So your best option is to wait for me at home, really. You’re just wasting my time, and every minute I’m out in the pouring rain trying to convince you to stop following me is a minute I am still, in fact, standing in the rain, my condition worsening. Follow my logic here?”
Why is he so harsh? So broken? So…mad? He was completely different yesterday, and I refuse to believe this is all due to the fact he woke up with the flu.
But I’m confused, and furious, and a little forlorn over the way things have progressed this morning, so I throw an accusing finger his way.
“Keep walking, but I’m ordering you a cab, and you better be home by one o’clock or I swear to God I’ll find your mom and grandfather’s numbers and call them.”
I smash the gas pedal with my foot, leaving him there, with a soggy cake, a gift bag, and that invisible cord between us he seems to tug whenever I wander too far away for his liking.
I’d let him have the car, but he is in no condition to drive, and I’m scared he’ll black out on the steering wheel.
At the next stop sign, I call a taxi company on the outskirts of Tolka and urge them to pick up Mal where I left him. I tell them I’ll Venmo them a hundred euros if it happens within the next five minutes. Then I continue my journey to Main Street and park in front of the newsagents, shaking with a humiliation I cannot fully explain.
Truly, I have no idea what I’m doing. I just know I have at least a few hours to burn before Mal comes back from his mysterious birthday bash. I open the glove compartment and find fifty euros. Considering I just spent more than that hauling Mal’s ass to his date, I think I’m okay to borrow it. I slip out of the car and get into the store, grabbing a small basket and throwing in flu medicine, herbal tea, a fancy Cadbury chocolate bar, chips, and a triangle-shaped sandwich to calm my grumbling stomach. When I hand the beautiful, dark cashier the note, she flips it and shakes her head, handing it back to me with an apologetic smile.
“I can’t accept it. The money is ruined.”
“Ruined how?” I blink, confused. I’m starting to think everyone just flat-out hates me in this town. They won’t even take my money now?
“Someone wrote all over it.”
I take the note and flip it. Sure enough, I see my name on it, and a date.
The date I threw it into Mal’s guitar case.
He kept it. For good luck. For fate. For whatever reason, he kept it and the napkin, and what does that even mean?
Heart pounding like a restless, caged animal, I tuck the note back into my pajama pocket.
Did you feel the same way I did, Mal? Did you walk around with a hole in your chest?
But if he had, he wouldn’t have married Kathleen. I’m reading into things. Not the first time I’ve done that. Besides, Callum. I love like Callum.
Callum, Callum, Callum.
“Look, it’s the only money I have. I stay right up Main Street, in the Doherty cottage. Is it okay if I come back in a few hours with the money? I’m starving. Also, my host is sick, and I—”
“I know who you are.” The woman lowers her voice, her eyes softening. She has this weird mix of Irish and Indian accents, sweet and round and warm, like spices and honey.
“You do?” I let out an audible sigh.
News sure travels fast in small villages. I wonder if that’s why people feel so strongly about country life. Because it defines you so profoundly, it’s a part of your identity. Then again, I did have a show-off with Maeve and Heather here not even forty-eight hours ago.
She starts shoving my things into a stripy, nylon white and blue bag. “I arrived in Tolka three years after your mother left. They told me how you got the scar. I’m so sorry, Aurora.”
“Huh?” I look up at her, no longer smiling.
