“Fae, I can’t stay!”
I thought they’d be shocked, but they shouted, “Why not?” So I was the one shocked into silence. Fae’s manic rambling made more sense now. They’d been trying to deflect from having this conversation. Probably knew the second they got a look at my face coming out of Kessian’s treatment room.
I finally managed an eloquent explanation. “The visions were bad.”
“How bad?”
“Deadly bad. For me and for Kessian.”
Fae’s shoulders sagged. “Really?”
“Really.” Blunt as I normally was, even I did not see the point in telling them about Laurelie’s resurrection. It would just add salt to the wound. “It’s dangerous for me to stay. Shearwater doesn’t want me here.”
Fae’s lip wobbled. “Oh …”
The tremor in their voice made my own eyes sting. An ungracious part of me resented my sibling for pushing so hard, opening us up to hope. “I’m sorry. Really.”
“I have to pull over and cry now.”
“Oh no.”
The car crunched over the pavement, Fae put it in park, then they folded over the steering wheel and sobbed.
I was at a loss. We’d barely spoken in nine years, and I didn’t know what sort of comfort Fae preferred. Should I sit silently with them? Should I search the glove box for tissues? Should I offer to get out and buy some if there weren’t any? Should I try and hug them? Should I try and summon tears, too, so they didn’t feel alone? I had felt a little weepy a second ago, but now I just felt awkward.
People should come with instruction manuals, especially for socially isolated weirdos like me.
Fae spared me by talking through their tears. “I thought, even if Grandpa’s gone … He was old, you know? It was sudden, but not a total surprise. Heart attacks happen to younger men than him. And he was working so hard all the time. So, so hard to find a way to make Shearwater safe for you. So I thought if we lost him but got you back, he’d have liked that. That was something. You know?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I hate it here. I mean, I love it because it’s the only home I’ve ever had and everybody I know lives here, but I hate it. It’s not the same. It never has been. Not since …”
“Yeah,” I said again, only this time with more feeling. “I know. I get it. Trust me, I get it.”
“I’m sorry. This is hardest on you, and I’m the one blubbering.”
“It’s hard on everyone,” I conceded.But yes, it is hardest on me. You all have each other. My familiar turns on the seat warmers when I need a hug.
I could offer one now. A hug. But it didn’t feel right when we both needed more comfort than we had to give.
I opened the glove box, and mercifully there were tissues. I offered Fae one and they mopped their face with it. Checking the rearview mirror, they made a wet noise of derision. “I look like I’ve been smoking weed with the new receptionist rather than training him.”
I didn’t know them well anymore, but they hadn’t changedthatmuch. “Trust me, Fae. No one is ever going to wonder if you dabble in drugs.”
They laughed, and the combination of congestion and snot turned it into a snort, which made them laugh harder. I smiled, too. It was a relief, in a way, to have Fae’s feelings out in the open.
Even though Kessian couldn’t help me, it helped to know someone here would miss me.
It felt strange stepping into Grandad’s front foyer, when I’d just been there in the spring’s visions. Albeit, a nightmarish version.
Mum had decided it was the best place for the reading of the will. All the furniture was arranged the same, and the grandfather clock still haunted the front hall—thankfully it wasn’t leaking or birthing shadow monsters—but it seemed every spare surface, shelf, and storage area overflowed with clocks. Hundreds of clocks.
Grandad had been a horologist. He liked making clocks. He liked fixing them even more. He liked knowing what made them tick and made them die. There’d always been a number of them scattered through the house, but now they were everywhere, and stranger still, many of them no longer worked.
Enough of them did work, though, and the chorus of ticking was the psychological equivalent of an ice pick lobotomy.
The collections gave the place an archival smell, woodsy and old, when in my memories the house always smelled like Sunday roasts and Christmas dinner, because those were the times we visited.
