CHAPTER FOUR ✹
The Angry Daughter

  𝕹OT unlike the majority of the mornings from her childhood, Iris woke up from her mid-afternoon nap to the unmistakable sound of her parents arguing downstairs.

  All doe-eyed and tired, Phoebe poked her head into Iris's room with a doleful pout and stuttering chest. "They're doing it again, Irie."

  "I know. Hey, it's all right. C'mere." Iris lifted her duvet up enough for Phoebe to crawl in, and that's exactly what her little sister did. The patchwork comforter dwarfed her, tucked up right under her wobbling chin. "Don't cry—it's all gonna be fine. Dad'll be gone soon."

  "I don't like it when he goes," Phoebe whispers sadly.

  An ugly pinch in her heart kept Iris's lips sewn. She had to keep reminding herself that she's not the youngest sister anymore—as middle child, she had someone that she needed to protect. She's got Phoebe. And, just because Iris felt no grief to see their father go, it didn't mean that Phoebe was old enough to understand why.

  Instead of insolence, Iris wrapped an arm around her little sister and cradled her head to her chest. Silent tears dampen her t-shirt over her sternum. Remorsefully, she gently kissed the crown of Phoebe's hair and murmured a lie to her, about how everything will work itself out—how their parents love each other, and them, and all of this yelling and belligerence were only testaments to that love. Phoebe's not old enough to understand any of that, but she's innocent enough to believe it, and whisper a loving thank you right against Iris's heart.

  "Love you, Irie."

  Iris wanted to tell her little sister that she loved her too, and not in the complicated way she loved their parents, or Alex, and their half-siblings on the other side of the island, but in the easiest way she's ever loved anyone. Iris loved Phoebe like breathing, and she thinks that might be why it's so difficult to voice.

  "It's gonna be okay, Pheebs," she promises instead.

  "Girls," their father sighs, invading the sanctity of Iris's room with his tensed presence. Ward Cameron stood there in the doorway, breathless, his hair windswept, and hands falling to rest on his hips. "There you both are."

  Loud, indignant footsteps bounded their way up the stairs, and Carmen's voice, shrill and full of spite, reached them before she did, "Ward, just leave!"

  "What is it, Dad?" Iris asked impatiently.

  "There's a hurricane coming in," he explained hastily, sparing anxious glances over his shoulder. "A nasty one, they're saying. I was just trying to reason with your mom—"

  "Ward," Carmen seethed, finally reaching Iris's room, "I told you to drop it! Go home."

  Ward ignored her, treading further into Iris's room with trembling, surrendered hands. "All I said was that I think it's safer if you kids come stay with me at Tannyhill, just 'til it all blows over. Y'know, we've got backup generators over there if the electricity sparks out, and your mom hasn't got the time to storm-prep—"

  "I can take care of our fucking kids," the mother snarled.

  "I didn't say that—"

  "Oh, but you definitely implied!"

  Whatever love still existed between Ward Cameron and Carmen Mariano was an incurable haemophilia. With this knife of theirs, they cut each other up into ribbons, so all they did was bleed and bleed and bleed, in every room of this goddamn house that he didn't even live in.

  It didn't matter that, right now, the frontlines of their war was their eldest daughter's bedroom, and that their youngest was right there, clutching at Iris's chest and whimpering like a wounded dog. It didn't matter that this has been a twenty years long affair that's buried a woman and maimed six children. It didn't matter that Alex existed as a gleaming award in a trophy cabinet in Tannyhill, that Phoebe was slowly becoming a lamb in a slaughterhouse, and Iris saw herself as nothing more than a bargaining chip, an afterthought in ruthless arguments. The less that mattered to Ward and Carmen, the more Iris felt like she was losing the only religion that she'd ever known.

  The infallibility of her parents hangs by a fragile thread that their apathy threatens to sever with every spiteful insult and each parochial argument.

  "Iris," said Ward impatiently, pinching the bridge of his nose, "please tell your mother that I did not imply that she was incapable of anything."

