I freeze. Words desert me. The anger that carried me here flickers out, leaving only the truth I don’t want to face.
She’s wrong. She has to be.
“Just...” I rake a hand through my hair, suddenly exhausted. “Leave the past where it is, Blair. Please. You’re brilliant with Finn, and I appreciate that. I do. But you’re here to look after him when I can’t, not to dig up what’s gone.”
Her mouth opens like she wants to argue, but I’m already turning away.
“We’ll see you tomorrow.”
The door clicks shut behind me, but her words stick, following me across the dark garden.Are you really protecting Finn? Or just yourself?
Back in the house, Finn’s quiet through his bath, through brushing his teeth. Normally, I’d be telling him to stop talking with his mouth full of foam. Instead, he goes through the bedtime motions without his usual chatter, and it sits heavy in my chest. I want to blame Blair for this, for bringing up something that was none of her business, for making my boy sad. But the words she threw at me keep circling back. Am I protecting Finn? Or, as Blair suggested, just myself?
When I tuck Finn into bed, he looks small against the pillows, those brown eyes—Leanne’s eyes—watching me with something that might be hope.
“Da?”
“Aye, lad?”
“Will you... will you tell me about Mum? Just one story?”
Bloody hell. He’s not giving up. I almost deflect, almost suggest we readZoginstead. But the way he’s looking at me, the careful way he’s asking—like he’s not sure I’ll say yes—it breaks something loose inside me.
I sit on the edge of his bed, hands clasped between my knees. Where do I even start?
“Your mum...” I clear my throat. “She loved stories. Always had a book in her hand. Didn’t matter what kind. Love stories, adventures, mysteries... she read them all.”
It sounds flat. Dull. Like I’m reciting facts instead of talking about the lass I loved. I want to tell him about how she’d lose herself in those pages, how she’d cry happy tears at the endings, how she’d insist on telling me all about what happened to these fictional characters, even if I didn’t exactly always listen with rapt attention.
But the words stick. None of it comes out right.
Christ, if Blair had known Leanne, she’d know how to do this properly. She’d paint pictures with her voice, make Leanne come alive again.
I glance down, half expecting Finn to look bored or confused. Instead he’s staring at me, wide-eyed, soaking up every word like it’s gold.
The tightness in my chest eases just enough for me to go on. “She’d stay up too late reading. Way past when she should’ve gone to sleep. But she got lost in the stories, you see. Said they made the world seem bigger, full of magic.”
“Like you and me, Da,” Finn whispers, a sleepy smile spreading across his face. “And Blair. We like stories too.”
“Aye, we do.” I smooth his hair back from his forehead. “And she loved reading to you when you were wee. Had her own way of telling them, made you hang on every word.”
His smile grows wider. “Tell me more?”
So I do. I tell him about how she’d hum while she cooked, how she collected smooth stones from the beach, how even a drizzly day couldn’t stop her from dragging us out for picnics. The words come easier now, and Finn drinks them in like he’s been thirsty for them his whole life.
“Thank you, Da,” he murmurs when his eyelids finally grow heavy. “For telling me about Mum.”
“Sleep tight, wee man.”
I wait until his breathing evens out before I head through to my bedroom and, from my wardrobe, pull out a photo album. My hands shake slightly as I flip through the pages, past images I haven’t looked at in years.
Finn in his pram, Finn on a blanket, Finn in my arms. Leanne took nearly all of them, so she’s noticeably missing from them. Her eye is everywhere, though, in the way she caught the light, the angle, the little notes she scribbled underneath.
Then—there. Leanne cradling Finn when he was only a few weeks old, her smile so bright, both of them perfect and whole and mine.
I take the photo to the kitchen, to the cork board where Finn’s drawings live in bold, chaotic colour. Carefully I pin Leanne’s picture right in the centre, among the dragons and dinosaurs and stick-figure families. Her face shining out through Finn’s messy colours.
It looks right there. Like she belongs.
