Page 41 of Lawless
“Wet it first.” I elbowed him out of the way and turned the tap on.
The plaster was grimy. It was hard to tell, but it probably smelled as bad as the rest of him. I grabbed his wrist and held his hand under the tap, just to soften up the ends of the plaster enough so they’d lift easily. It took me a moment to realise that Will was watching me, his brow creased, and a weird, almost soft expression on his face. I jolted. “What?”
“Nothing.” His mouth turned down. “What’s for dinner?”
“Pasta. Mum wanted to eat early, so yours is in the fridge.”
“Thanks,” he said gruffly, then cleared his throat. He pulled his hand away. “I’ve got it. I can do it.”
“You stink,” I said, going to the fridge and getting his dinner out. “You should have a shower first. I can heat this up for you.”
He tore the plaster off the heel of his hand and inspected his wound. He showed it to me; the clean, pink rectangle of skin, knotted stitches curling up like dead spiders’ legs, looked almost bright neon against the rest of his filthy skin. “Oil leak.”
“Go and have a shower,” I said again. “Put a new Band-Aid on first.”
He grunted and headed upstairs.
I heated his dinner up for him; Will was a grumpy fucker, and we butted heads more often than not, but he was still my brother and he worked hard for our family. Which was one of the things that shit me the most—he wouldn’t have to work so hard if he let me shoulder some of the load, but I’d always just be a useless little kid to him.
I grabbed a dishcloth and wiped down the kitchen bench, then put some water on the stove so I could boil some eggs for sandwiches tomorrow. I heard the shower cut off upstairs, and the house’s old pipes groaned and rattled in response.
After a while, Mum wandered into the kitchen and put the popcorn bowl in the sink. Sometimes she remembered to do stuff like that, and sometimes she didn’t. She smiled and put her arms around me for a hug. Then she looked at the plate of pasta at the table, still steaming from the microwave. “Is it dinner time, Natty?”
“No, this is for Will.”
She straightened in my arms, her expression brightening. “Will’s back?”
“No. It’s—” I swallowed. “It’s for Nipper Will, Mum.”
I looked over her shoulder. Will was standing in the doorway, his hair damp from the shower. His gaze held mine, and I wondered if his guts felt like mine did—like Mum was twisting them up and feeding them through the mangle on the old tub outside.
“Oh,” Mum said, and sighed as though she was disappointed. Like she thought Dad was just running late, but any moment now he’d walk through the door. Sometimes I wished he would too, just so Mum would be Mum again. Sometimes I sat on the harbour wall at night to catch glimpses of any passing boats and imagined that my dad was on one of them, heading home to us to make everything right again.
They’d never found his body. And it didn’t change anything—of course he’d drowned in that storm, dragged down by the ocean he’d loved so much—but it gave a place in my mind for crazy fantasies to build. Maybe he’d hit his head and lost his memories. Maybe he’d been picked up by a cargo ship, and even now he was working his way from port to port, wondering why his heart kept pulling him towards a tiny little speck of an island in the middle of the ocean. Maybe it’d take him another ten years to get back here, but he’d find his way. Dauntless Islanders always found their way back home.
The difference between me and Mum was that I knew it wasn’t real, however much I wanted it to be.
Will stepped into the kitchen. He grabbed a fork from the drainer and sat down at the table. Nodded at me and then dug into his pasta.
Mum pulled away from me, and I watched her watch him. She pressed her mouth together in a shaky line, and tilted her head, and then looked away from him, her expression suddenly blank as though she’d already forgotten about him. Maybe she had.
“You didn’t put another Band-Aid on,” I said. “You’re not supposed to get your stitches wet.”
“Don’t bloody start,” Will muttered, but there was no heat in his words.
Mum wandered out of the kitchen, tugging her robe tightly around her body.
I filled a glass with water from the tap and sat down across from Will. It was dark outside, and quiet. I wondered if Dominic was still up. Probably. It was pretty early. I bet he was sitting in his kitchen just like we were, except instead of eating pasta he was eating toasted sandwiches because he was terrible at cooking. I thought of when I’d shown him how to cook mudcrabs, and my chest ached. It wasn’t just the sex stuff that I’d never have again with him—it was moments like that as well; everyday moments that were just as amazing as kissing.
“You were late tonight,” I said, if only to pull my thoughts away from Dominic.
Will grunted into his dinner. “Took longer to unload. We were down a hand.”
“What?” I hadn’t heard anything about that.
“Young Archie,” Will said, with a look that dared me to complain.
Young Archie Hooper’s wife, Anna, was sick. She’d been going to the mainland for chemo for months now. Some days she was good, but on the days she was bad, Young Archie stayed with her. I hadn’t seen Anna sitting out in the sunlight by the harbour wall for a while, so maybe she’d been having a lot of bad days lately.