  "Don't do that," Carmen seethed, pointing at him viciously, "don't rope her into this—like you always do."

  It's then Iris snapped. "Are you being serious right now? Both of you. Like, is this an actual thing that you're arguing over?"

  Ward glanced at her, hesitating. "Sonny...—"

  "Mom, it is probably safer for Phoebe to wait out the storm at Tannyhill. But, Dad—" She interjected herself as soon as she caught a glimmer of smugness on Ward's face, "is this really about the hurricane, or this just another chance for you to one-up Mom?"

  "That's all everything ever is to him, girls," Carmen ranted. "It's all one big game to him."

  "That's not true, Carm, and you know it. I want our kids to be safe. Don't you?"

  A look of pure hatred crossed their mother's face that was almost convincing. "Oh, you're—"

  "Pheebs," Iris mumbled to her little sister, softly taking her face into her hands. Her thumbs stroked over Phoebe's damp cheekbones, smearing away tears, rubbing a bit of colour back into her skin. "Go pack a bag, hm? You and Wheezie can have a sleepover."

  Her bottom lip jutted out in an unhappy pout. "Do you think Sarah will paint my nails?"

  "I think if you ask her nicely enough, she'll even braid your hair all pretty."

  Around them, their parents' diatribe swelled in the room like a reddening, ugly bruise. Iris had gotten pretty good at blocking out, but Phoebe kept flinching at every bad word.

  "Go on, then. Quick. Before the thunder starts."

  Giggling, Phoebe rushed out of the room and to her own, leaving Iris in the middle of the onslaught.

  "Are you not coming too, Iris?" Ward asked; a brief armistice.

  Iris bit her tongue. "No. I'm gonna go to John B's."

  "John—John B's," he laughed in disbelief. "Honey, I like the kid, but he lives in a youth hostel."

  "I'll be fine," she said shortly.

  As her parents exchanged an unlikely kindred glance, Iris snatched her backpack from under her bed and started to make her way around her room. She grabbed an extra pair of underwear and some pyjama shorts, banking on one of the boys' tees being left lying around for her to sleep in.

  When she didn't hear nothing from her parents for too long, she straightened back up and turned to them with an expectant frown. "Yes?"

  "It's just," Carmen started nervously, "I don't think staying at the Chateau is what's safest tonight, honey."

  "Are you kidding me?" demanded Iris, a little hysterical. "After that entire fight, you're going to say that staying at the Chateau's unsafe?"

  Ward's smile was wan. "Your mom's right, Sonny. I like John B, you know I do, but—"

  "But what?"

  "Carm?" he said, turning to her. "A little help?"

  "Friends again, are we?" Iris bit. She scoffed at their nettled expressions, and angrily shouldered her bag. "Whatever. Just try not to let Rafe make Phoebe cry again, please."

  The sky was the colour of gunmetal when Iris left her home. The air around her was sweet and damp and swelling with electricity. But, she'd rather be smote by lightning than stomach her parents any longer. She dug around in the pocket of her shorts and took out her phone, opening the number of a boy she knew that she could always call.

  IRIE. hi. u'll never guess
  IRIE. can u pick me up pls
  IRIE. i'll love u forever

  There's nothing for a worrying amount of time. She was so afraid that her dad might come outside, all heroic as he whisked Phoebe away from their mother's home and buckled all her safe up into the back of his newest flashy car, that she started off down to the end of her road, frantically checking her phone for a text back.

  When it vibrated in her hand, she heard the unmistakable sound of an expensive car's engine starting up, and quickly leapt over one of her neighbour's hydrangea bushes to duck behind it as her dad drove past. Knee-deep in miry soil, Iris winced at the mud on her socks and miserably opened her new messages.

  BEE. sorry irie On my way! to pick up pope
  BEE. were gonna surf the surge!!!!!!
  BEE. On my way! wtf
  BEE. On my way!.

  That went on for about eleven more messages, until Iris finally clicked off their chat and onto JJ's.

  SUNSHINE. hi

  It took approximately eight seconds for a response.

