Chapter 68
"Do you feel different?" Katherine asks, her forehead wrinkling in that way that it does when she's curious.
Jack has learned these things, now, the little quirks of her, expressions and mannerisms, and finds them all rather unfairly adorable, yet keeps on drinking them down like good wine. He wants them, craves them. He wants to know her inside and out, be able to etch every part of her into his brain until he can conjure up her exact likeness in charcoal on paper whether she's stood in front of him or not.
"Not really." He frowns, casting a glance back at the church. "D'you think I should?"
"Baptism is only symbolic; it doesn't transform your faith. You don't have to feel different." Katherine tells him, squeezing his hand. The very last thing that she wants is him getting nervous now, after he's done something so important for the both of them. She's so ridiculously proud of him.
It had been a big deal for him, she knows, getting up in front of all those people and saying he believed, even though he'd negotiated not having to make a big speech about his testimony. Despite the lack of speech, Jack's pretty sure the last time people congratulated him that much was during the strike, so Katherine suspects that might have something to do with how positive he seems about everything now.
"I feel wet, 's for sure." Jack wrinkles his nose, reaching up to run the fingers of his free hand through his damp curls.
Katherine holds back a laugh. She's getting used to this, having to remind herself that Jack's quiet, initially tentative faith is just as important as hers. And as much as he puts up his big confident front, cracking jokes and such, she has the privilege of hearing him mumbling his prayers under his breath every night, sometimes catching her own name, sometimes Lucy's. Some things don't need to be said aloud to make them true; love and faith are sometimes shown in other ways. Mumbled prayers, gentle touches, immersion in water. So, she doesn't need to say aloud how proud she is, the way she told him this morning whilst he fidgeted at the breakfast table, it's all there in the way she smiles up at him as she says:
"You look very handsome with wet hair. It's the only time it stays where it's supposed to rather than sticking up all over the place." He nudges her with his shoulder for that, muttering about her cheek, but his playful complaints are lost when Katherine's eyes light on another man. "Oh look, there's Race."
Katherine has indeed spotted Race, who is down on his knees, weeding a flower bed at the edge of the park across the street. She grabs Jack's hand and pulls him across the road, calling out to the boy. "Race!"
Race's blond head, streaked with mud and soil, snaps up, searching for the owner of the voice. He smiles as he sees them approaching, leaning his elbows on the low wall between the pavement and the park and blinking up at them.
"Hey, Princess! Look a' me, workin'!" Race gestures to himself with a grin as they come to a stop in front of him. "Thanks for speakin' to that warden – ain't half bad, this gardenin' lark."
"I'm glad." Katherine beams.
She hadn't expected much to come of asking around at church, but Mr. Osman, the church warden, had really shown up for them with this job for Race. Apparently, Mr. Osman's brother is some sort of keeper for the city council and makes sure all the gardening stuff gets done. Katherine has never herself been too bothered about taking advantage of nepotism – that, after all, is why she worked for the Sun and not the World – but she's quite willing to engage it as a technique for their boys. Hence, Race can now usually be found in one or other of the city's parks. Mr. Osman's brother lets him smoke on the job, provided that he works hard, and pays him well, so Race is in his element.
"Any particular reason you's lookin' like a drowned rat?" Race asks, pushing off the wall and getting to his feet as he turns his gaze on Jack. "Or did Kath finally get fed up o' you an' try to toss you in the Hudson?"
"Sod off." Jack replies, shoving Race's shoulder good-naturedly. "I's jus' got baptised, 'f y'must know. 'S holy water an' all that crap."
"Jack."
If she's being honest, Katherine isn't entirely sure whether what Jack just said is actually blasphemy, but it's close enough to the line that it's worth telling him off. Jack mumbles an apology and Race snorts, amused by just how whipped Jack is. Just you wait, Jack thinks, fighting the urge to roll his eyes at the boy, just you wait until you're in love with somebody. I'm going to rib you about it endlessly.
"Ain't baptisms for babies?" Race asks.
"You can get baptised at any age, Race." Katherine cuts in, quick as a flash. Jack's pride doesn't need any more of a battering than it's already had. "How's the job?"
