Fin returned her smile with one of equal size before letting her fingers slip through his to grasp the letter with both hands. ‘My darling Finley,’ he read.
His voice was tremulous in the silence, his throatachingwith the sweetness of his father’s greeting.
‘You… don’t have to read it out loud,’ she said gently.
He glanced up from the page. ‘I want to.’ He’d have probably read a letter as important as this out loud anyway, and having Sweeney by his side as he did made him feel less overwhelmed.
‘You’ve just walked out the door and I couldn’t feel more awful.’
Fin drew in a ragged breath. The anger had well and truly burned out by the time he’d hit the sack that night, leaving him feeling awful about their argument as well. Unfortunately, the hangover hadn’t. The pain had dulled but his brain had still felt like a dense foggy sponge inside his head. And he hadn’t wanted to be sub-par when he rang to apologise, which he had fully intended to do in the morning.
‘I love it when you’re home. There’s nothing that brings a parent more joy than when their adult kid wants to spend time with them and we’re so blessed that you come often. The thought that my careless words drove you away this time is really eating at me.’
Fin swallowed, tears burning his eyes and his throat, which he cleared before he continued.
‘I hadn’t planned for this to be a letter. More a list of the things Ishouldhave said to you while they’re roaring around in my head because I might forget some of them when I call you tomorrow.’
God…His father had been going to call, too.
‘But suddenly I’m writing a letter and I’m running with it because I can be much more eloquent on paper and, while it may be old fashioned, it also feels like the right thing to do. Formal, for sure, but the situation calls for it, I think. Or maybe it’s just that it feels like a veryIrish poetthing to do.’
Fin laughed as a tear spilled from one eye. That sounded like his dad.
‘Firstly, I’m sorry. I was wrong and I hope you can for—’ Laughter was quickly usurped by a groundswell of emotion. Another tear spilled from Fin’s eye and he sniffled as his nose started to run. ‘Forgive me,’ he finished, his voice now a hoarse whisper. ‘If I know you, you’re probably beating yourself up about this as well so I want you to know that I forgive you, too.’
The words blurred, making it impossible to read as he fought to suck enough air into his lungs around the thick block of emotion suffocating his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut and tears fell onto the page, smudging the print, smudging his father’s precious words, causing a spike of alarm.
‘I can’t,’ he said, holding out the pages to Sweeney. ‘I can’t.’
Looking pretty damn misty eyed herself, she wordlessly took the letter, drew in a slow ragged breath and started to read. ‘You and I don’t clash often so it’s always discomforting when we do.’
Her voice sounded small and quiet and was an instant balm to the raw emotion clogging his nose and his eyes and pounding through his head worse than any hangover.
‘Secondly, nothing you could ever do would disappoint me. You have been my pride and joy since the day they passed you to me in the hospital, all wet and bawling, and nothing will ever change that.’
Fin absently noticed the whiteness of Sweeney’s knuckles, like she was gripping the paper for dear life, and somewhere in the quagmire of his own grief he knew this couldn’t be easy on her either. His admiration for this woman he’d known forever ratcheted up tenfold.
‘Thirdly, your life is none of my business. I get to share it, not judge it. I guess I just want for you what your mum and I have, a grand love, but I realise we were lucky, Rhonda and I. We found each other early and that doesn’t happen for everyone.’
A grand love. Fin wanted that too. How could he not, growing up in a household with not one but two grand love stories?
‘Same goes for your job—’ Sweeney slid the first page behind the second and continued. ‘You gotta do what works for you and, in a world where so many people don’t have jobs, the fact you’re in stable, well-paid employment that allows you to use that big maths brain is not nothing. My only wish is that one day, when you’re ready, you veer from the main thoroughfare to take some of life’s intriguing laneways and find something that fills your soul as well as your bank account.’
Something that fills your soul.As they had hung the model Mir from his bedroom ceiling, his dad had waxed poetical about the romance of space and told Fin that one day, if he studied hard enough, there was no reason he couldn’t fly amongst the stars, if he wanted.
Imagine how seeing the moon up close must fill a man’s soul, Fin.
Fin had understood even back then that his father wasn’t necessarily pushing him to be an astronaut but encouraging him to reach for the stars. Metaphorically.
‘Being your dad has been the cornerstone of my life. You, your mother and Gaelic football are my three grand loves…’ Sweeney’s increasingly husky voice petered out for a beat before she ploughed on. ‘And I will forever regret my words today. I hope these ones will make up for them. I’ll probably never post this but I will keep it as a reminder to not be such an eejit in the future.’
Despite the tears streaming down Fin’s cheeks, he laughed. It was snotty and messy but came from the depths of his love for his dad. Sweeney laughed too, lifting her gaze to meet his, her eyes swimming with unshed tears.
‘I can almost hear your dad sayingeejit.’
Fin nodded. ‘Me too.’ Michael Murphy had said it with the same inflection and emphasis that his Kerry man father—Fin’s grandfather—always had. With just the right amount of relish.
Sweeney returned her attention to the letter, drawing in a slow, steadying breath before she continued. ‘I love you, Fin, and I know that you love me, too—’