  J. u at home?

  He was opening the passenger door of his dad's truck for her in seven minutes.

  "—I hate them. I hate them both," Iris was blustering, when they were well on the road. "They're just so—ugh, fucking—insufferable!"

  "Weird that Mother Mariano didn't want you slumming at the Chateau, though," mused JJ. "She's never had a problem with you crashing there during a storm."

  Iris shrugged disinterestedly. "D'know. She probably just wanted to get back into Ward's good books after pissing him off."

  "Yeah, maybe."

  "Whatever, anyway. I don't care anymore. All I care about is Phoebe. And she'll be fine. Wheezie's too young to hate us yet, and Sarah's still got a soft-spot for Phoebe because she's got those doe eyes of hers," said Iris fondly. "Rafe's always gonna be Rafe, so fuck him. And fuck my parents. And Rose, while you're at it."

  "I mean," JJ blinked, "if she's down—"

  "Not like that!" she chastised.

  JJ rolled his head to slant her a smirk. "Kidding."

  "I hate you."

  "Hey, it was only if you wanted me to!"

  "Why would I want—"

  "I don't question, sunshine," JJ insisted, "I only serve."

  Exasperated, Iris rolled her eyes at him and started digging around in her bag, between her knees in the footwell. As JJ ran his mouth about something, entirely oblivious that Iris wasn't listening to a single world, she retrieved a pack of Vogue Lilas with a disgruntled huff.

  "Fuck," she muttered. "I forgot my lighter."

  JJ's eyes narrowed. "Did you listen to anything that I just said?"

  "...No?"

  "Bitch. M'lighter's in my pocket." With a little grin, JJ lifted his hips up just enough from his seat that Iris could see the outline of his flippo in his shorts. "But, ya know—I'm driving, so..."

  Iris squinted at him. "You're so...ugh."

  Trying not to get all red in the face about it, Iris leaned over the arm he had outstretched for the gearstick, and shoved her hand into his pocket. She yanked it out with a mumbled insult, and busied herself with taking a cigarette from out of her packet as JJ smirked around some drawled, smug comment. Outside the truck, the rain had started, and the sun had left them behind. The early touches of the storm didn't stop Iris from rolling down the passenger window as she lit her cigarette and took the first drag. It bothered her how instantly lighter she felt. It bothered how easier it was for to get hooked on cigarettes after spending her childhood scrunching up her nose at her mother's bad habit. Achingly, it made Iris worry about what other of her mother's ugly tendencies that she might pick up, knowing somewhere down the line, there's a girl with fragile bones and an even more sinewy heart who would berate her for it.

  Oh, well. That girl's dead. Iris killed her a long time ago with a generational knife that's passed down from father to son to daughter, and she had to bury it with that brittle corpse before it got into the wrong hands—into Phoebe's. Cigarettes, loving the wrong man, being mean; all hereditary curses that Iris would gladly suffer. But screwing up Phoebe, like her parents screwed her up—Iris wouldn't give the island the satisfaction (it's taken enough from her).

  Agatha's an empty stomach that must be satiated, and Kildare is an honourable sacrifice—a terrified animal in a slaughterhouse that the storm comes for, tears out the throat of it, right at the starved belly (at the Cut), and ravages. She was threatening to make the oak in John B'd frontyard—a sturdy constant in the Chateau's decaying ways—look as fickle as a twig by the time JJ pulled up outside. He fought his way out the truck first, and ran over to Iris's side, prying open the passenger door against the wind, and all but yanking her out of her seat. It sounded like wolves lingered in the sweet-grass around the marsh, whistling in the wind as JJ grabbed her hand and dragged her into the Chateau. Waters fell from them in rivulets onto the dirty, unswept floor, and Iris was instantly rushing in John B's bedroom to snatch the comfiest duvet in the house, bringing it back out to the front room and throwing it onto the decrepit futon. JJ was yanking off his waterlogged boots and emptying them into a puddle right by a suspicious-looking pile of magazines.

  "We should probably put on dry clothes," Iris said against the violent chattering of her teeth.

