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“I hate that we could have prevented it,” I mumble.
“We couldn’t.”
“He was high all the time. We let it happen.”
“You obviously haven’t met an addict before. There was nothing you or I could have done to prevent him from using. This is not on you, Rory.” He kisses my shoulder.
I feel my eyes coating with tears again. “Then why am I so sad?”
“Because you’re a good human. Because essentially, he was one, too.”
We don’t talk about the project, about the album, about the absurdity of us reuniting to work on something that will never materialize. Now that the project is officially dead—along with its star—something fundamental has snapped and shifted in the world we created together. We no longer have ground on which to operate. I don’t have a deadline in Ireland.
I tap my phone where it rests on my knee, pushing away Summer’s nonstop unanswered calls and Mom’s book-long messages begging me to come back home before something terrible happens.
“You’re crying.” Mal squeezes my shoulder.
I realize I am.
I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I’ve just never dealt with death up close before. My grandparents were dead before I hit three, and even though Glen died when I was a teenager, I didn’t know him and never witnessed it. It sounds ridiculous. I’m almost twenty-seven, yet up until now, death seemed like this vague, abstract idea. It was there, but not really. Now I feel it everywhere.”
Mal takes my hand in his and kisses it.
“It is,” he agrees.
“You probably miss Kathleen all the time,” I say.
“I do,” he admits, pausing to think about it. “But then I also think, when you lose someone when they’re young and in their prime, it reminds you how fragile life truly is. It reminds you that you were not put on this Earth to work. You weren’t put on this Earth to do the dishes or pay your taxes on time or, I don’t know, count your weekly alcohol units or goddamn calories. We’re not here to win awards or make money. What flashes through your mind in that fraction of a moment, when you realize this is it for you, that you’re about to die, is the kiss you stole from your first crush under the old oak tree. The cartwheels on the beach on a perfectly sunny day with your brothers. The first time your niece said your name, and you knew you were a goner—you were going to give her every single thing she asked for, including but not limited to your limbs. Losing someone when they’re young is like surviving a fatal disease. Life gifts you a second chance of not fecking it up. It can either dim you or make you shine brighter. It’s a great reminder that what we have is rare and fleeting and not to be carelessly wasted. You want to honor Richards’ legacy? Live.”
“That’s why you didn’t want to make it big.” I sniff. “You always wanted the family life. Your little corner in the world.”
And he almost got it, too, with Kath. But then she died. A part of me wants to go back to Ireland and start making babies with Mal right away. I’ve never admitted to anyone what crossed my mind when I got back home from Ireland after my first trip there.
How a part of me—and not a small one—was regretful that I took that morning-after pill. Because that would have been a great excuse to drop everything and go be with him. I’d have done what my mother hadn’t. I’d have tried to make it work.
Mal rubs his thumb across my cheek, frowning.
“Now you get it, Princess.”
The next couple days are a blur.
Mal and I have long, emotional, grueling sex. We talk for hours, wrapped around each other. I cry a lot, and he listens—a lot. Mal makes elaborate plans to tell his family about our marriage, and I do the same with my mother.
In reality, however, I don’t pick up the phone, and he doesn’t arrange any conversations with his family. He visits them every day, but never allows them to pop into the cabin. I’d say he avoids having them meet me like the plague, but even the plague gets the royal treatment compared to the way he handles his family when I’m around.
One morning, I hear whispers rising from the front door while I’m still in bed.
It’s Mal—clipped, asshole, this-is-not-the-man-I-married Mal.
“…poor timing. I’ll ring you in a bit.”
“When exactly is a bit?” asks an old woman’s voice, brittle and wary.
“Eternity and beyond, Mother.”
“That’s what it feels like, since she came along.”
A hushed, heated reply comes from the other side of the door. They’re fighting.
“No. Absolutely not,” Mal rumbles. “I’ve got this under control. Just go.”
Sometimes Mal disappears. When he does, I spend my time arguing with Ryner on the phone instead of facing the Summer and Mom music.
