‘She’s been living with me and Hilde, her grandmother, ever since but she hasn’t spoken in all that time.’
‘Gordon.’ Fin was at a loss as to what to say. He raised his hand to grasp the man by the shoulder but let it fall as the older man stiffened. Fin remembered how people’s well-meaning platitudes had worn thin after his father had died, and the last thing he wanted was to force some clumsy attempt at comfort on a man who’d already endured so much.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’ And he meant it.
Yes, Winnie had been through a terrible ordeal and lost her mum and dad, but Gordon had lost his son and his daughter-in-law as well. That in itself was enough to process, let alone having to suddenly prioritise the care of a traumatised grandkid.
‘Thank you,’ he said, his voice husky before he cleared it and continued. ‘My wife and I moved here a couple of months ago from Melbourne, hoping a slower pace and a smaller school might make her feel safer.’
‘Has it helped?’
‘Definitely. A lot less cars and traffic noise, which gave her the jitters in Melbourne. And we always loved Ballyshannon, used to come up here with the kids over the years, take a picnic out to the lake. Brought our kids up for the Irish festival most years, so when we were looking for somewhere quiet, it was a no-brainer.’
Fin nodded. ‘It’s a nice, quiet place.’ Very different to the rush and hurry of Melbourne and Dublin. God knew, he’d missed it. ‘She signs well. So do you.’
‘Oh, believe me, she picked it up much quicker than we did. Probably because she’d been such a chatterbox before the accident.’ He laughed. ‘But we’re getting there. The fact she can hear helps communication, obviously, and my wife organised a lot of allied health support very early on. Thankfully we can mostly do it over Zoom now without having to disrupt her routine with trips back and forth to Melbourne.’
‘Zoom, huh?’ Fin smiled. ‘I wish I knew that was going to be a thing. I would have bought shares in the company.’
‘You and me both.’ Gordon chuckled. ‘What about you? Where’d you learn to sign? You’re very good.’
‘My grandmother was deaf from childhood. Measles. So pretty much all the Murphy clan can sign to some degree or other. But my grandparents moved in with us just after I was born so I grew up signing. It was like a second language to me, although it’s been over a decade since I last signed.’
‘Well.’ Gordon smiled. ‘You’d never know.’
‘Thanks. I’m surprised how quickly it came back.’
Gordon returned his attention to his granddaughter and they watched for a beat or two as the girls, now sitting cross-legged in a circle, played a three-way clapping game. Winnie wasn’t singing but she obviously knew the actions. ‘I can’t thank you enough for this.’
‘Of course,’ Fin dismissed with a wave of his hand. ‘Thanks for giving me some background. Appreciated.’
‘I’ll stick around for the training sessions, if that’s okay? Just in case… something happens.’
From Gordon’s comment, Fin assumed that there might have been some separation issues in the past, which was unsurprising. ‘Be my guest.’ He gestured around at all the other parents and sundry other family and the cabal of stickybeaks. ‘As you can see, it’s a bit of a free-for-all.’
Gordon laughed. ‘You’re a popular man.’
Fin grimaced. Thanks to that photo he was. Thanks to Sweeney. His gaze cut to her, oblivious to his scrutiny as she snapped away. ‘You okay with Sweeney taking pictures of Winnie and posting them to socials?’ All the other parents had been wildly enthusiastic, but Fin wouldn’t blame Gordon if he was reticent where his granddaughter was concerned.
‘Yep, no worries. Hilde’s been showing her the Banshees Instagram page every day and she loves it. I think she’d quite like to see herself in some action pics.’
‘I’m sure there’ll be plenty by the time the comp is over,’ Fin said. ‘But for now, I better get to it. This lot’—he tipped his chin at the bunch of five- and six-year-olds bouncing around the field like ping-pong balls—‘look like they need to run off some energy.’
It had taken Fin two days to figure out he had to run the little blighters ragged for the first ten or fifteen minutes before he could get any sense or useful ball skills out of them.
Gordon chuckled. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
Fin nodded and headed back towards the team, his gaze once again finding a trigger-happy Sweeney, his brain wandering back to the couch last night and the world’s most inappropriate hard-on. Thankfully his shirt had hidden the evidence, but it didn’t make it any less mortifying or, frankly, confusing.
As a man, random boners were a way of life, but to the best of his knowledge he’d never had one induced by Sweeney. Not as an adult, anyway. When he’d been going through puberty—probably. Consideringanything and everythinghad triggered him back then. A stiff breeze. Melinda Raleigh’s two perfectly prim plaits that had hung down her back. The mere sight of a can of whipped cream. The slim gold chain with a tiny dangling star that his art teacher wore around her right ankle. The sensation of his underwear pulling against his crotch when he rode his bike.
The sight of Edna Mullins’ industrial-strength beige bra on her clothes line.
The damn thing had been up and down more often than a flag on a pole. It was a wonder it hadn’t dropped off or worn out before he’d actually had a chance to use it with something other than his right hand.
But seriously, when had thoughts of women wearing men’s fragrances been such a freaking turn-on? Or had it just been the… intimacy of it all? His body wash on her. From the same tube. More intimate even than living under the same roof and sharing the same bathroom, her toothbrush sitting next to his on top of the vanity. Or her clothes in the laundry hamper. Listening to her humming along to whatever song was playing in her earbuds in the morning as she made a cup of tea.
He hadn’t even been able to remember the name of the damn stuff as he’d sat there with his hard-on but it had smelled amazing—the memory of it now still made him squirm. Which was unsettling. And he’d never felt unsettled around orbecause ofSweeney.
