Fury (6 page)

“Hạ Long City.”

“I have no idea where that is.”

“It’s far north Vietnam and on the east coast, about two and half hours from Hanoi and about three hours south of China. It’s—” She paused then took a deep breath, “It’s a heavy tourist area.”

My gut tightened at her hesitation. I didn’t understand it but it made me nervous as hell. “I’m actually scared for you, I think.”

“I’m not afraid of death, Ethan.”

“
Is death a possibility?
”

“It is. I’m prepared for it. Plus, I’m carrying hope with me, so I’m cool.”

I turned toward her, my left ear sinking into the lake. “Finley, you’re not even the slightest bit afraid?”

She looked at me, the lake water rippling from her movement. “Ethan, you can choose to hope or you can choose to fear. Fear is a crippling disease. It takes over and paralyzes. Hope bolsters, motivates. People who fear, die. People who hope, live. Even in death they live.”

I let her words sink into me while we paddled closer to shore to prevent ourselves from drifting too far. We did this when the music started to feel too distant. We floated in silence, listening to her dynamite playlist and memorizing the stars and moon.

“Finley?” I asked a half hour later.

“Hmm?”

“You said at the bar that we were never friends in high school.”

“Right.”

I turned toward her again, our bodies rippling with the movement. “Do you really believe that?”

She sighed toward the stars. “Yeah, I do.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said matter-of-factly.

She didn’t respond, but I could practically feel her eyes roll.

              “It’s bullshit,” I explained, “because there’s still merit in small conversations. Yeah, we might not have waxed philosophic, but we most definitely talked real life. I think you forgot that. To be honest, those seemingly nothing talks to you meant so much to me.” She furrowed her brow. “I needed to talk to someone so badly at that time about regular things, regular life. I was overwhelmed with responsibility then and felt like I was drowning. I found solace in our synoptic talks, Finley. I found worth in the culmination of those hundreds of hours we spent in one another’s company. I didn’t do that with anyone else.” I paused. “You were a soft place to fall,” I whispered.

Fragile tears pooled in her eyes and spilled into the lake beneath us. ”Don’t mistake me,” she explained. “They meant something to me as well. I just had no idea they signified anything to you. I assumed you were just passing the time with me, Ethan. It’s why I never considered us friends. I figured them as one-sided politeness on your end.”

“I was careful around you,” I admitted, her crush then an unspoken point, “but I was still vulnerable to you.” I was thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t want you to think that your friendship was only an escape for me either, though. I need you to know that I counted you as significant.” I looked at her and she looked at me. “You’re still significant, Finley.”

I tightened my arm and pulled her closer so that our legs and shoulders touched.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

CHAPTER SEVEN

              I dropped Finley off at her apartment in Kalispell and headed home around three in the morning. My jeans were soaked but I didn’t care because Finley had saved my life. My house was dark, save for the small porch light. That light, in fact, was the only one for fifteen miles all around us, further solidifying just how isolated Montana, I, really was.             

              The house lights were off as well so I was surprised to hear my dad speak from the sofa when I opened the front door. The television sitting on the old metal TV tray against the half wall that separated the tiny kitchen and the living area was playing a rerun of
Leave it to Beaver
, a reminder of how innocent life could be if you so chose it.

              “Hey, kid.”

              “Hey, Dad, what are you doing up so late?” I asked, startled to see him.

              “Waitin’ for you.”

              “Seriously? Shit, Dad, I’m sorry. Don’t you have to be up in two hours?”

              “First, watch your mouth.”

              “Sorry.”

              “And yeah, I have to up in two hours, but I’ve been trying to talk to you for days now. You come home when I’m asleep and wake up after I leave, Ethan.”

              I fell onto our twenty-year-old gold plaid sofa and squirmed a little because my knees were practically in my chest.

              “I never sit on this thing. Too tall,” I offered, grasping for any semblance of normality between us.

Normal was something my dad and I never did. Not since my mom died. She was our normal.

              “Maybe I should get a new one.”

              “What for? I doubt I’ll be living here for much longer,” I told him.

He didn’t reply but his chest stilled. I’d surprised him.

              He looked at me. “Where’re you going then?” he asked before taking a swig from his Mason jar iced tea.

              “Not sure,” I told him truthfully. “I just figured you’d want me out of here soon, seeing as how I’m getting older.”

              He took another sip from his tea and set the glass on the ground near his foot. When he did this, he leaned forward a little bit and groaned when he sat back. A little piece of me died when I saw him do this. He was getting older as well and I hated that. Dads were supposed to live forever. So were moms, for that matter. Realizing in that moment that he was indeed mortal, that he was utterly human, made my chest ache in unimaginable ways.

              “You always have a home here, son,” he finally said, making that ache in my chest throb just a little more stiffly, painfully.

              “Thanks, Dad.”

He nodded.“Sober, I see.”

              I laughed bitterly. “So?”

              “I’m relieved.”

              “Yeah, well, you can thank Finley Dyer for that.”

              He sat up, not so perceptibly that anyone who didn’t know him would take notice, but I was keen to my father’s everything. He was so subtle in his movements, his words, that if you weren’t paying close attention to him, you could miss an entire feeling. I knew from that barely there action that he was interested in this new revelation. For whatever reason.

              “Finley Dyer?” he asked. “She that russet-headed girl?”

