Oh, thought Blue. So this is what I can’t have.
Not being able to kiss whoever she fell in love with didn’t feel so different than not having a cell phone when everyone else at school did. It didn’t feel very different from knowing she wasn’t going to be studying ecology abroad for college, or going abroad period. It didn’t feel very different from knowing that Cabeswater was going to be the only extraordinary thing about her life.
Which was to say that it was unbearable, but she had to bear it anyway.
Because there was nothing terrible about kissing Noah Czerny, apart from him being cold. She let him kiss her, and kissed him back until he pulled back on an elbow and clumsily wiped away some of her tears with the heel of his fist. His smudge had gotten very dark, and he was cold enough that she shivered.
Blue gave him a watery smile. “That was super nice.”
He shrugged, eyes doleful, shoulders curled in on themselves. He was fading. It wasn’t that she could see through him. It was that it was hard to remember what he looked like, even while she was looking at him. When he turned his head, she saw him swallow. He mumbled, “I’d ask you out, if I was alive.”
Nothing was fair.
“I’d say okay,” she replied.
She only had time to see him smile faintly. And then he was gone.
She rolled onto her back in the middle of the suddenly empty bed. Above her, the rafters glowed with the summer sun. Blue touched her mouth. It felt the same as it always did. Not at all like she had just gotten her first and last kiss.
32
Get in,” Ronan said.
“Where are we going?” asked Matthew. But he was already climbing in, throwing his bag in the back. He shut the door. The interior of the car instantly smelled like a cologne sample.
Ronan put the BMW in gear. Aglionby shrank in the rearview mirror. “Home.”
“Home!” yelped Matthew. Clutching the door handle, he stared over his shoulder as if bystanders would divine their destination. “Ronan, we can’t. Declan said —”
Ronan slammed on the brakes. The tires squealed obligingly and the car jerked to a halt by the sidewalk. The car behind them honked and went around. “You can get out here and walk back, if you want. But I’m going. Do you want to or not?”
His younger brother’s already round eyes were even rounder. “Declan —”
“Don’t say his name.”
Little dimples appeared in Matthew’s chin, the sort that had meant, when he was three or four, that he was going to cry. He did not cry. Ronan wished for a half a second that he didn’t hate Declan, for Matthew’s sake.
“Okay,” Matthew said. “Are you sure it will be okay?” “No,” Ronan replied, because he always told the truth. Matthew put on his seat belt.
Ronan rummaged through his MP3 player until he found a playlist of bouzouki music. Matthew hadn’t played since Niall Lynch died, but he’d been pretty good at it before then. It felt indulgent. Ronan rationed the music from their old life, as if he used up a bit of his memories of his father every time he played it. Surely this occasion warranted it, though.
As the tune plucked through the speakers, his younger brother let all of the air escape from his lungs. And Ronan drove home for the second time.
This time felt different. Having Matthew along should have made returning to the Barns feel more familiar than before, but instead it only served to remind Ronan of how forbidden this was. The sunshine made it a more anxious trip as well, as if the bright light left them more exposed as they drove down the driveway.
Ronan went slowly until he verified that the home nurse’s car wasn’t there, and then he drove around the back of the house to where an overgrown, mildew-green equipment shed stood.
“Open that door,” he ordered Matthew. “Hurry up.”
Matthew scrambled out, pawed away some of the creeper, and struggled to lift the metal door. He dragged a small, rusted lawn mower out of the way, and Ronan backed the BMW in. He turned it off, pulled down the door again, and checked to be sure the tires hadn’t left obvious marks.
“James Bond,” Matthew remarked inexplicably. He was incredibly cheerful. “What’s that?”
Ronan held the puzzle box under his arm. “A shoe box.”
Matthew cocked his head, working this out. He took in the facts: the perfectly square box was clearly wooden, covered with strange markings, and several inches shorter than his older brother’s feet.
Matthew blinked. Then he said, “Okay!” Trotting ahead to the back door, he found the key hidden by the boot pull.
“Wait,” Ronan warned. “Keep an ear out. If someone comes down the driveway, get in the basement. And turn off your phone, for God’s sake.”
“Right! Sure! Clever!”
He gallumphed into the house before Ronan, who looked over his shoulder before he locked the back door behind them. He heard Matthew’s feet head toward the sitting room, hesitate, and then pound percussively up the stairs to his bedroom. Matthew’s affection was a sloppy, demonstrative thing, and he had not seemed to know what to make of their now-motionless mother.
Ronan followed the hall to the sitting room more slowly, listening for the sounds of an approaching car between each footfall. The sitting room was dimmer and quieter than the hall, with no windows to let in the simmering afternoon or the trilling birds. The door to the basement was on the far wall, so he’d be able to intercept Matthew if anyone else arrived.
Ronan went directly to the desk against the wall, not looking at his mother. His father had called this desk his “office,” as if his work had required a legitimate form of paperwork. Ronan wondered if his mother had known what Niall Lynch did for a living. Surely she must have. She must have known she was a dream thing.
Suddenly, for the briefest of moments, panic forced itself up.
Am I a dream creature? Would I know?
Then he let reason tamp the thought down. All of the boys had baby books, with photos and hospital records. He had a blood type. He had been born, not conjured. He was real.
What is real?
Was something real once it had been taken from a dream? If so, was it real the moment he thought it?
He stole a glance over his shoulder at his mother. She didn’t seem particularly logical now, sitting motionless and uncaring for months and months. But he had never doubted her before her father’s death, even when she was the only parent for months at a time.
She’s nothing without Dad.
Declan was wrong. She existed apart from Niall Lynch, even if he was her sole creator.