Every New Beginning is Some Other Beginnings End

She laughed.

And it was a sound Lochlann recognized all too well.

He'd made the exact same laugh how many times over the last through weeks? It didn't matter that she stifled it. He'd recognized it.

He didn't expect it to hurt him, but it did. It hurt more because she had a point. She was walking away from him and for some reason, this hurt worse.

He didn't realize what he'd done until the words escaped from his mouth.

"She tried to kill me again and I slept with her," he said.

He bit the inside of his cheek. His fingers hung loose on his side.

"How was I supposed to tell you this, Addy?" he said. "How was I supposed to tell you that I love you, but I slept with a woman I despised, and still have you even want to talk to me?"

He couldn't look up at her. He was staring at the floor and his face was red with shame and, beneath that, sheer terror. Guinevere Haze frightened him. He hadn't wanted to sleep with her that night, but he did, and he couldn't take that back. Worse, he'd probably do it again, and he hated that, too.

He hated that he'd made a mess out of all of this.

He picked at the bandage on his hand and Lochlann sighed.

"You're right," he said. "We should...go in."

But he didn't move.

He couldn't move.

Because even the thought of Guinevere Haze paralyzed him, and the thought of Guin hurting Addy? That...that paralyzed him more.

Lochlann was numb.

He stood there. Even as the black marks appeared on Addy's face, even as the tears came from her eyes, Lochlann just stood there.

This was it.

He'd broken everything.

He wanted to blame someone, he wanted to have a target to be angry at, and the only person Lochlann could think to hate was Guinevere Haze, but he was too numb to even hate her. This was his fault.

"Yeah," he said. "I'll be up in a minute."

But she was already gone.

Lochlann leaned against the brick wall and sighed.




Lillianna, meanwhile, was happy for Adelene's return. Lochlann's sister gave her a wave and something of a shrug. Lawrence was puzzling over the menu and occasionally would show it to Lillianna, who would help him decipher a word he didn't recognize.

"Why would they call it tempura when they mean fried?" he mumbled.

Lillianna rolled her eyes.

"I think we're just going to get Reubens," she said. "I'm going to order Lochlann one or he'll him and haw and not eat anything. Did you know that he used to do this really irritating thing where he'd just wouldn't eat? He would stare at food like he didn't know what it was. Christ the only thing he looked at like it was food was a pair of legs."

Lillianna gave a small laugh. When the waitress came over, Lillianna ordered for her two siblings, and then gave pause for Adelene.

"So Adelene," Lilianna said. "Tell me about yourself. Lochlann is so mysterious when he writes about you. I feel like I know you, but i hardly know you at the same time. How do you like the island here?"

Lillianna nodded.

She chewed on the inside of her cheek. A lot of her brother’s letters were very clinical and matter-of-fact, the kind of updates their father wanted on his progress.

“He stopped writing about how much he hates it here, and started writing about spending time with you,” Lillianna said. When Addy mentioned guns and blades, Lillianna did not react like Lochlann did. She perked up and seemed interesting. “Care to tell me more? We can’t have a lot of knives in our house, what with the iron thing, and we’ve got guns but they’re always locked up. I always wanted to learn…butterfly knives, are they called?”

Lillianna and Lawrence didn’t seem to mind their brother’s absence. Lawrence was much quieter, but it wasn’t out of lack of interest. He was just the quitest of the three Cabyll-Ushtey siblings.

Though he was the quitest of the siblings, Lawrence was the first to notice Addy's shaking. He reached out and placed his hand ontop of hers only for a moment, as if to say, you're not alone. He had no idea what the problem was, or that his missing brother was part of it, but it was the only thing Lawrence knew how to do.

He had the rough hands of a mechanic. Lillianna's hand was wrapping around the cup the waitress had set down before her and the others. She took a sip of her water.

"Tell me more about guns," Lillianna said. She, too, had noticed Addy's reaction, and was trying to talk her out of it, or at lesat find out the root of it. "If you could shoot anyone with any kind of gun, what would it be and who?"

Lochlann, meanwhile, was sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette. He was trying to burn the taste of Guin from his mouth and replace the look Addy had given him with the gentle smoke rising from the tip of the cancerstick.

He tapped the end on the curb and sighed.

He'd fucked up.

He needed to go in there, but Lochlann couldn't clear his head.

Lillianna shrugged.

"We're on an island with magical creatures, some of which eat people, so I figured killing people wasn't entirely off the table as a dinner conversation. Regardless I'm sorry," she said with a short laugh. "I would personally kill whoever designed those props on the back of keyboards to be so fragile. "

When Addy asked about their parents, Lillianna and Lawrence exchanged a look.

"Well," Lillianna said carefully. "Mom has been sick. They both came to the ceremony, but they decided to go home tonight instead of staying for dinner."

"Lorcan and Lochlann sort of had a big fight," Lawrence explained. He cracked his knuckles turning one hand into a fist and pressing it into the palm of his other hand, and then he repeated the process.

"Our family has a lot riding on Lochlann. Loch didn't even want to come here, but Lorcan gave him an ultimatum: If Lochlann didn't graduate, Lorcan was going to kill him."

They talked about it so casually, like it was just a conversation about failing grades.

Lillianna said, "Did Lochlann ever tell you the story about our first Halloween in the states?"