Finally, before the sun completely vanishes over the high ground in the west, I throw open the side door and stand there looking at Finn meaningfully, waiting for him to look up and say something to me. He is all buckled over the top of the chain saw, which lies dismembered in front of him, pieces spread tidily over the packed dirt of the yard. He wears one of Gabe’s sweaters that, while several years old, is still too large for him. He has the sleeves doubled back into fat, perfectly even cuffs, and his dark hair is mussed into an oily rooster tail. He looks like an orphan, and that makes me cross, too.
“Are you going to come in and eat the cake while it still remembers being warm?” I sound a little bratty, but I don’t care.
Finn says, without looking up, “In a minute.” He doesn’t mean a minute and I know it.
“I’m going to eat it all myself,” I say. He doesn’t reply; he’s lost in the mystery of the chain saw. I think, just for that moment, that I hate brothers, because they never realize when something is important to you and they only care about their own things.
I’m about to say something that I might be embarrassed about later when I see Gabe walking his bicycle through the dusk toward us. Neither of us says hi to him as he opens the yard gate, pushes his bicycle through, and closes it again, Finn because he is self-involved, and me because I am annoyed at Finn.
Gabe puts his bicycle away in the little lean-to by the back of the house and then comes to stand behind Finn. Gabe takes off his skullcap and holds it in his armpit, his arms crossed, wordlessly watching what Finn’s doing. I’m not sure Gabe can actually tell what it is that Finn has eviscerated in the barely there blue light of evening, but Finn rocks the body of the chain saw slightly to give Gabe a better view. This apparently tells Gabe everything he needs to know, because as Finn looks up, tilting his chin toward our older brother, Gabe just gives a little nod.
Their unspoken language both entrances and infuriates me. “There’s apple cake,” I say. “It’s still warm.”
Gabe removes his skullcap from his armpit and turns to me. “What’s dinner?”
“Apple cake,” Finn comments from the ground.
“And chain saw,” I reply. “Finn made a lovely chain saw to go with.”
“Apple cake’s fine,” Gabe says, but he sounds tired. “Puck, don’t leave the door open. It’s cold out here.” I step back so that he can walk into the house, and as he does, I notice that he stinks of fish. I hate it when the Beringers have him cleaning fish. He makes the whole house smell.
Gabe pauses in the door. I stare at him then, at the way he stands, his hand on the door frame, his face turned toward his hand as if he is studying his fingers or the chipped red paint beneath them. The way his face looks seems far away, like a stranger’s, and I suddenly want to hug him like I used to when I was small. “Finn,” he says, his voice low, “when you get that together, I need to talk to you and Kate.”
Finn looks up, his face startled, but Gabe is already gone, disappeared past me into the room he still shares with Finn despite our parents’ room being empty. Either Gabe’s request or his use of my real name has gotten Finn’s attention in a way that my apple cake couldn’t, and he begins to assemble the parts rapidly, dumping them into a battered cardboard box.
I feel unsettled while I wait for Gabe to emerge from his room. The kitchen has turned into the small, yellow place that it becomes at night when the darkness outside presses it smaller. I hurriedly wash off three plates that match and cut a fat piece of apple cake for each of us, the biggest one for Gabe. Setting them out on the table, three lonely plates where once there would’ve been five, depresses me, so I busy myself making some mint tea to go with them. As I arrange and rearrange the teacups by our plates, it occurs to me, too late, that mint tea and apple cake might not go together.
By then Finn has begun the process of washing his hands, which can take centuries. Patiently and silently he lathers his hands with the bar of milk soap, working between each finger and rubbing each line in his palm. He keeps doing it when Gabe emerges in fresh clothing but still smelling of fish.
“This is nice,” Gabe tells me as he pulls out his chair, and I’m relieved, because nothing is wrong, everything will be fine. “Mint smells good after today.”
I try to think of what Mum or Dad would’ve said to him then; for some reason, our age difference feels like a massive void just now. “I thought they had you getting the hotel ready today?”
“They were shorthanded at the pier,” Gabe says. “And Beringer knows I’m quicker than Joseph.”
Joseph is Beringer’s son, too lazy to be quick at anything. Gabe told me once that we should be grateful for Joseph’s inability to think of anything but himself, because it is why Gabe has a job. I’m not grateful at the moment, though, because Gabe smells like fish since Joseph is a feck.
Gabe holds his tea but doesn’t drink it. Finn is still washing. I sit down at my place. Gabe waits a few more beats and then says, “Finn, enough, okay?”
Finn still takes another minute to rinse, but then he shuts off the tap and comes and sits across from me. “Do we still say grace if it’s only apple cake?”
“And a chain saw,” I say.
“God, thank you for this cake and Finn’s chain saw,” Gabe says. “Are you happy?”
“God, or me?” I ask.
“God’s always happy,” Finn says. “You’re the one who needs pleasing.”
This strikes me as incredibly untrue, but I refuse to rise to the bait. I look at Gabe, who’s looking at his plate. I ask him, “So, what?”
Outside, I hear Dove whickering where the pasture meets the yard; she wants her handful of grain. Finn looks at Gabe, who’s still looking at his plate, pressing his fingers into the top of the apple cake as if he’s checking the texture. I am suddenly aware of how tomorrow, the anniversary of our parents’ deaths, has been looming inside me, and how it never occurred to me to think that it might be the same for quiet, solid Gabe.
He doesn’t lift his eyes. He simply says, “I’m leaving the island.”
Finn keeps his gaze on Gabe. “What?”
I can’t speak; it’s like he’s said it in a different language, and my brain has to translate it before I can understand it.
“I’m leaving the island,” Gabe tells us, and this time the statement is firmer, more real, though he still doesn’t look at either of us.