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I arrived partway through the festivities. Harry was grilling burgers on a little charcoal grill on the roof, wearing an apron I helped Maggie decorate with puff paint. It read ‘#1 firestarter,’ surrounded by pink flames.
Maggie waved to me from where she sat on one of the castle’s ramparts, kicking her heels against the stone while she watched Harry’s newest grasshopper, a cauliflower-eared doppelgänger named Fitz, toss light from one hand to the next. His face was screwed up in concentration.
Harry slapped me on the back and directed me to a cooler full of soda and beer. “How’d things go?”
“Oh, same as every year,” I said, while I shook water droplets off my hand. Lara and Harry were decently cozy these days, but she hadn’t considered, for one moment, inviting him to the traditional Raith family Father’s Day luncheon. She wasn’t ready for this one to be Dad’s last, I supposed.
I popped the cap and took a swig of Mac’s brew. I didn’t taste any of it. “I don’t get why we keep it going, to be honest,” I confessed. “Even when the guy isn’t the biggest bastard in the world, it all becomes a farce after you turn, what, sixteen? Eighteen? Who even thinks about their dad after that?”
I had a vague recollection of making a macaroni picture frame for mine with one of the nannies. There was a good chance Lara still had it stashed somewhere. Empty Night, what a bleak thought.
Harry took a moment to respond. He’d grown up a lot in the year I missed, and that was its own sort of gut-wrench. Finally, he shrugged.
“I haven’t grown out of wanting mine,” he said. He flipped the patties over and didn’t look at me.
Damn him.
I pressed the cold flat of my bottle to the back of his neck. The mantle of Winter he bore all but guaranteed his offended squawk and flinch were put-ons. The lurch of affection I felt for him was anything but.
“Maggie’s starting to sprout up,” I said, before we risked becoming a bunch of girls. Harry wiped his neck dry, and I tilted my head in her direction. She was calling for Fitz to toss the light higher. Mouse was sprawled in the limited shade beneath her feet, his tail thumping lazily.
Harry had never held her when she was small enough to fit in one hand. He hadn’t heard her first shrill cry, hadn’t cleaned the blood and white paste from her eyes and ears. Vernix, it was called. I learned that, afterwards, while I worked, in fits and bursts, to understand and hold tight to every detail I had.
I took another swallow, and this time I appreciated the bitter.
Harry’s smile was a beautiful thing when he looked at his child. My brother, filled with all the same love and pride I felt. “Yeah,” he said. And there wasn’t any longing for what should have been. “She’s doing alright.”