  "Yeah," JJ agreed, throwing back the duvet around her just enough to get under it too, "probably."

  Iris's eyes shut against it all. "I think my dad's up to something."

  "Yeah? What's that, Mariano?" JJ already sounded half-asleep, the right side of his face smushed against a pillow.

  "I dunno. I just...I don't trust him, s'all," she said softly. JJ said nothing. Iris's lips sink into a frown. "J?"

  She rolled onto her side to face him, peeking one eye open. Asleep. Her head shook in affectionate disbelief. It always fascinated her how easily JJ could nod off—even in the middle of a hurricane. She was pretty sure her best friend could sleep through anything.

  Tenderly, as if JJ was this injured bird, Iris reached out to sweep a lock of hair from his forehead. It bounced right back, all golden and stubborn, like him. She smiled at it, at him, and let her eyes go dark again. It was carnage outside, and her mother was all alone in their home—Phoebe at Tannyhill, Iris exactly where she told her not to go, and Alex belonged nowhere. Nothing was right with the world, but Iris slept rather calmly knowing that she wouldn't wake up again to the sound of her parents ravaging love. 

  Though, it wasn't exactly peace that she woke up to.

  "Irie, Irie, Irie—" the soft hit of a sock bouncing off her head made Iris stir. John B was stood at the foot of the pull-out, cheesing at her malcontent. "Rise and shine."

  "No. Go away. M'sleeping. Day off."

  The duvet was kicked off, either by JJ or Iris—likely, both; they were restless, angry sleepers. It was balled up in a blue-striped knot at the end of the futon, and JJ had rolled over onto his front, arm splayed over Iris's abdomen. Last night, it must've been a welcomed heaviness against the cold. Now, with sunlight beating through the unsightly, water-spotted windows, his bare skin against hers made her feel sticky and smothered.

  "Get him off me before I kill him, Bee," she bellyached. 

  John B, smirking at her, reached over to slap JJ's sun-burned back. "Yo, JJ, you been outside?"

  "I have polio, bro, I can't walk," JJ grumbled, morning voice all muffled by the pillow his face was buried in.

  "I tried," said John B with a complacent shrug, before walking out onto the porch through the screen door.

  Iris groaned, fruitlessly pushing at JJ's arm. "Maybank, off."

  "D'you not understand how serious polio is?"

  With an unhappy sigh, Iris gave up trying to get his arm off and let her arms sag to her sides, looking at him with a squinty, affronted frown that he couldn't even see.

  JJ Maybank had a nice back, she'd give him that. He was lying there, on starched, itchy sheets, curved jawline with a pouty, sullen mouth, his hair splayed on the pillow, and forehead mottled with annoyance at being rudely awoken. All sunkissed and covered in lopsided, hickory freckles, a litany of gnarly, pinkish scars were all on show for her to gaze at. A yawn stretched all the way through him, the sinews in his neck and shoulders as taut as a washing-line, and tendons along the planes of his back straining against the his bronze skin. On his shoulder-blade, there was a singular birth-mark that Iris swore resembled a tiny strawberry. 

  "Stop staring at me, pervert," he grunted, lifting up the arm that was on her middle to push her face away.

  Finally free, Iris got up off the futon and moved around to look for her converse. "I wasn't staring, moron. Had to check you were still breathing. It was like sleeping next to a dead body."

  "Pretty sure that's what Pope calls necrophilia," JJ grinned, slowly getting up off the pull-out.

  "Wow, big word," she praised drolly.

  "Yeah? Wanna give me a kiss for it?" He made kiss-faces at her as he trudged into the kitchen.

  "Ha, ha, ha." 

  Flipping him off, Iris walked out onto the porch. An unearthed willow tree greeted her, and all of its gnarled, ugly roots. John B's backyard was in ruin—fallen branches, debris carried here by the winds; Agatha's hunger had chewed up the Chateau and spat it all out. 

  Grimacing, she trekked across splintered tree limbs and the torn aluminium of forgotten beer cans over to the HMS Pogue, where John B's yanking a tangled offshoot of the still-standing oak from his boat's helm. 

