Scythe & Sparrow: Chapter 9

Fionn

I never thought I’d find crocheting meditative and soothing. But here we are.

I’m sure my brothers would have a field day if they knew that I was holed up in my room like a hermit, spending my Saturday night crocheting a fucking blanket. But I guess they equally take the piss out of me for my “gym obsession,” or as Lachlan likes to call it, my “Dr. Bellend gym-bro phase.” And Rowan would be chiming in with some unhelpful suggestions, or even worse, he’d take up crocheting just long enough to make me a mankini for my birthday. While Lachlan is a broody asshat, Rowan is fucking nuts, and will go to literally any lengths to make a point or get what he wants, no matter how reckless or ridiculous or absurd. The two of them together are the worst, and the torment would be never-ending if they found out all the details of my life at present.

Especially seeing as how the most beautiful but admittedly also terrifying woman I’ve ever met is sleeping in the room across from mine, and I’ve done nothing but try to force myself to avoid her as much as possible.

I haven’t been doing a great job of it either.

Even when I’m at work or running through town or at the gym, Rose will suddenly appear in my thoughts. I’ll hear her voice, that desperate, whispered help still a barb in my mind. Or I’ll see her face, like her startled expression when I pulled the door of her motor home open for her, the way her eyes glimmered in the summer sun when she realized it was me. I came here to Hartford in the hope that I would isolate myself from the things that made me weak, that made me want to poke and prod the hidden dark corners of my mind. But from the moment Rose showed up, she’s invaded my thoughts as though she’s stripping my immunity, cell by cell.

But it’s not me I’m worried about.

It’s her.

I lower the blanket I’m working on and pan my gaze across the room. Simple furniture. Nondescript paintings. Impersonal details on display, all of it dull and unoriginal. Nothing that would provoke any emotion or raise any concern. Nothing you’d look at and think, This belongs to a man who covered up a murder yesterday. Or, This belongs to a man who nearly bludgeoned a farmer to death with a wrench. And certainly not, This belongs to a man who killed his own father, and nobody knows it was him.

I set the blanket aside and brace my elbows on my knees, pressing my palms to my eyes as though it will push those thoughts back where they belong.

But they never truly fade away.

I still see my father in his drunken and drug-induced rage, still remember with vivid clarity the disappointment I felt when he returned after a week of being missing, those glorious few days when I’d started to believe he’d finally been killed as the ultimate consequence of his shitty life choices. After all, I was the one who discovered who he owed, who he stole from. It was me who thought if I let the Mayes family know that he’d taken money from them, they would get rid of my father for good. With every day that had passed that week, I realized I didn’t feel the way any decent person would for selling out their own father. Me? I felt relief. Even pride. I felt fucking invincible.

But I was just a kid.

I underestimated my father’s ability to get himself out of trouble. All that growing hope and serenity I felt was suddenly washed away when he reappeared on Saturday afternoon, slurring and cursing as he shoved my brother Rowan into the kitchen of our childhood home in Sligo, demanding a meal. He smacked Rowan across the face when my brother protested. When I tried to intervene, he shoved me against the counter and knocked my head against the cupboard hard enough that I saw stars. But through the flashing light, I still caught the way my brother’s eyes turned black with rage. How he looked to Lachlan where he stood in the living room, his fists curled at his sides. It was as though there was a secret switch that had been flipped between them with that fleeting look. When the last conflict with my father erupted, I slipped a knife into my hand when no one was looking. And I remember how a single word stood out like a beacon as my brothers kicked off the brawl that would end Callum Kane’s miserable life.

Finally, I thought.

Finally.

Even now, I still feel the rush of adrenaline. Hoping that it would be the end. Knowing it, as though it were part of my blood and bone, my DNA.

I’ve spent every day since trying to prove those instincts wrong. I’ve tried to be worthy of my brothers’ devotion, to be worthy of their sacrifices. I’ve wanted to make up for my role in his death that day, one my brothers didn’t even realize I played. And yesterday, it was like I simply … succumbed.

With a deep sigh, I check my watch. Eleven thirty. Eric Donovan has been dead for over twenty-four hours. If he hasn’t been reported missing already, it’s not going to take much longer. The tracks of our vehicles would have been washed away by last night’s downpour, if anyone even bothers to look on that deserted patch of land. His vehicle is submerged beneath murky gray water. Maybe, if we’re lucky, he’ll never be found. Wouldn’t a normal person feel remorse?

I don’t.

