As Cathy watches them, standing just a few feet from the outhouse, a strange feeling overcomes her. Some sort of trepidation. It neutralizes the frustration she feels with her sister, but that doesn’t mean that she likes it. She can’t quite say what’s bothered her. Something about the scene of Joe looking at Frannie over the fence. Cathy can’t read his expression. It’s tender, but it is something else too. Maybe withheld.

Cathy is overcome with nerves about what is to come. Thinking about the power that each holds over the other, the actions they could take, the lies that they could tell. Something tells her that this is far from over. That the cracks are going to get deeper, form chasms, enough to move continents.

65.

Joe

‘It’s late,’ Frannie says to him in the dark of their gardens. Her voice is clear and high, like a bell. He didn’t realize she knew he was there. ‘Could smell your cigarettes,’ she adds, as though he vocalized that thought.

‘It is late,’ he agrees.

‘You’re mad at me.’

Joe glances up at the moon, a nightlight for just the two of them. ‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ he says sadly. ‘Yes. I just wish I had known who we were burying.’

She advances towards him and reaches a hand over the fence. He can only just see the top of her head, dark hair illuminated by the moonlight, and her hand, reaching towards his. He grabs it tight. He can feel her bones.

‘What can I say except I’m sorry?’ she says. ‘I’ll say it as often as you like. Every day for the rest of my life. Every hour.’

She turns her head back towards the house momentarily, looking up at Paul’s window. He can just see her forehead and the tip of her nose, painted a soft dark yellow by the lights of her house.

‘What did you mean about your family?’

‘Lydia’s left.’

‘Oh.’ Frannie looks at him, her eyes just meeting his over the fence, like two children. ‘Oh, Joe.’

‘Hopefully we’ll work it out,’ he says woodenly, though he doesn’t mean it.

‘Would you do it again?’ he asks her after a few minutes more.

‘No,’ Frannie says immediately. ‘Absolutely not. I would give up everything to take it back. Despite who he was. Despite what he did. Because of what my crime put you guys through.’

‘Well,’ Joe says, in relief. He has arrived back at where they were: two family members who love each other, both in a situation they wish they weren’t in. ‘I’m glad about that,’ he adds huskily.

Frannie squeezes his hand, then slides away from him.

‘I’m glad you’re glad about that,’ she echoes softly. He reaches over the fence and ruffles her hair, the way he used to do when she was little, just the way he used to do to Rosie too, before they lost her. ‘But he was a twat,’ Frannie says.

Joe lets out an unexpected laugh in the night.