"Good." He shrugs. "Same as any kinda outdoor work – summer stinks an' winter's freezin', but it pays better than sellin' papes. 'S nice sharin' wi' Crutchie, too."
Things, it seems to Jack, have really come together for Race over the past couple of weeks, with Katherine finding him this job and Crutchie offering him the room in the apartment that used to be Jack's, now that the kid is paying rent himself. And, sure, Crutchie's clerk job doesn't pay all that much, though a damn sight more than last year when he was just an apprentice, and Race certainly isn't rolling in it as a gardener, but it's good, honest work that's not dangerous. That's more than most people can boast. That's all Jack's ever wanted for his brothers.
"That's wonderful." Katherine smiles.
"Y'should come round the apartment. I can't cook for shit-"
"Watch it-" Jack growls.
Race rolls his eyes, but corrects himself. "-I can't cook to save my life, but y'could come for dinner."
Jack's rule about not swearing in front of girls is, in Race's personal opinion, as stupid as they come, given that he's heard Katherine curse like a sailor when she's stubbed her toe on one of the kitchen table legs. He can't remember exactly which table leg it was, as there are three possibilities, whilst the other one is still supported by a stack of newspapers. Katherine hasn't said anything about it to Jack in while and though Jack knows that he should probably get it fixed, it feels like a part of their house, now, the table supported by newspapers. Broken and patched back together, but better for it.
"We'd love to. You're coming for family dinner night next Saturday, aren't you?"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world."
…
It takes until the day that Katherine gets the final lot of edits back on her manuscript for Jack to ask, properly. He's hinted before, let her know that he's open to listening to her talk about her book, let her know just how proud he is of her. Katherine's certain that, despite how hard Jack finds reading, he'd read it from to cover to cover if she asked him to. But she hasn't wanted him to read it, not until very, very recently. And when she says very, very recently, she means about five seconds ago, just after he asked.
See, there's something so very personal about sharing her writing with another person. And whilst she's bared all of herself to Jack, inside and out, it still feels odd to hand over a stack of pages that essentially contain her soul. Especially with a novel like this. Especially a novel that bears their daughter's name, her sister's name, and both their stories. The circumstances may be different, there may be a plot, but the emotions behind it are the same – the raw grief, the anger, the ecstasy of realising that you are not alone. It takes him asking for her to remember that this is Jack, her Jack. And really, there's nothing to be afraid of. The manuscript doesn't have to be perfect before he reads it, or she reads it to him, because she isn't perfect. But he loves her enough that it doesn't matter.
"What's this book 'bout then?" He asks, idly twirling a strand of her hair around the index finger of his right hand.
It's a bit of a struggle to fit them both into this armchair, at this point, with Jack balancing a sketchbook on the left armrest whilst his right arm wraps around her, drawing her to him, and her curled in his lap, head tucked into his neck as she reads through the final draft, eyes scanning her editor's notes scribbled in the margins in red pen. Still, they manage. They want to. Jack's intense tactility will never wear off, Katherine has realised, and, honestly, she doesn't really mind. It's a little infectious. She wants to be here, to slot against him like this, lazy and languid and close. If you were to ask Jack, in this exact moment, where Katherine ends and he begins, well, he wouldn't be able to tell you.
Katherine frowns, lowering her work to look at him and tilting her chin up so that she can see what's going on behind those beautiful eyes of his. "You'll be angry."
"At you?" Jack asks, turning to meet her eyes. "Never."
The fire that burns low in the grate dances in the dampness of his eyes, flickering in the way that he looks at her. Really, that reflection is the only fire his eyes have ever shown her. Katherine doesn't do well with fire. She won't go to bed until Jack has fully extinguished it each night and left their door keys on the hook by the front door. It's perhaps fate, then, or something like it, that means she's married a man who is stretched out before her in watercolours, grey and blue and beautiful. No, she decides. Not fate. Choice.
"It's called Lucy." She tells him, biting her lip. "It's a novel about grief."
"Oh."
She winces. "I told you that you'd be angry."
