I come up blank until the door bangs shut behind him, firelight catches his face, and Sol lets out a whoop of pure happiness.
Until clarity sharpens my dulled mind and I realise Sol’s brother has come home too.
Sev is alone. But he’s brought good news that Sol murmurs to me sometime later, as the music begins to ebb and people go home. Dav Bosanko has turned up safe and sound in Saltkiss Bay and Sol’s aunt is letting him stay.
Can’t lie. My brain’s been too full to give Dav’s whereabouts much thought beyond the toll this giant fucking mess has taken on Sol. But the relief I see in my best friend lets me know that maybe I should’ve paid more attention.
“I’m sorry.”
Sol tilts his head. “For what?”
“I didn’t really get that he was missing.”
“He wasn’t missing, he was AWOL. There’s a difference.”
“And he’s okay? Your mam too?”
“Everyone’s fine, Jackie. We can breathe for a while, eh?”
I don’t know what he means. But there are too many people around for me to follow a single train of thought. We close the pub and go upstairs. Sol and Oscar cook dinner. Roast cod, potatoes and greens—a meal we won’t eat until the first star appears in the sky.
Lithuanian rituals.
They’ve come to feel as normal as Cornish folklore to me. But me and Mal have our traditions too. Sausage rolls and caramel squares our nan used to callwee buns. Somehow Sol has found the time and headspace to stock the freezer with both and I love him more tonight than I ever have.
After dinner, the lowkey party crashes out in the living room, sprawled on the couches and cushions on the floor, passing round the sweet bread bites that make Oscar happy, even though he doesn’t get to eat that many.
Skylar loves them. A sight that has my brother hiding in the kitchen with me under the guise of washing up even though he’s yet to get his hands wet.
“You want to talk about it?” I wipe a plate and place it carefully on the shelf, braced for a non-answer. Mal’s been orbiting me all afternoon when he hasn’t been wrapped up in Skylar, as if he’s waiting for a moment like this, but I can’t tell if it’s for my sake or his.
“I’m all right,” Mal says after a beat too long, moving to the doorway to survey the living room while we talk. A sensible precaution, given what he says next. “They’re safe.”
His crew.
“All of them?”
Mal nods, but disquiet hovers in his gaze, an unsettled flicker even I can’t miss.
“They hurt?”
“Battered, but nothing unexpected.”
“Aye, but that doesn’t mean much if you don’t come back the way you left.”
Mal sucks in a breath that flares his nose and darts a glance into the living room, searching for Skylar. And I see the moment he finds that hard-won peace. See the comfort he takes from whatever he sees.
Makes me long for Sol, but whatever we are to each other, I know this is a conversation me and Mal need to have alone.
“Who are you worried about?”
Mal looks at me again. He’s drinking electrolytes, because he’s tired, but too wired and in love to go to sleep yet. “Orion.”
“Why?”
“He took more. Saw more. And he’s not like Moth and the others, you know? He’s a deeper thinker.”
I don’t know my brother’s friends that well. Just their faces. And that Orion was the one who came to see me when Mal got hurt in Syria. The soldier who travelled here instead of going home to look me in the eye and tell me my brother was hurt, but whole. That he’d seen a lot, but he’d be okay if he let me take care of him.