That’s the real reason I’m avoiding the woman across the hall. Because despite what she’s done, I’m not afraid of her. I’m afraid for her.

And I think about that as I set my crochet project in my bag and slide into bed, chasing sleep. I don’t feel remorse. My last conscious thoughts are questions that have no answers. What if I’ve spent all these years trying to cultivate something within me that just doesn’t exist? What if I’m just as much of a monster as the man who made me?

When I wake the next morning after a night of restless dreams, Rose is either asleep or out. Both of these options are strange. She’s usually up by six, always before me unless I’ve taken on an early shift at the hospital. I’ve gotten used to the smell of waffles and maple syrup and bacon in the morning, and though she makes enough for both of us every time, I always opt for a probiotic shake. But the scent has become welcoming. It feels like home. And Rose seems to enjoy spending the mornings in, making conversation that I try to keep to a minimum, or laying out the cards of her tarot deck to stare down at them with a crease between her brows. She plays with her wavy fringe when she has trouble interpreting their meaning. Sometimes she whispers “ta-da” and twinkles her fingers when she figures it out. Or she hums off-key. Or talks to the deck. Or catches my eye and grins at me as though she knew all along that I was watching like the fucking blue-balled hermit I am. I try to stay professional. Detached. But I feel like I’m caught in her orbit, sucked in by her gravitational pull.

And now I’m trying to sense that gravitational pull from outside her door, like some kind of fucking weirdo stalker.

I hear … nothing.

I rap the door with my knuckles, softly at first. When no sound comes from the other side, I knock again, a little louder this time. “Rose …?”

Against my better judgment, I open her door. And it’s like I’ve stepped into a room that belongs to someone else’s house.

The bedspread I bought for her is perfectly smoothed across the mattress. The yellow pillows are propped against the headboard. But there are extra pillows too, not just a few but maybe half a dozen of them, in floral patterns and stripes and polka dots that are all mismatched yet somehow work together perfectly. There are framed photos and knickknacks on the nightstand. There’s a painting I don’t recognize that’s propped up on the dresser. And plants. Plants everywhere. A monstera near the bed. Ivy on the shelf. Orchids on the windowsill. Three spider plants hang suspended from the curtain rod. In a matter of a few days, and entirely without my realizing it, Rose has transformed a once bland and lifeless room into something that feels like a home.

It leaves me with many, many questions. Such as, Where the fuck did she get all these plants? And when? How? She couldn’t have done it by herself. So who helped her?

And where the fuck is she? And why does it worry me so goddamn much that she’s not here?

I stop in front of one of the plants lined up on the dresser next to a mortar and pestle, the inner surface of the bowl stained with purple streaks. The first plant I don’t recognize. It has small indigo flowers and glossy dark berries. Beside it, there’s a small shrub with blossoms that look like pale pink stars. The third plant in the row has hood-shaped purple flowers clustered around a vertical stem. This one I know. It’s monkshood, also known as wolfsbane. A highly poisonous plant.

I take a few more steps into the room and lean in to look at the photos on the nightstand. Teenage Rose in her motorcycle gear, flanked by twin boys. Rose a few years older, her arm around a woman in an elaborate costume. One of José Silveria, standing proud beneath a curved sign of lights. Silveria Circus, it says. His voice surfaces from a few weeks ago, when he wrapped me in an unexpected embrace in Rose’s hospital room. Take good care of our Rose, he’d said. She needs this. She just doesn’t know it yet.

I don’t know if anyone needs a broken leg or a hospital stay or to be left behind in an unfamiliar town. But I nodded anyway.

I’m about to leave when I notice a postcard from Colorado Springs leaning against one of the frames. I turn it over.

Dear Sparrow,

I wanted to thank you. I was afraid. But I was more afraid of what would happen if I never took flight. Thank you for giving me my wings back.

Sincerely,

M

I can’t know for sure what the note means. But I think after the last few days, and given the row of plants on her dresser, I might have a clue.

I take one last look around the hidden garden of my guest room and leave, stalking out of the house with my bag of yarn and my half-finished blanket and my crochet hooks slung over my shoulder.

When I make it to Sandra’s house four blocks away, I don’t know if I’d rather turn around and go home to stew in my morose confusion or immerse myself in the Suture Sisters gossip in the fragile hope of taking my mind off Rose.

And that hope is immediately shattered when I enter Sandra’s home.

“Hey, Doc. How’s it hangin’?”

