“Oh, shit. Pix! What did you do?” Maeve took the stairs toward her heavily.
Molly headed down, met Maeve on the landing.
“God. That looks awful!” Maeve said. She reached out to touch Molly’s hair, but Molly ducked her hand. “What were you thinking? And where did you get that ... that ... jacket?” She closed her eyes, shook her head in exaggerated disgust. “What is the matter with you? What would it cost you to just ... go along? Does everything have to be a fight?” She threw up her hands. “You’re a lost cause, you know that?”
She knew she was lost. Couldn’t Maeve see that? “Look who’s the brown-noser now? What would it costyouto stop being such a suck-up? I wanna go see Grandpa,” Molly said. The pit in her stomach felt like tar, black as death.
Maeve blinked and blinked. She threw up her hands. “Fine. Let’s go. It’s your funeral.”
Maeve sighed, and Molly could tell that she regretted her word choice. Molly pressed her tongue into her cheek as she opened the front door. She wasn’t about to let her sister off the hook. “No, Maeve. I think it’s Grandpa’s.”
She and Maeve rode in silence to the cove, Molly imagining the talking-to her father would give her about respect and family, how her bad attitude and brazen disregard for others would not be tolerated. He would remind her that they had expectations, that her defiance would not do her any favors. She was ready for him. When they arrived at Thomas’s house, Maeve switched off the ignition. “I have to warn them,” she said and rushed inside. Before Molly even reached the porch, her father was outside.
He yanked her arm, not brutally, but not gently either, and pulled her to the side of the house. “Jesus Mary Almighty, Pix,” her father hissed. “What did you do?”
“I like it,” Molly said, her voice barely a mew.
“Oh, you do not. It looks terrible. It’s like a bird’s nest in hell.” He pulled up her fried coils of curl, stinging her scalp. “And what’s with that?” He slapped at her new leather jacket. “Looks like—” He shook his head. “Take that off before your mother sees it. Did you even think ...? Honey ...” William pulled her into him, wrapping her up so tight she could hear his heartbeat.
“What are we going to do with you, huh?” he whispered.
Molly wanted to scream, to hit and kick, to make every bad thing stop happening. She wanted to be a raven or a grizzly or a shark, something deadly and fearsome. But nothing she did ever seemed to change anything. Why wouldn’t they all just quit loving her? Did they understand that she was broken? She cried and cried in her father’s arms, wished she was small enough still that he could pick her up, small enough to fit in his pocket.
Her father leaned over her, smoothed her hair in his big hands. “We have to go in now so you can see Grandpa. Let’s take that coat off, though,” he said, easing it off her. “You wait here while I put it in the truck.”
Molly nodded.
Before they stepped through the door, he squeezed her hand. “Be nice.”
Molly tiptoed in, her head low. Even without the jacket, she was dressed for a funeral, all black right down to the fingerless gloves and heavy liner smudged around her eyes. Her mother’s arms were crossed, hands on her shoulders like a shawl. Molly ignored the exhausted look she gave her. She could pay hell later.
Thomas stirred at the sight of his granddaughter, and his mouth went into a big circle. “Oh!” he said, his brow twitching.
Molly thought she saw a little smile. She tightened her lips, touched her hair, and leaned in. She didn’t want anyone else to hear her talk to her grandfather or for them to hear what he said to her. “The Morrigan. Shape-shifter. Up for a battle, I see,” Thomas said, resting his hand on her head, piercing her armor.
Molly broke open, sobbed onto the ugly quilt.Some warrior.
“There, there, faithful one. Fight your fight if you must. Dance for me? One last time?”
Molly did what he asked, tears falling, chest heaving with sobs. The Irish steps felt odd in her heavy boots, and she knew she probably looked ridiculous, like some prancing imp. She didn’t care. Thomas managed to clap twice. His smile was all that mattered. She leaned in, kissed his smooth cheek.
“Go and love, my Molly. Go and love.”
“Bye, Grandpa,” she said and ran from the house.
She did not see her mother crumple a section of theIrish Timesand fold Thomas’s creped hand around it one last time or the way his blue veins pulsed like rivers. Molly was already halfway home when loss bore down on Faye, and the sky seemed to open up and the flap of great wings and the delirious laughter of gulls filtered in through a cracked window at the cove house.
Only her mother saw Thomas’s eyes widen. Only she heard a note of wonder sound from his throat.
“My birds!”
The paper fell from his hand.
Her father dropped Molly home without even turning off the engine. “I have to get back to your mother. You’re sure you’ll be okay here? I can take you to Maeve’s ...” Molly told him she would be fine, that she would take a shower and see if she could get out some of the hair dye. They weren’t wrong. It did look like shit. She got out of the truck, put the leather coat back on.
“I don’t understand why you’d want that,” her father said, through the open window. “It’s not you.”
“It is me, Daddy,” Molly said. She couldn’t make her insides better, so she was making her outside worse. That’s what none of them understood. This is what she felt like on the inside. This was her skin.
