“He didn’t say she wasn’t, either.”
We both listened to the murmur of voices as Big Johnny and Aunt Jane spoke in the kitchen. I couldn’t make out the words. Then, a few minutes later, Aunt Jane appeared with two mugs of hot Milo and set them down on the coffee table. I picked mine up.
“The boats are coming in,” she said.
I blew on my Milo to cool it and nodded.
Great. Just what I need. Nipper Will telling me how I’ve fucked up again.
I couldn’t drink my Milo. I set it back down and stood up and shook my head at Button John when he made a move to follow me. I left the living room and headed up the stairs. It wasn’t even dusk yet, but the curtains in Mum’s room had been pulled closed. When I opened the door to look inside, it was dim and still. Mum was lying on her side under her blankets, her face resting on her pillow, her eyes closed. She looked peaceful as she slept. She looked small too, curled up like a little kid.
I leaned in her doorway and swallowed against the ache in my throat, suddenly overwhelmed with thoughts of both helplessness and gratitude. Helplessness because there was nothing I could do to keep Mum here, to reach her, to hold onto her, and profound gratitude because she was safe. That Dominic had been there today. And then helplessness came again, a new wave following fast on the first, because he couldn’t be there every minute of every day any more than anyone else could be—any more than I could be.
I heard Nipper Will downstairs, his voice raised loud in a questioning tone, although I couldn’t make out the words, and Big Johnny murmuring something in reply. I straightened up and pulled Mum’s door closed. Then I took a breath and held it until I felt strong enough to head down to the kitchen and face my brother.
I’d thought he’d look angry, but when I slunk downstairs and into the kitchen and I saw his face, he just looked tired. He caught my gaze, and then tightened his mouth and looked away, still nodding as Big Johnny clapped him on the shoulder.
And then, because there was nothing me and Will could ever get right, I said, “It wasn’t my fault.”
Because I didn’t just need him to know this, I needed to hear it back from him. I needed to know that he knew. I wanted to know he didn’t hate me, except that’s not what he heard, because I’d said it wrong. All he heard was a selfish kid trying to weasel out of everything.
“I never said it was,” he said with a glare.
“Well, it wasn’t.”
“It’s nobody’s fault,” Big Johnny said in a tone that left no room for argument, even if either of us would be willing to argue with a bloke who could snap our necks without breaking a sweat. Well, my neck, anyhow; he’d probably have to exert at least a small amount of force to snap Nipper Will’s.
Nipper Will shrugged off Big Johnny’s hand and began to unbutton his orange PVC jacket, revealing the sweat-stained T-shirt underneath. He usually had his gear off before he got inside, but either Big Johnny called him in first, or he’d already heard on his way home what had happened. Whatever the case, now he was filling the kitchen with stink—both fish stink and his own.
“I’ll fill the tub,” I said, shouldering past him and Big Johnny to head outside.
There was a pinch in my gut—guilt and anger, twisted up as tight as knotted fishing lines and impossible to tease apart again. I didn’t even know if I was more angry at Will for misunderstanding me or at me for fucking up what I was trying to say in the first place. And it wasn’t my fault—not what happened with Mum, and not even my and Will’s inability to talk without it turning into a slanging match. At least half of that was on him, too. But knowing that didn’t magically cure the guilt. Because I should have been here. Even if I knew, realistically, I couldn’t watch Mum twenty-four hours a day, I should have been here. If I’d been here, it wouldn’t have happened.
The pipes shuddered and squealed as I twisted the taps. I turned around and leaned on the edge of the tub, the ridge of it digging into my lower back, and a whole new wave of guilt rose up in me and completely obliterated the last one.
Dominic’s back bedroom window was open, the curtain blowing in the breeze. The curtain was ugly and flowery because he still hadn’t got new ones yet. There was a flicker of movement from inside as he passed the window.
I thought of him getting showered and dressed, all alone in his house with nobody to talk to except Princess Frank. Was he okay? Was he upset? Was it stupid to think he might be, even though he’d been doing the job he’d been trained to do? Or was it more stupid to think that just because he was a copper he was somehow immune to the same shakiness and bolts of anxiety that were shooting through me right now, even though I hadn’t even been there?
I wanted to see him. I needed to see him. To see if he was okay, and to thank him. I didn’t know how the fuck I was supposed to thank him for something as big as saving Mum from drowning, but even if I stumbled over every one of my words and made a total mess of it, then at least he’d know I tried. And he deserved that. Aside from how I felt about him—and wasn’t that a whole other knotted mess I didn’t have a fucking prayer of untangling?—he deserved to know how grateful I was.
Button John slipped out of the kitchen, his mug of Milo still in his hand. He leaned on the tub beside me. “Are we perving on the copper?”
I elbowed him. “Shut up!”
He grinned to show me he was just teasing. “I mean,” he said, and paused for a sip of Milo. “I’d do him.”
I ignored the jealousy—a new and exciting ingredient to add to the soup I was brewing in my gut—and elbowed him in the ribs. “What makes you think he’d do you?”
Button John preened. “Excuse you. I’m hot.”
“You reckon?”
“Well, I’m not too bad, and pickings are slim on Dauntless,” he said. His grin faded, and he nudged me with his shoulder. “You okay?”
I nodded and let out a long breath. “Yeah.”
I wasn’t, and by Button John’s wry look, he knew it. But he didn’t call me out on it, which was why we were best mates. That, and the pickings were also slim when it came to friends on Dauntless. But even if there were a million people living on Dauntless, I knew Button John would still be my best mate.