I come to a dead stop in Sandra’s foyer, my jaw slack, my expression dumbfounded. Rose is surrounded by the Suture Sisters crochet group, her leg propped up on an ottoman and a backpack resting next to her on the floor. A sly grin spreads across Rose’s face as she watches me standing motionless like a malfunctioning robot, my brain seemingly detached from my body.

“Dr. Kane,” Sandra says, and I finally break my gaze away from Rose when the host of our club swans into view. Her petite hand wraps around my wrist and she tows me into the living room. “Your friend Rose has come to join us today. Turns out, she’s an avid crocheter, did you know that?”

“No,” I reply as she leads me to the chair across from Rose and passes me a glass of lemonade. “I did not know that.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘avid,’ necessarily.” Rose’s eyes don’t leave mine as she leans forward to grab her bag from the floor and opens it, withdrawing a ball of black yarn and a set of crochet hooks. “My gran taught me growing up, and I like to dabble from time to time. But I might be a little out of practice. I’m probably not as good as Doc.”

The other Suture Sisters eat that shit up. Maude and Tina let out synchronized awws from where they sit on a velvet love seat as Liza, the group’s most voracious gossip, snorts a laugh, reaching over to pat Rose’s arm with her liver-spotted hand. “You’re far too kind, Rosie dear.”

Rose doesn’t correct her on the mispronunciation of her name. Quite the opposite, in fact. With the way she beams a devious little smirk at me, I’m pretty sure she’s already earned “Rosie” as a nickname, despite the fact she’s been here all of two seconds and doesn’t know these women. How the fuck did she get here and why the hell is this simultaneously grinding my gears and adorable and hot as fuck? It’s like she’s set off a bomb in my thoughts, and now they’re scattered everywhere, a mess I can’t hope to make sense of.

And she’s loving every second of it.

“I’ve seen your doilies,” Rose whispers, her eyes still latched to mine, innocent and wide, though the gleam in them is pure mischief. “I thought the one in the living room was really good.”

“Bless your heart,” Sandra says as she tops up Rose’s lemonade. Then she sits down next to Maude, who’s the quietest of the bunch, her focus captured by the work of her hands. “Dr. Kane—”

“Fionn, please.”

“Fionn. You didn’t tell us you had such a delightful young lady staying at your home.”

Maude and Tina share a weighted glance. Liza grins down into her yarn.

“Yes … well …” I clear my throat, trying to avoid the burn of Rose’s gaze on my face. I pull my yarn and hooks from my bag, laying them out on my lap before I start my first stitch. “Rose had an accident and needed a place to recover. So, here we are.”

“She told us. A motorcycle accident. Such a shame, but you can stay as long as you like—”

“I’ll have to get back to the circus as soon as I’m healed,” Rose interjects, as though she’s saving me from an explanation I’m ill-prepared to give. To be honest, I’ve felt ill-prepared for all the moments that have passed since I walked through Sandra’s door this morning, but I feel even more blindsided by the wave of disappointment at the prospect of her departure. “I’m sure Fionn will grow tired of my antics soon enough anyway.”

I snort.

“Nonsense, dear. I’m pretty sure our good doctor has had more excitement in the last few days than he has in the last few years. Isn’t that right, dear?” Sandra says, her gray eyebrows hiked halfway up her forehead as she pins her gaze on me.

Before I can answer, Liza leans forward in her chair, her eyes darting from one person to the next. “Speaking of excitement, have you heard about that Donovan boy?”

My heart stops beating and drops through my guts. When I look at Rose, the color has drained from her face, but she does an admirable job of staying composed as the Suture Sisters speak over one another with questions that Liza can’t keep up with to answer. Christina Donovan’s boy? The one in Weyburn? I thought she had two boys, which one is it? Did someone finally throw them in jail?

“Eric. The younger one. He’s missing,” Liza finally gets out, and the other women gasp and tsk. “Last anyone saw him, he was buying some beer. Told some friends he was going fishing but didn’t say where. He never showed up for work and he’s not answering his phone. Just … disappeared.”

Panic still crawls through my veins, but at least my heart restarts when it settles in that he hasn’t been found. I make some agreeable noises when they say how sad it is for Christina or that he probably just went on a bender and will turn up in a day or two, but I don’t miss Maude’s muttered words beneath the fray: “Let’s hope he doesn’t come back.” I’m so focused on catching every shred of the rapid-fire chatter that it takes me a moment to feel the weight of Rose’s attention on my face. When I meet her gaze, I see worry in her eyes, and then determination. And frankly, it’s the latter that truly scares me.

