I’m successful, more or less.
Until, in the shadows, I notice something.
Nestled between a pair of rose bushes, I see two glinting eyes trained on me. I squint into the thick undergrowth and squat down to the grass.
“Hey, there,” I murmur, clicking my fingers.
A thin purr reaches me before the cat does. I recognize the dappled ginger and white fur.
Its malnourished body of thirteen years ago is gone. This cat is sleek, but massive. Well-fed and obviously well-looked after.
There’s even a collar around his neck, for fuck’s sake.
It’s the little runt I found the night Sean left.
“They kept you,” I laugh in disbelief. “That sentimental bastard kept you.”
He purrs loudly, greeting me like an old friend as he butts his head against my waiting fingers. I check the collar and read the name engraved there.
“Ghost,” I whisper. I wonder who gave him his name.
I pick him up and walk deeper into the garden, headed nowhere in particular.
“Sometimes,” I say—and yeah, I’m talking to the fucking cat—"it feels like I’ve lived several lifetimes.”
Ghost purrs in response. He doesn’t sound awfully sympathetic to my dilemmas.
As I approach, I see a low fence I don’t recognize, wrapped around the perimeter of a makeshift courtyard area.
I step over it and walk towards the tree that marks the center.
To my surprise, as I round the tree, I see something. Two somethings, actually.
A pair of gravestones.
I kneel down in the grass and squint in the faint moonlight to make out the engravings. Ghost jumps out of my arms and immediately starts scratching himself on the right headstone.
That’s the one that reads, Cillian O’Sullivan.
“Jesus.”
The headstone on the left is much the same. Simple. Unadorned.
Except, instead of my name, it bears the words Sean O’Sullivan.
That’s it. Just our names.
No birthdate. No death date. No line commemorating our lives, the things we did, the places we went, the people we loved.
Why would there be?
Our lives are still being lived.
Just not in Da’s head, apparently. The man is hard, but I never imagined he’d go this far. He buried his own fucking sons—the idea of us, at least.
The message is clear. We’re dead to him. Dead to this family.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.