  "Shit," was all she could say.

  "Shit indeed, Irie."

  "Agatha did some work, huh?" JJ called from the porch.

  John B tore off another sprig. "Yeah, she did. Irie, c'mere, I'll give you a leg-up."

  Being the lither of the three, John B helped Iris up onto the HMS so she could start to clear the hull of Agatha's remains. Dirt and rain-water splattered up her shins as she waded through all the shit left behind.

  "What you thinkin'?" JJ'd walked over. He was nursing a can of beer, and Iris had to bite her tongue not to reprimand him about drinking before ten. 

  "I'm thinking that storm surge pushed all the crabs out on the marsh maze," said John B, taking a particularly big branch from Iris and throwing it onto the floor. "All those drum are gonna chase the crab."

  Iris hummed to herself. "Circle of life."

  "What about the DCS, wasn't that today?" JJ challenged.

  "Nah, they're not getting on a ferry," John B retorted. He entirely missed the meaningful glance shared by his best friends. "C'mon, think about it—it's God telling us to fish."

  "I think we should also consider the possibility that God's telling us to stay in the Chateau and do fuck all today," Iris offered halfheartedly. "Y'know, roll a spliffette, get some booze in—relax, maybe."

  "Y'hear that, JJ? Our Mariano wants to relax," Routledge taunted.

  JJ shook his head, feigning a forlorn kind of disappointed that made him look almost motherly. "She's not the girl she once was, Bree. That ain't our Mariano. I think—" he interjected himself with a trapped burp, "I think, this is Iris Cameron we're looking at here."

  "Cheap shot, dude," she sneered, "cheap shot. Help me down, so I can knee you in the dick."

  "Hey! There she is. See, I found her." John B ruffled her hair lovingly and helped her jump down into the knee-deep reeds. "What ya say, Irie? Do you really want to relax?"

  She did.

  Iris wanted to slow the whole world down. It felt, sometimes, like everything was moving too fast, and that everything would soon outgrow her—she'd be dwarfed by the grotesque enormity of her own resentment and desires, left behind to wade through it all like a ruby-red river of discontent and blood. Sometimes, Iris Mariano did want to sit and freeze time for a while. Her friends were all so fast that she thought they might keep running until Iris couldn't keep up with them anymore. She wanted to grab all of their hands into hers and run back in time, losing years like a ribbon unravelling.

  Couldn't they see, as plainly as Iris, that they were running out of time?

  Still, John B and JJ were looking at her with this big, stupid grins and eyes of mischief, youth-chased, and love. She said yes with a mouthful of regrets, and John B twirled her in the air like she's a sister to him—and this itself was a testament to the absence of time. She's exchanging one brother for another, and burying Alex in a past that she couldn't get back. The ribbon's in her, taut as a tendon, but Iris had lost all grasp of it. It didn't belong to her anymore—neither did her name, or her brother, or anything at all. 

  Fuck it. 

  Iris Mariano had got pretty good at romanticising all the things that bothered her.

  She was sunbathing on the deck of the HMS, jean-shorts fraying at the hem where the starched material kissed her upper-thighs, and the sun left pinkish lovebites. Her bikini-strap was biting uncomfortably into the flesh of her shoulder, but it means she's alive—the sting of it leaving in a harsh indent, it's good. Inadvertently, Iris was surrounded by evidence that life wasn't anywhere near being over, and she had to stop getting ahead of herself. John B and JJ were at the helm, cruising the commercial waterfront—it's lined with the very organic life that Iris liked to ignore; fish shacks, seafood joints, and outfitters. The storm damage was pervasive, colonies of plastic gathered at the docks, enough to take five years off Kie's life.

