All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’donoghue (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

As bud is leaf and bough.

Rain to river and river to sea;

What was then will not be now.”

Fiona crashes back into the shop, muttering angrily.

“Hey,” Roe pipes up. “We ready to go?”

“I just want to buy these.” Fiona lays some tarot cards on the table. “Look, Game of Thrones tarot. Arya Stark is the Death card.”

The shopkeeper turns her head towards Fiona and smiles. She takes the tarot, bags them and then pops a stick of incense into her bag because she’s a “new customer”.

I look from Fi to the shopkeeper and back again. Did anyone else hear her chanting? Did I imagine it?

“What was then will not be now.”

“I can’t believe my mum,” Fiona rages. “The second she hears I have some time off, she thinks: free babysitter. It’s like she doesn’t even care that I get straight As and do theatre and look after Jos most afternoons already. I never get to relax. It’s so unfair.”

This is the most like a stroppy teenager Fiona has ever sounded, and it’s thrilling to witness.

“I mean, Jos seems pretty self-sufficient,” I offer. “You can just plop him in front of cartoons. And you’re so good with him, y’know?”

“I don’t want to look after people, OK?” she storms. “I don’t want to be a doctor or a nurse or a babysitter or a … fucking – I don’t know – a live-in carer for the elderly.”

“OK, Fi,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm. “I didn’t say you had to be.”

“No, you didn’t,” she says, folding her arms and sighing softly. “You didn’t.”

Roe and I look at each other, and it’s clear he doesn’t know what’s going on either.

“Are you OK?”

“It’s just, that’s what good little Filipino girls are supposed to do, isn’t it? Become a nurse. Watch other people’s kids.”

I bite my lip. “Sorry,” I say, searching for something useful to say. I realize that there is nothing useful I can offer, so I just opt for the plainest expression of truth I can find. “I don’t know what that’s like, Fi.”

She takes a couple of deep breaths.

“No, I’m sorry. This isn’t about you, Maeve, this is my stuff.”

She smiles at Roe and me. “Can we go get a tea, or something?”

As soon as we’re back in Bridey’s, Roe’s mother calls.

“Jesus,” he says. “Looks like it’s a day for badly timed mother calls.” And then it’s his turn to step outside.

Me and Fiona sit on the big squashy couch, and I want to ask her more about life at home. Her family are so charismatic and fun-loving, I completely missed any tension that might be bubbling under the surface.

But before I can form the words, I hear something. A voice. A familiar voice.

“Two coffees and a muffin for six euro,” he says to the cashier, sunny and disarming. “Wow, you wouldn’t get that kind of value in Dublin, would you?”

I turn my head around, hoping that I’m mistaken, and there’s some other upbeat American in Bridey’s. But no: it’s Aaron. Aaron holding two steaming takeaway cups and a brown bag. I watch him for a moment, fascinated that someone like him could be making small talk over coffee, then go back to Fiona and our shared pot of tea.

“Maeve,” he says, like he’s just seen an old family friend. “Fancy seeing you here. You and Roe left in such a hurry the other night.”

“Yeah, well, we had places to be.”

“I’m glad,” he beams. “Date night?”

There’s something mildly sarcastic in the way he says “date night”, as though Roe and I were two children playing restaurant. Fi is fiddling with her phone, barely paying attention.

“Maybe you could come back,” he offers grandly. “By yourself this time.”

I can’t take all this faux-friendliness. I cut right to the point.

“Sure, except … I would rather die?”

It’s not the most elegant thing I’ve ever said, but it gets my message across.

He raises his eyebrows briefly, and then moves on to Fiona. “You’re Fiona, aren’t you?” he says.

“Um … yes?”

It’s clear she doesn’t remember Aaron from our day in Basement, but I’m amazed as to why he remembers her, and why he knows her name. He studies her for a moment, and then, in a voice as soft as honey, speaks.

“You’re used to people expecting rather a lot from you, aren’t you?”

It is the exact way I heard him talk to the girls at the CoB meeting. The affection, the sympathy, the sense of immediate understanding. And Fiona, who still hasn’t put two and two together, is completely captivated by it.

“Well,” she says, raising a shoulder to her chin. “I usually deliver.”

God, to have her confidence. I remember, briefly, the older boyfriend. Is this what she was like with him?

“Stop it,” I say, my teeth gritted. “Stop talking to her.”

Fiona looks at me, confused. “Maeve, what’s going on?”

“You need to learn to be less possessive, Maeve,” Aaron says, with a smile. “You can’t own people.”

He narrows his eyes at me, his irises darkening. “And you can’t throw them away, either.”

And just like that, he leaves. He walks out of Bridey’s with his hoodie and his takeaway coffees, like any normal twenty-something man. I feel like I’m about to vomit.

You can’t throw them away, either.

“Maeve,” Fiona says, tapping my shoulder. “Maeve, are you OK? You’re shaking. Who was that?”

The light in the cafe suddenly feels too strong, like a fire burning behind my eyeballs. I close them, balling my fists into my sockets, covering my face with the crook of my arm.

“Who was it, Maeve?”

I say nothing, my breath coming short. He knows everything. Everything about what happened with Lily, and somehow, everything about Fiona. He can see inside people. Whatever dark magic went into creating the Housekeeper, a shred of that exists in Aaron, too. And if it lives in him, it must live countless other places. Suddenly, the world feels too big, and I’m too small in it.

“Come on, I’m taking you outside.”

The cold street air hits me in the lungs like a throwing star.

“Sit