The conversation is still churning when Rose taps Sandra on the arm and pushes her crochet work toward her for inspection. “Do you think this yarn will be strong enough?”

I take a sip of my lemonade, trying to swallow the dread that’s crept up my throat as Sandra scrutinizes Rose’s pattern with a furrowed brow. “That depends,” she says. “What are you making, dear?”

“A sex swing.”

Lemonade shoots up my nose and burns. I cough and sputter my way through what would otherwise be a moment of suspended silence. But that only lasts for a blessed few seconds before I’m surrounded by a flurry of voices that tosses me into an alternate reality.

“You’ll need a softer heft for that. Maybe try the MillaMia merino.”

“You might want to consider a tighter crochet stitch.”

“Is it for you?” Maude asks without looking up. “Or does it need to take the weight of an adult man? Like, say”—her eyes flick to me—“maybe the doctor’s size?”

I drag a hand down my face as though it will scrape away my blush. “Jesus, Maude—”

“I don’t know,” Rose says as she looks toward the ceiling, tapping her lip with the end of her crochet hook. “Maybe …? I’m not sure.”

“What about Tencel bamboo yarn? Soft and strong.”

“Did you find a pattern?”

Rose shrugs. I die a little. “I was just going to wing it.”

“I have a pattern for a pot hanger,” Liza chimes in, pulling her bag onto her lap so she can rummage through the contents. She finds a magazine and flips it open, pointing to a photo of a crocheted hanging planter. “You could use this, maybe make leg holes right here. Ooh, and what about an extra pair of hanging handles and ankle braces?”

Sandra leans over to scrutinize the pattern, adjusting her reading glasses. “My Bernard could make you a wooden frame. It’ll have to be good and strong, don’t want something like that collapsing when you’re taking it for a ride, you know?”

“Yeah,” Rose says, taking the magazine from Liza, her smile barely subdued, her eyes glinting with amusement as they flow over the page in her hands. In a sudden flurry of motion, she tosses it in my direction and it smacks me in the face, falling open on my lap. “What do you think, Doc?”

I should probably give her a sharp glance, a cutting look. Say something about how I’m technically still her doctor, or at least offer a bland and noncommittal response. But as I look down at the photo of the crocheted hanger, I can actually picture it. Picture her. Her tongue leaving a trail of moisture across her lower lip. Her legs spread wide, her pussy glistening with arousal in the dim light of my room. Those dark eyes of hers, full of desire, feral with need for my—

“So? Think it’ll work?”

When I look up, it’s the first time I see a glimmer of apprehension flash across Rose’s face. I clear my throat, the trace of a burn still lingering from the lemonade. “I think …” I trail off, drawing out her doubt before I finally give her the barest hint of a conspiratorial smile. “I think you should use a thermal stitch for the base. It’s sturdy. Could support the weight of a six-foot-four adult male. Theoretically.”

Rose’s eyes dance in the morning light that streams through the blinds. “Even all Beast Mode muscly?”

I swallow a laugh as I set the magazine aside and resume my stitches. Though I try not to blush, I’m probably failing, judging by the heat coursing beneath my skin. “I mean, theoretically.”

There’s a single beat of silence, and then the women around me cackle. Though it takes a minute for my smile to really break free, it still does when I spot Maude dabbing at tears with the tissue she always keeps folded beneath her bra strap, or when Tina wheezes “sex swing” and laughs so hard she has to shuffle to the bathroom.

“Well, thank God,” Liza says as she pulls a flask from her bag and dumps a generous splash of vodka into her lemonade, stirring the mixture with the end of her crochet hook. “We were starting to wonder if you were going to run off back to Ireland and join the priesthood.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m not joining the priesthood.”

“Valid concern.” Liza shrugs and downs a third of her glass. “We’d be heartbroken to lose you. Especially when you’ve finally come out of your shell a little bit these last two weeks.”

I try to think back on last week’s meeting and what I said or did that was any different than the times I’ve been here before. I know I didn’t explicitly say anything about how Rose broke into my clinic, or how I rode with her in the ambulance to the hospital. But maybe I did open up a little more than usual when I told them about scrubbing in for a surgery. Maybe I did say something about a patient I was worried about. A case that was weighing on my mind.

Liza smiles as though she can see where my thoughts have gone, and the conversation eventually veers to other topics, other gossip. We spend a couple hours there, and I finish the blanket I intend to donate to the hospital and then start a new one, soliciting guidance from the group for the difficult jasmine stitch. When noon rolls around, everyone packs up, and I help Rose to her feet before I take her bag alongside my own and we leave to a chorus of final advice about the sex swing.

