Fin smiled. ‘Me too.’ He remembered it vividly.
For a guy who worked a bar and loved a beer and the football, his father was a true romantic, the book a constant on his bedside table. His mother had told Fin once that his father liked to thumb through it each night and pick a random poem to read.
‘I just love the smell of old books, don’t you?’ Sweeney opened the front cover and sniffed the pages. ‘They should bottle it and sell it as perfume.’
Fin laughed, pleased for the levity. He wasn’t sure that would be an easy sell. ‘What would they call it? Eau du Musty?’
‘Ha, funny.’ She turned to the next page and sniffed it. ‘Eau du Bibliothèque? Or … Le Book. Or …’ She inhaled again as if seeking inspiration. ‘Bookish?’
Not bad for being put on the spot. ‘How about Writers’ Tears?’
‘Now you’re talking.’
She grinned as she passed it over, but the transfer was clumsy given he was putting down the two books he already had in his hands and it slipped from his fingers, landing open and face down on the floor. He crouched to pick it up but, as he did, something slipped from the centre. For a moment Fin thought it might be some of the actual pages before he realised it was an envelope with his name on the front—Finley—in his father’s familiar bold, slashing style.
It looked like it had been written yesterday, but the date beneath his name was the day of their argument. The day before his father had died.
Seventeen
Sweeney stared at the envelope, a tiny flutter of excitement kicking to life in the centre of her chest. Was there a letter inside? ‘Fin?’ she murmured. ‘Isn’t that your dad’s handwriting?’
‘Yeah.’
But he didn’t move to pick it up. ‘So, what are you waiting for?’ She stepped around him, examining the writing as she scooped it off the ground. There was definitely a letter inside. Or folded paper, anyway. ‘This is the day before he died, right?’ She thrust it at him. ‘You have to open it.’
Sweeney frowned as he took it and just stared at it—with trepidation. Like it was a live snake instead of words from beyond the grave. She was trying to understand his hesitation but… she’d give anything to have had a letter from her father.
‘I mean… the day before he dies he just happens to write you a letter?’ Sweeney gentled her voice. ‘Was that coincidence or did he maybe sense something was about to happen and write to you, just in case? Don’t you… want to know what it says?’
He looked up then and the grimness of his features clawed at her chest.
‘I know it’ll be hardemotionallyto read. But Fin…’ She tried to temper the excitement in her voice because this wasn’t about her and her father, it was about Fin andhis. ‘You get to hear from your dad, again.’
Fin looked up from the envelope. ‘We argued.’ The two words crashed like boulders into the space between them. ‘The day before he died.’
Sweeney sucked in a breath. Well, shit… so probably not a coincidence. And probably why Fin was looking like he’d been punched in the gut.
He stared at the envelope again as he turned it over and over in his hands. ‘I’ve never told another soul about it.’
She understood his hesitation now. Fin had to be wondering what his father had written. An apology. Or had it been composed in fresh anger? And how would Fin—her dear friend who had clearly been beating himself up about that argument for the past two years—handle that? Maybe he didn’t want to tell her any more—but maybe he did, now he’d taken the first step?
‘What did you argue about?’
‘It was so…’ Fin shook his head. ‘Sostupid. I’d come back to Ballyshannon for the weekend and been out the night before with Donny and a couple of the other guys I used to play with, and I’d just broken up with this woman I’d been seeing for a couple of months and was massively hungover. Dad had the mower out at seven in the morning, deliberately, I’m sure.’
Sweeney smiled. ‘That sounds like him.’
‘Mum had gone to church. The night before, I’d told her I’d go with her, but did I mention my hangover?’
‘That bad, huh?’
‘Severe. Donny is a beast.’ He gave a half laugh but it just sounded sad. ‘I think I emerged from my room about eleven in the morning, pretty irritated over the mower. We were meeting Mum out for lunch somewhere, I can’t remember where, and Dad was not impressed at my sloth.’
‘Your father wasn’t much of a fan of sleeping in, was he?’
He fully laughed this time and Sweeney joined him. Michael Murphy considered lie-ins a wealthy person’s fancy. ‘Anyway…’ Fin shook his head as if to clear it. ‘He started. Asking me about Carys—’
‘The girl you’d broken up with?’
