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“Why are you being like this?” she cried. “I don’t deserve you being all kind to me! I’ve been a total cunt, Finn.”
“Yeah, you have been mind,” I agreed. “But you know what? You’re also right. I did leave you, and I swear I missed you every single day, and I never, ever stopped loving you.”
“Sinéad love, the car’s here,” Niamh called from the doorway, her voice gentle. My little sister’s grip didn’t loosen.
“Look, if you want, we can just start this whole ‘family’ thing again, yeah?” I said quickly. “Just whenever you like, at whatever speed is good for you. We’ve got all the time in the world now. Just come with us to Spain where it’s all good and safe, and the rest can follow, yeah?”
“Ah, she said you’d be like this,” Sinéad said, then sniffed loudly and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Lilith, I mean. I didn’t believe her, mind. I reckoned I’d done too much for you to forgive me.”
“Fear and anger aren’t exactly conducive to being our best selves,” I said. “And I’m speaking from very personal experience. As far as I’m concerned there’s absolutely nothing to forgive.”
Sinéad finally gave a little snort of laughter into my chest. “Fuckin’ hell, she said you’d say that, too, the witch.”
“Yeah, she’s like that. Between you and me, I’m leaning towards witchcraft too,” I admitted, then kissed my little sister on her forehead for the first time in years. “But I promise you’ll get used to it. Now go on, get your backside in that car and I’ll see you tomorrow. We can talk more then, yeah?”
“Yeah, that sounds good,” Sinéad said then gave me a hesitant smile. I watched incredulously as she walked away, mouthing a silent ‘Thank you’ to Lilith as my sister passed her.
“You managed all of that in a few minutes?” I asked as Lilith came over to join me.
Lilith shook her head. “No, Sinéad did. She just needed someone to create the space for her to breathe. To be honest I was just hoping to put a few cracks in her wall, but true to form it seems your sister decided to take a wrecking ball to it.”
“Yeah, well whatever you did, thank you. It looks like I might just have got my sister back.”
Lilith leaned against me and I put an arm around her shoulders. “Looks like. And now my love, we’re just one tiny step away from being home.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lilith
The moment we got back to our hotel room Finn threw himself down on our massive bed. “Jesus but that was some fuckin’ day.”
I rubbed my temples. My nascent headache from earlier had definitely stepped up another few notches, but I supposed that was hardly surprising considering the events of that afternoon. “You’re telling me. Are you still doing okay?”
“Well, apart from burying my bloody awful excuse for a mother, dealing with Sinéad, coming face-to-face with a noncin’ terror from my childhood and getting whacked across the head with a bottle, I reckon I’m doing just grand, thanks for asking.”
I grinned. “Well that’s fabulous to hear. I’d hate to see what you’d call a bad day.”
He gave his very best seductive smile. “Ah that, a chuisle? That would be a day without you.”
“Oh you charmer.” I sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off my shoes. “And if I wasn’t ready to sleep as though it were an Olympic sport, I’d be more than happy to return the adoration.”
Finn pulled me to him in a gentle embrace. “S’okay; in a couple of days we’ll be home, then we can lock the bedroom door against marauding family members and spend a whole week carrying out a practical demonstration. What d’you reckon?”
I nestled my head into his shoulder. “Oh, I’m already counting down the seconds.”
“It’s an amazing thing you’re doing, you know. Letting them in like this.” Finn said, and gave my ear a playful, skilled nip.
Despite my weariness I gave a little shiver of pleasure. “Do you mean physically, or mentally?”
“Both, I suppose. I mean, before we met you were kinda private and, well, you know…” He tailed off as he tried to find the right word.
“A professional misanthropist?” I suggested.
Finn winced, then laughed. “Oof. I wouldn’t be that harsh, but… yeah, now you say it, pretty much. But first it was me, then Sceolan, then the demon kittens, and now you’re going to have a houseful, at least for a while, including a baby and a teenage gremlin.”
I gave that some consideration. “Ironically, I think it’s the level of threat that makes things easier. The thought of Sol getting his sticky fingers on a canvas is significantly less worrying than the O’Hallorans getting their hands on any of us. Whether I’ll be quite such a stoic when it happens is another question entirely, but we deal with it as it happens, I suppose. And I can always get you to build a soundproof shed in the garden for Sinéad.”
Finn grinned. “Not a bad idea, that. And it would give us somewhere to go to and fuck like mink.”