"I ain't angry, Ace." Jack says, and she knows it's the truth by the gentle promises his fingertips spell out on her skin. "I don'- I don' understand why you wants to dwell on it, an' I's worried it's gonna upset you, but I ain't angry."
"Well, it's not about our Lucy specifically." Katherine avoids his gaze, chewing her lip further. "Or even my Lucy. It's fiction, not an autobiography."
"I should hope not; it'd be pretty damn short seein' as you's only twenty." Jack chuckles, a sound that fills Katherine with hope.
On the arm of the chair, Jack sets down his pencil and brings his hand up to brush his thumb across her bottom lip, easing it from the grip of her teeth. Don't, his touch says, you'll make it bleed. He's told her that enough times, too many years of trying to keep his boys from splitting open lips chapped from cold.
"Will you read me some o' it?" He asks, running his hand, its job now accomplished, down her arm.
"I don't-" she falters, fighting the urge to take her lip back between her teeth, "-will it upset you?"
"I dunno. I wanta hear it, though."
Katherine looks at him, long and lingering, then shuffles the pages in her hands, searching for the first chapter. When she finds it, she takes a deep breath and starts to read.
"Lucy left traces of herself behind when she left." She stops a moment, clears her throat a little, the inside of her mouth suddenly coated with sand. "Some were visible; fingerprints trailing through the dust on the mantelpiece, dog-eared pages and notes scribbled in the margins, a coffee mug left on the side. Others weren't. The smell of her, lingering on blankets and moth-eaten dresses in the wardrobe. The taste of Christmas cake, made with her recipe. Footprints in the leaves, crunching through the piles, or in the snow, hopping from foot to foot in the imprints of strangers. There are notches in the doorframe that leads from the kitchen to the living room, notches that catalogue a childhood. Numbers carved beside each one, marking out birthdays and Christmases and 'dad have I grown yet's."
Beside her, Jack sniffs. Katherine stops reading and looks at him, realises that there are tears rolling down his cheeks from the corners of his closed eyes. She's seen Jack cry before, of course. The night that Lucy died and the day he tried to paint over the mural in the spare bedroom and the moments when he thinks she doesn't see. But he's never cried in front of her, not like this, not so open and trusting. No, now he's letting her see him cry. And Katherine has shared a bed with this man for the best part of a year and has been his first port of call in times of need for almost two, but she's never felt closer to him than she does right now. Letting the book drop closed in her lap, she reaches up to stroke his hair back from his face, carding her fingers through the dark curls.
"You okay?" She asks, oh-so soft and warm and gentle.
Jack nods, swallowing before he opens his eyes. They're a little bit misty, but he smiles at her through it, not that big performative Jack Kelly grin, though she loves that just as well, but a small smile, sweet and private and just for her.
"I's real glad you's done this." He says, reaching up in turn to tuck a loose wisp of hair behind her ear, letting his fingers brush against her cheek as he does so. "I – I wasn't sure 'bout it, at first. But I's real glad. 'S like… you's given them the futures they never got to have. Our little one. Your sister. They's got futures now."
Futures, yes. And so, Katherine realises, do the two of them. When they lost Lucy, everything they had planned for their future had fallen apart, the future they'd spent two years carving out of solid granite, ignoring everybody's derisive comments and stares. But the end of Lucy, loved and lovely and utterly unforgettable, isn't the end of them. They have a future, the two of them intertwined for as long as there are rings on their fingers and ways to say I love you.
"You wanta carry on a bit?" Jack asks.
She knows he means the book. She knows he means so much more. "Do you want me to?"
He nods. Because it is a choice. It's not about what happens to them, but what they want, what they choose. And Katherine chooses him. They've chosen one another, for better or for worse, and they keep making those choices, over and over again. Because, at the end of the day, that's what loving another person is, isn't it? Katherine clears her throat.
"There was a space left behind by Lucy when she passed through that doorway for the last time, a space which visitors and residents alike found themselves falling into and unable to escape, something missing, somehow. The story of Lucy's leaving is a long one, but it begins, as all good stories do, with a newspaper…"