Letting You Go by Anouska Knight Page A

the pup, that smile she seemed to put her wholebody into. A smile she didn’t have to think about. At this time of year to bring that smile back into the house was nothing short of a blessing.
    The pup cocked her head the other way.
    ‘If you were smarter, dog, you’d have tried my daughter’s room,’ Ted sighed. The girls had always gone gaga for puppies, just like Blythe. Ted wasn’t one to shout it from the rooftops but he’d always quietly beamed when somebody remarked how alike his girls were to their mother. Daughters should be like their mothers and Blythe and their girls were the most beautiful creatures in the Falls. He’d challenge anyone to say they weren’t. Of course, the same folks had said on occasion how Dill got his looks from Ted, but it was easy to tell the difference between true observation and politeness. Besides his dirty blond hair Dill had looked very little like him, Ted knew that. No matter what the heart wanted to be true, there was no disputing what his eyes told him every time he’d walked passed the photographs of Dillon hanging in the hall downstairs.
    Blythe had taken herself off into the frozen garden and cried for an hour straight when he’d taken down the
Son
from the garage sign. He shouldn’t have climbed up there, yanking it away with his own hands, he realised that now. But he couldn’t bear seeing it any longer. It would be a lie to have left it up there, calling out an untruth to everyone passing by. The Fosters’ name would come to an end when the girls married, they all knew that. There were some people who’d known it before Ted had.
    That same old hollowness began to yawn like a chasm inside him. The puppy squeaked for attention again but Ted was resolute. ‘You’ll have to wait, little one. I have something to do before breakfast.’ The bastard was good and dead now. No more a part of the town, no longer a thorn in their sides. And when Ted made it to the churchyard, by God, he hoped he’d find that the old son of a bitch had finally taken the last of his poorly kept goddamn secrets with him.

2 nd November 2006
    A lex felt him tense, harden like her clay; Finn’s whole body beside her suddenly off limits, no longer hers to touch.
    ‘That’s not it. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to know, Finn. I just
can’t
upset him again, he’s my dad. I’ve already put him through so much.’ Finn took his hand back, slow enough that it wasn’t like a punishment. Only it was. Alex stopped herself from grabbing it and bringing those fingers back to her again. ‘Now’s just … it’s not good timing, Jem’s getting into trouble at school and—’
    ‘So how long, Alex? I’m ready to get my lights punched out to stand up for the way I feel about you, how long until you’re ready to stand up for how you say you feel for me?’
    Alex’s palm was still lying against Finn’s chest. Should she move it? Everything about him was starting to feel defensive. The way he was pushing his hair away from his face, the tension through his arms.
    ‘I do feel that way, Finn. I love you.’
    ‘Do you?’
    She was losing him. She could already feel it. ‘You know I do. You’ve always known.’
    ‘So tell him. Tell him, Alex. Tell him we’re young and in love and we’d do anything to change what happened. But we
can’t.
All we can do is keep moving forwards and sometimes that means moving against the current.’
    Something had shifted in the air between them. It was a similar feeling to watching one of her clay pots lose its shape when it had stood to be so beautiful before she’d cocked it up. Maybe if she was careful, deft enough, she could bring it back again, coax it all back into shape. ‘He’s my dad, Finn. I can’t keep pushing him. I love you, and I love him too. I need him to have the chance to understand.’
    ‘Understand what?’
    ‘How sorry I am! It happened on
our
watch, Finn! I can’t be sorry for that
and
ram you down his throat at the same