“That’s a little unfair,” Ronan said uneasily.
“And can you blame them?” Bryde went on. “A part of them must be relieved they no longer have front-row seats watching as the world breaks you. It’s hard to die. Harder to watch someone else do it, and make no mistake, that’s what you two were doing before now. Dying in plain sight, inch by inch, dream by dream, drip by drip. You’ve given them the gift of letting them look away, and I’m just warning you they might not like you returning that gift for store credit.”
“Marvelous,” Hennessy said, sounding bitter. “Wonderful. Inspiring. Got it. We die alone.”
Bryde said, “You have each other. The ley line. Places like this. They are your family, too.”
“You’re wrong,” Ronan said. “About Adam, anyway.”
“I’d like to be,” Bryde replied. “But I’ve met too many humans.”
“You’re wrong,” Ronan said again.
“Tell me the dream that produced all those wheels,” Bryde said. “Tamquam—”
“Don’t say that again,” Ronan said. Then, again, “You’re wrong.”
Hennessy muttered something, but when Bryde waited for her to repeat it, she just said, “I wish I had a cigarette.”
“Come on,” Bryde said. “We have work to do.”
Declan Lynch had a complicated relationship with his family. It wasn’t that he hated them. Hate was such a slick, neat, simple emotion. Declan envied people who felt proper hate. You had to sand all the corners off things in order to unequivocally hate; it was a subtractive emotion. Hate was sometimes a prize. But hate was sometimes also just a dick move. It was annoying how many people had small redeeming qualities or depressingly sympathetic motives or other complicating features that disqualified it as an appropriate response.
Declan wanted to hate his family. He wanted to hate his father, Niall. For being a bad businessman, for never paying attention to the details, for bullshitting himself to death. For being a bad father. For having favorites. For having favorites who weren’t Declan. But could he blame him for not wanting a son like Declan? Declan hadn’t wanted a father like Niall. He liked to think he hated him, but he knew it wasn’t true, because if it was, he’d have been able to set Niall’s memory down and walk away. Instead, he took it out of the box and poked it. Declan said he hated him, but it was aspirational.
Declan wanted to hate his dreamt mother, Aurora, but he couldn’t justify that, either. She’d adored him; she’d adored all the boys. It wasn’t her fault she was a faulty model. He was increasingly certain she was happily oblivious to her dreamt status. This was probably where the idea to withhold the same information from Matthew had clocked in. Who’d come up with that? Niall? Declan? It had happened too long ago. In any case, it wasn’t Aurora’s fault that, deep down, Declan had always suspected she was untrue. A trick. A blarney-filled bedtime story for three boys. He didn’t hate her. He hated that he’d been naïve enough to ever be fooled by her.
And Ronan. Ronan should’ve been the easiest to hate, because Ronan was built for acrimony. He despised people and assumed they despised him, too. He was stubborn, narrow-minded, completely unable to see compromise or nuance. He’d fought Declan before, which was unremarkable; he’d fought everyone. The world against Ronan Lynch, that was his motto. As if the world cared. Niall had, Declan supposed. That was Ronan’s worst sin: idolizing their father. Grow up. But Declan couldn’t hate Ronan for this; now that Declan didn’t have to parent Ronan, he no longer had to constantly compete with a ghost.
Which left Matthew. In person, it seemed impossible to consider hating the youngest Lynch, but on paper, it seemed impossible to not. Out of all of the Lynches, he was the family member who’d taken the most from Declan. Niall had made Declan a liar. Aurora had made him an orphan. Ronan had made him a nag and then, later, a fugitive. But Matthew had taken Declan’s youth. Declan fed him and read to him, drove him to school events and picked him up from friend visits. The orphans Lynch. But at least Ronan grew up and out, toward independence. Matthew didn’t even want to get a driver’s license. And could he live alone, really? He was a dream with a head full of clouds, a dream whose feet kept walking him over waterfalls. Goodbye, distant colleges in interesting places. Goodbye, internship offers from Niall Lynch’s well-connected clients. Goodbye, carefree, single adult life.
Goodbye, whatever Declan Lynch would have grown up to be.
Declan should have hated Matthew.
But he couldn’t. Not jolly, carefree Matthew. Not the innocent chubby kid who tumbled into Declan’s gloomy childhood. Not Matthew, the angelic—
“Not gonna, fartmonger,” Matthew said. “Can’t make me.”
“It wasn’t a request. Buckle your seat belt, we are in a moving vehicle,” Declan said.
“If I died,” Matthew shot back, “couldn’t you just ask Ronan to dream a replacement me?”
“If I did, I’d ask him to dream one who always buckled his seat belt. Do you really want to die in Connecticut?”
The two brothers were in a loaner car one of Niall’s past associates had hooked Declan up with in exchange for the transport of the skittish foreign national currently riding in the trunk with a bottle of water and some potato chips. (Declan didn’t know why the man needed to be moved secretly from DC to Boston, nor did he even consider asking.) Declan had just stopped long enough to make sure the hired muscle he’d arranged to watch their backs in Boston remembered where and when to find them. Then he called the second hired muscle he’d gotten to watch the first hired muscle in case the first one got attacked or compromised in some way. Then he talked to the third hired muscle he’d gotten just in case the first two went wrong. Fail-safes. He believed in fail-safes. You’re a twitchy guy, the third muscle had said. Then, thoughtfully, You looking for a job?
“Maybe I am the replacement,” Matthew continued mulishly.
Declan allowed himself one quarter of one half of a picosecond to imagine what it would be like to make the journey to Boston on his own, feeling guilty for all parts of the picosecond.
This was his father’s DNA, he was sure of it. Niall had felt no compunction about going on trips and leaving his family behind. Fuck you, he thought. Then: I hate you.
(How he wished that was true.)
Matthew was still going on. “If I were a replacement, I wouldn’t even know, would I?”
“Mary, please strike me deaf until the state line,” Declan said, checking his mirrors, changing lanes, driving safely. He felt Matthew was taking all this a bit far. Declan had put his identity crises on hold multiple times for the greater good. Matthew had only been asked to do it once.
“Did you hear a thump?” Matthew asked. “From the back?”
“No,” Declan said. “Eat your snacks.”
“Why did I have to go through puberty?” Matthew picked back up where he’d left off. “If I had to be a dream, why couldn’t I have superpowers? Why di—”
There was a phone ringing from somewhere in the car, which ordinarily would have annoyed Declan, but in this case relieved him.