I drop eye contact with her, feeling increasingly out of my depth. Cynthia continues to talk and I sense her trying to catch my gaze again but still I look away, listening, processing. Or trying to.
“That's what Aiden does,” she continues. “He rushes into things. He goes full throttle. He did it with Arnie. When they went travelling, when they fell in love, and when Arnie got the cancer. Aiden was all in, straight away. And then when Arnie died, he was all in on self-destruct mode. He drank, he got high, and I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this but he slept around too, shagged his way through...”
“Ma.” Maeve’s voice silences Cynthia and makes us both twist our heads towards her. “That’s enough.”
Maeve’s shoulders and her jaw are squared in exactly the same way Marty's was when we had the small confrontation in the bathroom yesterday.
“She should know,” Cynthia says.
“Her name is Jenna, Ma.” Maeve steps forward to create the third point in a triangle between us. “And you're meddling.”
I could pick Maeve up and spin her around in circles, I'm so grateful for her presence and solidarity in this moment.
“I'm not meddling! Not really. Not when it's my responsibility to look after Aiden and make sure he doesn't get hurt.”
“I would never hurt him,” I blurt out. “I care about him.”
Cynthia snatches hold of my words. “If you do, then you'll leave him be. Let him have a holiday with his family. Let him have this week with us before he has to go back to reality again.” Her tone is softer now, but still not calm. There's still tension in every sound, as if she's truly begging me to do as she asks.
When I don’t reply, Cynthia tuts out a sigh that I feel in my own lungs. Then she turns and walks past Maeve and back up the path, one of her hands on her face and her shoulders shaking.
I exhale as I turn to Maeve.
“Thank you,” I say to her with a slight nod.
“Don't thank me,” she says, shrugging as she takes half a step closer. “What she said was true.”
“What?” I pull my head back.
“All of it. It's true. He did get in that accident, and people did say it was deliberate. And he did drink and shag his way around the Balearics. He was a massive dirtbird man whore.”
“Right,” I say in a whisper, and nearly chuckle to myself because part of me is wishing the context was different so I could address her slut-shaming and being derogatory to sex workers.
“But wouldn't you have too?” Maeve asks pulling me back into our conversation.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Wouldn't you have done the same, or something just as unhinged, if you were twenty-three and you'd just buried your first love and best friend?”
Maeve doesn't wait for my answer. She is gone as quickly and quietly as she arrived, leaving me standing there under a hot sun, its rays toasting the already pink patches of sunburn I got yesterday, any energy I had for my workout now completely gone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Marty
Coming four times in twenty-four hours doesn't improve my pace on our morning ride even though my father isn't pushing quite as hard as he did yesterday. It surprises me further when he stops close to the peak and pulls over, pretending to admire the view. It’s possible he does enjoy the panorama for half a minute or so, but I know my dad. He's not a standing still and staring out at the horizon kind of guy. He needs to keep his hands and his brain busy, so I know this is an excuse for something else. And it doesn't take much to make a guess.
“Are you going to bollock me?” I ask.
“And take that fun away from your mother?” he jokes, then takes a swig from his water bottle. “Nah. You know me, I don't have the energy.”
I nod and stare out again at the view. Unlike my father, I’m a man who could stare at a beautiful view for a long time.
“Well, for what it's worth, I am sorry,” I say. “It wasn't my plan to skip dinner or stay out. And I did call to let you know.”
“You did, but in some ways that made it worse for your ma. It was like you were choosing to not be with us rather than just letting time run away with you.”
“Well, that's sort of what happened. I didn't plan to be gone all day. We just...”
