Scythe & Sparrow (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #3)(95)

The next week, there’s another letter. Another tarot card, the Moon. In his letter, Fionn talks about how it symbolizes secrets and deceptions and illusions. He tells me about the things he feared—his own darkness, the secrets that he kept from his brothers. He talks about the secrets he’s keeping now too, but only in the loosest of terms. He worries about his brothers and the people he left behind. But it’s the last lines of his letter I reread that night until I fall asleep.




The hardest secret I ever kept was the one I kept from you. It was not telling you how much I love you. How much that love has consumed me, even when I tried not to let it. You unraveled the life I’d convinced myself I wanted. I didn’t think the man left behind was one I could trust. I thought I was keeping you safe from me by hiding those feelings away. But I was wrong. I’d give anything to go back and break every rule before the day we made them. Because I know now that I loved you even then.



Another week. Another letter. Two tarot cards this time. The next week, another letter, a single card. Week after week, they keep coming, each letter accompanied by at least one card, sometimes two or three. Every letter relates to the meaning of the cards sent with it. Every one ends the same way.

I love you. I’m not letting you go. I never will.



The closer we get to the first of April, the more the anxiety churns in my guts. Because that’s when we hit the road and start touring for the season. Maybe my last season, for real this time. Or maybe not, I don’t know. Maybe I’m clinging to this life I no longer want because it’s safe. It’s known. And the last time I dove headfirst into the unknown I ended up with an edge beveler in my belly and my heart torn out of my chest. All I know for sure is that Fionn’s letters have been something I’ve come to depend on, even on those days when I’ve tried to convince myself not to. I’ve even started replying, writing pages to fold and put into envelopes with nowhere to send them. I tell my own stories about anger and forgiveness and love and loss. And maybe hope too. It might be a one-sided conversation, but there’s a relief in putting those feelings onto paper and sealing them up, even if they’re never read.

I get a letter the day we pack up to head out on the road. It comes with the Knight of Wands. He talks about how I must be getting ready to leave soon. He knows the card can signify travel, and he wonders where I might be going. He wants to ask about my favorite places. Says he wishes he were here so we could talk. “If you’ve kept your fringe, you’d blow the hair from your brow as you think about it. And then your eyes would shimmer when you’d tell me about the best stops on the road.” I write back and say I wouldn’t need to think about it. My favorite stop is the one where I found myself laid up in Hartford, Nebraska. I wonder about the people I got to know there. Is Nate still fighting in the Blood Brothers barn? What about Sandra and the Suture Sisters, have they all started crocheting sex swings now? And why did we never make them form a cover band and play at a Blood Brothers fight with a name like that? Sandra and the Suture Sisters need crocheted merch. I would buy it. “I miss Hartford,” I say in my letter. “I miss you most of all.”

I seal that letter and cry myself to sleep that night. And the next morning, we set off for Archer City.

It’s not a long drive. Our first trip rarely is, just so we can work out the kinks with new staff and old machines and performances that are getting off the ground after a winter season at home. It will take a few weekends before we truly get into the swing of things. We spend a few extra days setting up and practicing. We run an extra night of shows. The day of teardown, I’m about to peel off my dirty, sweaty clothes and hop into my tiny shower when there’s a knock at my door.




“Mail delivery,” Baz says when I open the door and he thrusts an envelope at me. My heart flips over. I reach out with a tentative hand, but he whips the letter out of reach before I can touch it. “Are these love letters from the guy who came to visit when that moron tripped on the fence and offed himself?”

“None of your business,” I reply. I hang on to the edge of my door and reach for the paper that he flaps just beyond my grasp. I finally manage to yank it from him, but only because I think he lets me.

“I’ve never seen you get mail on the road before.” Baz’s teasing smile softens when I look up from the envelope. He’s right. Some of the troupe get mail forwarded by third-party services, or they pick it up from friends and relatives scattered along the route. But I’ve never done that. Never had a reason to. “It’s nice. Dude must really like you.”

With a little salute, Baz shoves his hands in his pockets and then walks away whistling “La Vie en Rose.” A stupid grin must be plastered across my face, but he doesn’t look back to see it.

I didn’t think another letter would come, but now that I have it in my hands, the relief and excitement almost overwhelm me as they compete for the space in my chest. I sit down at my table and slide the letter opener I bought in February beneath the edge of the flap.

Dear Mayhem,

If I’ve timed this right, you’ll be at your first stop. I hope it went great. I never told you that I went to see you perform in Ely for the first time after your accident. I didn’t want to seem like some kind of weirdo stalker. I guess telling you about it a year later in my fourteenth letter that was written in a secret location and sent by phantom postal service is already pretty stalkery. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have been so worried that you’d see me in the audience after all.