Sage needs to see the picture. She deserves the full picture, not the edited version Leigh chose to offer. And she is going to be hurt by it, and I cannot prevent that, and I am going to have to be the one to show her, and I am going to do it tonight rather than waiting. There is no amount of time that will make this land better for her.
“I want you to be honest with me. Whatever else happens. I have had enough of people not being honest with me.”Sage said it plainly and she meant it, and I gave her my word, and my word is not contingent on the information being convenient.
I can do this. I have been doing this for thirty years. The difference is that those were strangers, and this is the woman who has her feet tucked under her on my sofa when she reads, who sings to the babies when she thinks I cannot hear. She deserves the full truth.
“Mary,” I say.
“Yes?”
“When are you putting the archive up?”
“End of the month. It’s not urgent.”
We talk for another few minutes about the business and Liam, who has been making noise about expanding the labs into a new territory and wants a family vote. There’s the spring work that the estate in Galway needs doing. Am I planning to come for Saint Patrick’s Day this year?
I tell her yes. I tell her I’ll be bringing my family. She makes a sound that tells me she is holding a very large smile in check.
Mary is quiet for a moment. “Ronan. Are you in love with her?”
“Madly.” The word comes out without effort.
“Good. It’s about time.”
We say goodbye, and Boy opens his eyes when I put the phone down, as though he was waiting for me to be done. He looks at me with his usual evaluating patience.
“Nothing to worry about,” I tell him. “I’m handling it.”
He holds my gaze for a moment. Then he closes his eyes again, satisfied.
I wish I found it as easy to take my own word for things.
I sit for a while longer with Boy and the question and the photograph on my phone and the conversation I’m going to need to have with Sage this evening. Outside, the sky is doing something particular. It’s that low, amber late-winter light that comes through the windows at this time of day and fills the room with a quality of warmth that I have started to associate with this specific life, this specific hour, this place I have found my way to.
I am in love with her. I have been for a while. I have been circling around the word the way I circle around any significant diagnosis, making sure of the finding before I commit to it, running the secondary tests, and satisfying myself that what I’m seeing is what I think I’m seeing.
I am satisfied.
Tonight I will show her a photograph that is going to hurt her, because I promised to be honest and I intend to keep that promise. Tomorrow, or the day after, when the hurt has found its shape and she has worked through the first part of it, I am going to tell her that I love her.
One does not balance the other, and I would not pretend it could. But I hope she finds some solace in knowing she is loved. Madly.
29
SAGE
Ronan has been quieterthan usual since he got off the phone with his sister Mary this afternoon. Not cold or distant, just contained in the specific way of a man carrying something he is about to put down.
He will tell me in his own time, but I am dying to know what’s eating him.
When he comes to me in the office, he actually looks nervous. Which is throwing me off. I don’t know this side of Ronan.
“Hey. Everything okay?” Stupid question. I know it’s not. That much is obvious.
“Mary sent this,” he says as he sets his phone in front of me. “It’s from last year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in Galway. I wanted you to see it before it goes into the public archive.”
The photograph is bright and crowded and completely clear. Nearly centered is Connor, grinning, relaxed. Not a care in the world and looking more like the man I met than the drunken jerk he’s become.
His arm around Leigh.