At first, we walk in silence. It’s hard to know how to start. What to say. I know I’m good at diagnosing illnesses and treating injuries and the precision and science of medicine. But with Rose, I feel out of my depth. Do I start with the Suture Sisters? Or the whole sex swing fiasco? Or do I go head-on with tackling the subject of Eric Donovan?

But while I’m overthinking my options in silence, Rose just dives right in. “Hey,” she says.

A brief smile passes my lips. Maybe it doesn’t have to be so complicated. “Hey.”

“I like the Suture Sisters.”

“Yeah. They’re … entertaining. Not what I expected when I went to my first meeting. I thought I’d be stitching up wounds for a women’s fight club or roller derby, not … just … stitching.” I glance down my shoulder at her and Rose is grinning, clearly pleased with herself. “How’d you find out about that?”

“I saw a flyer on the bulletin board outside Wesley Pharmacy the other day. Thought I might check it out. Imagine my surprise when I called and Sandra mentioned your name.”

“You were not surprised at all, were you?”

“The doily kind of gave you away.”

“Much less lethally cool than the piña colada scent giving away an eyeball-stabbing incident.”

Rose shrugs around her crutch pads. “I dunno. Those crochet hooks could do some damage.”

“And while we’re on the topic of crochet, a sex swing? Seriously?”

“I figured it would be a good distraction. It worked.”

“You’re nuts.”

“I’ve been living with you for a week, and I killed a guy yesterday and you’re just figuring that out now? I still think we need to revisit the conversation about your credentials, Dr. Kane.” Though I try to give her a chastising look, it doesn’t really stick, not when I see so much worry and unease hidden beneath her teasing smile. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Always,” I say.

It takes her a long moment of watching me before she says, “You could have turned me in. Or called the cops. You could have driven me straight to the station.”

I shrug when she says nothing further. “I could have, sure.”

“So why didn’t you? Why did you help me?”

“Because you asked me to,” I say, and her whispered plea in my clinic resurrects itself from where it lies just beneath the surface of my thoughts. I’m sure she has no idea how much it has stuck with me. How sometimes I still hear it in my dreams.

Rose watches me, doubt written into the crease that appears between her brows. “Most people would have said no.”

“I might look like most people. But I’m not.”

“Trust me,” she says with an eye roll, “you do not look like most people.” A dusting of blush rises in her cheek, and she turns away. Even though I know I shouldn’t let it, my heart still flips over in my chest with this quiet admission that she might look at me and like what she sees. Rose waits until her blush is gone before she faces me once more. “This whole thing with Eric … the river … What if this all goes tits up?”

What if it does?

I’ve asked myself that many times over the past two days. Tried to imagine what life would be like if anyone discovered my role in Eric Donovan’s demise. But the thing that surprises me the most is how much I think about the opposite question. “What if it doesn’t?”

“But you could get in so much shit.”

“You could get in even more shit.”

“Yeah,” Rose says, drawing the word out. “That’s definitely the truth.”

“This thing with guys like Eric … have you been at it for a while?” I ask, thinking of the plants and the postcard with the cryptic note on her dresser.

“Kind of.” Her head swivels, and she squints into the distance, her gaze landing across the street on a couple plucking weeds from a flower bed near their driveway. “Maybe not the time and place to get into details, but I used to just supply the means, if you know what I’m talking about. But now I’m trying to take on a more … active … role. Didn’t work out once.”

“You mean Matt?”

Rose shakes her head and looks away, but not before I catch a glimpse of a glassy sheen in her eyes. My hand tightens around the straps of our bags to keep myself from reaching for her. Before I can say anything reassuring, she takes a deep and cleansing breath, then manufactures a brittle smile. “Anyway,” she says, clearing her throat, “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable in your own home. Would you like me to go?”

“Stop asking me that. Please. I’m not uncomfortable with you there.” I leave out the part about how strange it was to wake up to her absence today. Or how much I like what she’s done to the guest room. “I’m not used to it. But I don’t dislike it.”

“Round of applause for Dr. McSpicy Beast Mode on his exemplary performance of a compliment,” Rose booms in a theatrical ringmaster tone, pausing long enough to let go of a crutch and sweep her hand toward an imaginary audience. “And now for our next magic trick, witness Rose Evans’s disappearing self-esteem.”

