Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“Rory, feck are you doin’, boy?” the other one yells.
The one with the knife currently in his bullet wound—the one whose name we now know is Rory—responds, “Feck you, Angus! Tá scian agam i mo feckin ghlúin!”
I don’t speak traditional Irish, so ‘feck’ is the only thing I can make out clearly, but I assume he’s saying something about having a six-inch blade jammed into the existing hole in his skinny, Celtic leg.
“Where’s your phone?” Eliza asks him.
“Dunno. Was in my jacket,” he whimpers.
She nods to Charlie (or Brenden—again, don’t know, don’t care), who grabs Rory’s jacket from off the back of a chair, fishes through it, and pulls out a cracked, but apparently functional iPhone. He tosses it to Eliza, who slides up on the screen while holding it in front of Rory’s face. It unlocks. She tabs at the screen; looks for what she wants; shows the phone to Rory, who nods; closes her eyes; takes a breath; presses the screen; turns on the phone’s speaker; and holds it in the air in front of her own face.
It rings. And rings. And rings. And then, just as I’m certain it’s going to go to voicemail, someone answers. It’s a voice I know well. A voice from my past. A voice from my present. A voice I would’ve been happy never to hear again.
“Aye? What do ye need?” says Brasil Lynch.
CHAPTER SIX
TODAY. LATER.
The sun is bright today. It’s always bright here, I suppose, but today it seems especially so. And speaking of the sun…
I had to go through about ten dusty, ancient trunks in the attic before I found it. The dress. The yellow one. I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure I still had it. I honestly couldn’t believe it survived all these years. But then I can’t believe I did either.
Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I’m not really here. Maybe this is all just some alternate reality, a dream by someone else, and what I’m experiencing now isn’t me at all, but only some recollection of an idea of me.
Or maybe I’m just thinking about it all too much because today is a big day.
Such an odd thing we do: Mark occasions. Document the passage of time. As if time is a real thing and not just some figment of our imaginations. Some concept we humans have invented to… I don’t know. Know that we’ve been here, I guess.
We shouldn’t have to create special occasions to remember. To mark moments. To celebrate or mourn or whatever it is we’re trying to do. We could just choose to acknowledge each day that we get a chance to wake up, breathe air, and try again to be the best version of ourselves that we can. Can’t we? Do that? Can’t that be the default rather than the exception? I want to believe it can.
It’s why I looked for the dress and pulled it out, deciding that it is time for it to be worn again. It’s still yellow, still pretty, just a little faded and a little worse for wear, but not unacceptably so. Kind of like the person who bought it. It still reminds me of the sun—just a bit lower in the sky than it used to be, I suppose. Aren’t we all?
Once we moved here, I went to see if the lady at the fish market who sold it to me all those years ago was still there. She wasn’t. She was gone. Nobody seemed to know who I was talking about or who she was. Nobody remembered her. It made me sad. I wanted to see if her life was still exactly the same or if, like mine, it had changed dramatically in ways she couldn’t ever have seen coming.
Recollections sprint past my mind’s eye.
The bug.
The blue.
The boxing gym.
Alec.
Danny.
Danny.
Alec.
London.
Sydney.
The diamond.
Alec.
The boat.
Danny.
The Watsons.
Crown Jewels.
London.
The house.
The rooftop.
The memories I lost.
The memories I retained.
The other house.
The triangle.
The boat.
Belfast.
The lost.
The found.
There’s no real order, rhyme, or reason. They just tumble along, filling up my mind like a foggy dream and making my synapses pulse like sparks off a fire, popping and crackling and exploding into a night sky.
Like a bonfire. Like the bonfire we’re having tonight. It was my idea, the bonfire. I didn’t mention to anyone that part of the reason I thought we should have it is because it will maybe burn up some of the things we’ve yet to let go of. Or, at least, that I have yet to let go.
It’s been fourteen years. Most of them good. No, most of them great, especially when compared to the almost quarter of a century I lived before. But still… some things stay with you your whole life. I think the trick is to keep the things that serve you and let go of the things that don’t. If you’re going to have passengers riding with you your whole life, you should try to make sure they’re not a bunch of backseat drivers.