Page 43 of Carry Me Home

‘Kit’s been planning it for weeks,’ Brynn says. ‘He asked Maisie for permission first, did you know that? Made a whole thing of it. Asked if she’d be okay with Isla being her stepmum officially. She said yes and then asked if this meant she could have a bigger bedroom.’

‘That’s very Maisie.’

‘Extremely Maisie.’ Brynn smiles, but there’s something underneath it – something I recognise because I’m an expert in the art of smiling over the top of complicated feelings. She wraps both hands more tightly around her mug and looks at the steam rising from it. ‘It’s good. It’s really good. I’m happy for them.’

‘But?’

‘There’s no but.’

‘Brynn.’

She looks up. Her eyes are tired and bright and she doesn’t say anything for a moment – just holds my gaze – and I can see her deciding what to let out and what to keep.

‘It just makes you think,’ she says carefully. ‘About choices. About people deciding what they want and then actually doing something about it, instead of just—’ She stops. Picks up her coffee. Drinks. ‘Never mind. I’m tired. I haven’t slept.’

I don’t push. I know the shape of a person holding something they’re not ready to put down. Brynn and Jude – whatever it is, whatever it might become – has been hovering between all of us for months. He’s leaving for university in September. She’s staying. Neither of them has said anything, and everyone can see it, and none of us are going to be the one to say it out loud.

‘For what it’s worth,’ I say, ‘I think figuring out what you want is overrated. Most of us are just stumbling around hoping we trip over the right answer.’

‘Is that what you’re doing? Stumbling around?’

‘I’m the queen of stumbling around. I’ve made it an art form.’

She laughs, and the tension breaks. ‘You’re a disaster.’

‘I’m a charming disaster. There’s a difference.’

‘Is there?’ She says it the way Tom said it last night – the exact same cadence, the exact same two words – and for a second I feel the echo so strongly that I have to look away.

I text Isla while Brynn finishes her coffee: CONGRATULATIONS!!! I’m so happy for you both. Tell Kit I’ll only threaten him a little bit about treating you right. xx

The reply comes almost immediately: Thank you!!! Still can’t believe it. Maisie’s already planning the wedding. She wants a bouncy castle. Kit said no. I said maybe. We’ll see who wins.

I smile at my phone. Kit and Isla, choosing each other. Making it official after everything – the decade apart, the coming back, the learning how to be brave enough to stay. Maisie getting a stepmum who loves her like her own. A wedding. A baby. All of it.

I put the phone down and wipe the counter and my hands are busy and my face is smiling and underneath it the hollow is there – quiet, patient, the shape of a question I keep pretending isn’t a question.

What would it feel like to be chosen?

The thought arrives and I put it away. Fast. Before it can settle.

Brynn leaves. The lunch rush starts. I throw myself into the work because work is the thing I’m good at – the sandwiches and the coffee and the customers and the particular rhythm of a day that asks nothing of me except that I show up and keep moving.

I don’t think about last night. I don’t think about Tom’s voice in the dark saying I’m always going to pick up the phone. I don’t think about quiz night and his face close to mine and the word I’d tried to say – favourite – and the way it had caught in my mouth and then I’d changed tack to talk about Peter.

I don’t think about Kit on the harbour, getting down on one knee.

I don’t think about what it means that the person I called at half eleven, when I couldn’t sleep, when the dark was too much, when I needed a voice to hold me steady – was Tom.

I just work. And the hours pass. And eventually the hollow quiets to something I can carry.

That’s grief, I tell myself.

I’m getting less and less sure that that’s what it is.

Chapter Ten

TOM