Though I snort a laugh at the oohs and aahs she mimics from her circus spectators, my stomach still drops with the weight of her words. “I like you—”

“I can sure tell—”

“It just … takes some getting used to, having someone else in my home. Not because of the … thing … that happened. I mean, just generally. I’ve become accustomed to being alone, I guess.” I shrug and I can feel her watching, the way she hunts through my expression like she can burrow right into my mind. And sometimes, I think she does. She gets inside and pulls every loose thread, unraveling sutures through old wounds, opening them up to look inside. It’s as though she’s tearing my thoughts apart, stitch by stitch, until I don’t recognize the pattern of who I’m supposed to be.

“What was she like?” Rose asks softly. My steps slow and she matches my pace. When I look down at her with a question tugging at my brows, she gives me a sad smile. “The woman who broke your heart. What was she like?”

My step falters on a crack in the pavement. How does she figure me out like this? I don’t have anything of Claire in my home, I left it all behind when I fled Boston. There’s nothing she could have found, no one here who even knows the story. But she seems so sure, and something about that confidence in her deductions makes me want to tell her the truth. On paper, Rose is dangerous. A murderer. And I’m an accessory to her crime. But she doesn’t feel like someone to fear. She feels like someone to trust. And that scares me.

I let out a long breath, a thin stream of air between pursed lips. “She was …”

The opposite of you.

I shake my head. Try again. “She was someone I’d known for a long time. We met in college. She was the work hard, play hard type. She always wanted her life to look perfect. But she craved a bit of chaos underneath.”

“Can’t say I blame her there,” Rose says as she swings along on her crutches beside me. “I mean, I live in a literal circus for fucksakes. Not sure what’s more chaotic than traveling across the country and riding around in the Globe of Death for a living.”

“At least that’s chaos with a purpose. I think Claire’s chaos was purely to fuck shit up and watch everyone else scramble in the aftermath. At the time, I thought she was exciting. She had this pristine life with an unpredictable twist. I thought she was what I wanted.” I look across the street where kids are playing in a sprinkler on a lawn, their bikes discarded on the sidewalk. Farther down, neighbors chat across a hedge, sharing a midmorning beer. I know there is an underbelly of darkness in small towns just like in big cities. But something about Hartford feels comforting, even if it might be an illusion. “Looking back, I’m not sure I knew what I wanted at all. So I came here to clear my head. Guess I’m still figuring it all out.”

“And how’s that going for you?”

I laugh, hiking the straps of our bags up higher on my shoulder. “Up until a couple of weeks ago, it seemed to be going fine. And then the circus came to town, and nothing’s been the same since.”

Rose’s eyes dance, the color warming to a dark amber hue in the summer sun. “I’m sorry about that.”

“I’m not,” I reply. I catch the flicker of surprise across her face before she grins. “I mean, it was kind of boring until you came around. Although you could make it slightly less boring, and I’d be okay with that.”

“But you have a drug-addicted raccoon that haunts your office. How boring could it possibly be?”

“You’d be surprised.” We fall into a moment of silence, and though Rose usually fills those quiet chasms, this time she doesn’t. It’s as though she knows there’s more I want to say, but she doesn’t want to push me into it. “I proposed to her,” I finally admit, something I don’t usually share with anyone. “She said no.”

“The raccoon?” I guffaw a laugh and Rose’s eyes sparkle with delight. “Such a shame. I would have loved to come to the wedding.”

“You could have been the officiant.”

“Even better.”

“The only caveat is that it would have been circus themed, so you’d have needed a clown costume.”

“Sign me the fuck up.”

Our smiles slowly fade. Memories take hold in the silence. Pain dulls with time, but can still linger, waiting to be polished so it can shine once more. “I’m sorry that someone broke your heart,” Rose says, and her voice is so soft and melancholy that I look over at her.

“Thank you.” I don’t tell her I’m not sorry. That I spent a long time in mourning, not for losing Claire, but for how my whole reality seemed to shatter the moment I got down on one knee and she said no. I thought I loved her, and maybe I did love the idea of her. But more than that, I wanted the life I had envisioned for us. A safe and secure and straightforward marriage. A surgical career in one of the best hospitals in the country. What my brothers had fought so hard and so long for me to have. A perfect life. Atonement for the sin I had committed, a final twist of the key to lock my secret away. Proof that I am a good man, deserving of a good life. That moment I got down on one knee and Claire Peller said no, that she wanted a future with someone more exciting, darker, someone more … real … it tore me apart. Just not in the way everyone believes.

Maybe I was never deserving of all the things I thought I wanted. And that key? It just never turned.

And I’m starting to wonder what would happen if I just opened the door.