              “Yeah, that’s her.”

He nodded his head, but I also caught the faintest hint of a grin.

              “She’s my friend,” I offered in explanation.

He could only nod his head again.

              I stood because there wasn’t anything I could offer him that could explain what Fin’s friendship meant to me. He knew what I was struggling with getting over Cricket. He should have known that Finley could be nothing more to me than an earthly salvation. I didn’t know why Finley found me when she did but I wasn’t going to question it. So I stood because I was done talking.

“‘Night, Dad.”

              “‘Night, son.”

              The next morning, I woke surprisingly early for some reason and decided to cut and clear up the dead tree that had fallen over earlier in the summer in our front field. After watching my father the night before, I couldn’t live with myself if I let him do it on his own. If I was being honest with myself, it was probably also a little out of guilt for all the late nights and late mornings.

              I secured my hair as well as bound a worn bandana across my forehead to catch the sweat. I threw on a pair of jeans and boots but didn’t bother with a shirt and headed out to the old storage shed at the back of the house to grab the chainsaw and the canister of gasoline.

              The tree fell about a quarter mile off and to the left of the house. The grass reached my knees and I felt it slap against my legs as I trudged through the field, the chainsaw balanced across my left shoulder.

              When I reached the tree, I discovered that it had only partly fallen over making it sort of dangerous for one person to cut down by himself. I walked around it, deciding to start at the top of the tree and work my way down.

              I’d just pulled the chain when I saw Finley’s little Bug kicking up dirt and gravel as she turned into my drive. She was about half a mile away from me and I was afraid she’d go all the way down the mile-long drive to our house before discovering I wasn’t there. I killed the chainsaw and set it against the trunk of the tree and for some reason I couldn’t explain, I started running toward her, raising my arms above my head in that usual way people did when they wanted to get someone’s attention.

              To my surprise, she saw me and cut through the grass before I’d gotten far from my day’s work. She came barrelling a little too quickly toward me and slid to a stop a few feet from the tree. Her windows were down and a song I barely recognized, but knew was from the nineties because it was Finley, came tumbling out. It had a heavy beat and it spilled happily all over the field surrounding me.

She tossed her door open and turned up the volume full blast and jumped out, singing at the top of her lungs. She stood on the hood of her car, her arms raised at her sides, and continued to belt out the tune the only way Finley knew how to do anything, with as much life as her heart could give.

              I burst out laughing almost immediately but that didn’t stop her. In fact, it only seemed to bolster her. She slid gracefully off the hood onto the field below and came skipping toward me still singing. She grabbed my hands and made me dance with her. I humored her but it was proving difficult because I was laughing so hard I could barely stand. When the song came to an end, she pulled away, her eyes gleaming and her chest pumping from the effort. She playfully fell to the grass, out of breath.

              “God, I love that song,” she said, smiling.

              I backed up and leaned on the hood of her Bug. “I can tell,” I teased.

              She looked over at me seemingly just realizing that we were out in the middle of my field. “What are you doing out here?” she asked, studying her surroundings.

              I gestured to the dead tree. “It fell down a few weeks ago when that big storm rolled across and I’ve, uh, been meaning to get to it before my dad did.”

              “That’s awfully nice of you,” she said, catching her breath.

              “Not really. My motivation is guilt.”

              “Best kind, really,” she joked.

              “Yeah,” I laughed, “the great persuader.” I studied her. “Don’t have work today?”

              “Nope. Well, not during the day. I don’t work Mondays through Wednesdays at the travel agency.”

              “What do you do for cash then?”

              “I, uh, work nights at Buffalo’s,” she admitted, avoiding eye contact.

I fought a smile.

She sat up, fighting a smile of her own. “Whatever, Moonsong! I do what I have to do. I’m not ashamed!”

Buffalo’s was the local burger joint. That may not seem that bad, but unfortunately its main clientele were usually between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. Local farm kids rarely get the opportunity to do much other than school and work on the ranches. Needless to say, when they get together, they’re, let’s call them a rambunctious lot. Oh, and I almost forgot, the manager makes the waitresses there sing and dance to songs from the jukebox on the bar top once an hour. Nothing seedy but, I mean, come on, it’s pretty girls in shorts and cowboy boots. You can imagine how much the local high school boys like it.

“I’m not knockin’ it, Fin. I just feel sorry for you is all.”

Her smile went crooked.

              “What time’s your shift?” I asked.

              “Six o’clock,” she answered, standing up and brushing the grass from her shorts and band T-shirt. “It’ll be busy but you should come out,” she prodded.

              “I know what you’re doing,” I said, walking back over near the tree and picking up the chainsaw.

              “What am I doing, Ethan?”

              “You’re tryin’ to keep me from the bar.”

              “So what if I am?” she asked, joining my side and propping herself on top of the dead trunk of the tree. She looked me dead in the eye.

              “I have no plans to go to the bar tonight,” I admitted.

              She narrowed her eyes. “Really,” she stated as a fact more than a question.

              I met her eyes. “Really.”

              “Why not? I mean, I’m glad and all, but I want to know why.”

              “Because of how close I was to
you know
…” I left the sentence hanging. Nothing more needed to be said.

              “Come in at eleven. It’s pretty dead by then. I’ll save you a booth.” She jumped off the tree trunk then tied her hair back. “Let’s do this,” she said, examining the tree.