Genuinely. The way Fiona had mourned him? It had been as though both men had passed on, except we’d never had to go to church for a service, and there’d been no wake.
As kids do, I’d forgotten him. I’d been two when he’d disappeared, so I only really remembered that Fiona was a mom and that she was grieving.
We’d barely spoken his name because it could set her off into bouts of tears that would have my mom pouring tea down her gullet as they talked through her feelings.
As time passed, those little scenes in our crappy kitchen stopped, yet Fiona hung around our place so much it was like her second home.
One day, my stepfather died in an accident at work. The insurance paid out, Fiona moved in with us, and Mom had started scheming as to how to make her dream of owning a tea room come true. With Fiona living in, I’d heard Finn’s name more often, but the notion he was dead still rang true.
Yet, here he was.
Finn wasn’t dead.
He was very much alive.
Had Fiona known that?
Had she?
I wasn’t sure what I hoped for her.
Was it better to believe your son was dead, or that your son didn’t give enough of a fuck about you to contact you for years?
I gnawed on my bottom lip at the thought and accidentally raked over the tissue where Finn had bitten earlier.
“We’re almost there,” the man himself grated out, and I could sense he was pissed because the phone had buzzed, and whatever he’d been reading had a storm cloud passing behind his eyes.
“O-Okay,” I replied, hating the quiver in my voice, but also just hating my situation.
This was. . . .
It was too much.
How was it that I was sitting here?
This morning, I’d owned a tea room. Now, I didn’t.
This morning, I’d been exhausted, depressed about my mom, andfeelinglost.
Now?
I was theepitomeof lost.
A man was going to use me for sex, for Christ’s sake.
But all I could think was:did I still have my hymen?
God, would he be angry if he had to push through it?
Should I tell him?
If I did, it would be for my benefit, not his, and why the hell was I thinking like this? I should be trying to convince him that normal people did not work business deals out by bribing someone into bed.
But, deep down, I knew all my scattered thinking was futile.
I wasn’t dealing with normal people here.
I was dealing with a Five Pointer.