  Iris lifted herself up by her propped elbows just enough to spy a  scrap of cardboard with BRING IT ON, AGGIE, YOU BITCH! spray-painted on it. She had to squint through the sunlight for all of thirty seconds before JJ was snatching his sunglasses from the neckline of his wifebeater and tossing them absently into her lap. They were these tacky shades he pinched from a kitsch souvenir place in the Northside, with pink, plastic rims and novelty love-hearts frames. Grinning, Iris slid them on, and didn't have to try romanticise how they kept obstinately falling down her sweaty nose. The flighty edges of her bad mood were softening out. 

  "We'll be cleaning this all summer," JJ told them bitterly.

  John B lifted his head in solemn agreement. "That is my nightmare."

  The Pogue slowed down at the dock of Heyward's Seafood, and Iris sat herself up entirely, grinning at Pope as he angled the hosepipe in his hold to clean between the grooves of the planks. No matter what he did, Pope was always understated. She loved that quiet nature about him. He's all sullen-faced with a half-unbuttoned shirt and a baseball cap on, and his father noticed them before he did.

  "Well, look who we have here," John B taunted. As a tiny grin fought its way onto Pope's expression, Routledge put a hand to his mouth, mimicking the static of a cop's transceiver, "We have a safety meeting: attendance mandatory."

  Pope lifted his shoulder helplessly. "Can't. My pops has got me on lockdown."

  JJ played into the same walkie-talkie bit, quipping, "Your dad's a pussy. Over."

  "Oh, I heard that, you little bastard," Heyward sneered, a mop in hand, and a scowl on his fatherly face. 

  He loved them really.

  "Hi, Gregory," Iris greeted Pope with a little wave.

  Pope smiled at her, all bright and pearly. "Hi, Irie."

  "We need your son!" John B exclaimed, driving as slow as he could without halting the Pogue altogether.

  JJ's got that smirk he always had before he supplied the conversation with a dose of stupid. "Mhm. Island rules. Day after a hurricane's a free day."

  "Who the hell made that up?" Heyward challenged.

  "Uh...Pentagon, I think," he offered. "Ain't that right, sunshine?"

  Iris smiled all proper and responsible at Heyward. "It's true, Sir. We have security clearance. I'm gonna have to ask you hand your son over without a fight."

  "You think I'm stupid, girl?"

  "Pope," she said, still beaming at his dad, "now, idiot."

  He thought about it, looking at Iris, then at JJ, who surely had some wry remark on his tongue that will only piss Heyward off further, and ditched his hose, leaping onto the Pogue with a yelp.

  "—Pope, bring your ass back up here!" bit Heyward.

  "I promise, I'll do it, I swear, Pop—"

  "I'll get your sister to come find ya! She'll drag ya back by your neck, boy!" Heyward called.

  John B was manoeuvring the HMS away from the docks and deeper in the marina, and Iris reclined lazily back onto the deck, warmer now with Pope's thigh against hers, and the sunglasses shielding her eyes.

  "Mag's at work!" Pope called back, and then he's lying back too, an orange cat sprawling in gold rays. The distance swallowed up his old man's threats, but his chest was still tight with guilt. "He's gonna kill me."

  "Lighten up, Pius. Summer's ours," reassured Iris, quoting JJ from only a few days ago, "not his."

  JJ looked back at her sharply, but Iris wasn't looking. She pinched the shades from the bridge of her nose, and put them onto Pope's face, fixing them with a grin.

  "Hi," she said again.

  Pope smiled. "Hi, Iris."

  The boat headed deeper in the marina towards open water. The houses got bigger, and further apart. Kiara waited for them on the jagged, torn-up edge of the last dock, with a t-shirt that looked like one Iris lost a long time ago and a cooler locked in her heavily-ringed knuckles. Iris found her endearing in her backpack, the front pocket of it pinned with patchwork and political badges, and that box no doubt filled with more sustenance than either John B or Maybank had consumed all week. It was a tough pill for Iris to swallow, at first—that gluttonous taste for male validation she had—to get used to another girl being around. She grew out of that shallowness quick. Kiara always smelt of vanilla pods, and shared almost everything with Iris. Her wardrobe was a time-capsule into their friendship, as was her wrist; scintillating with dainty bracelets of Kie's, lovingly hand-crafted by thread and seashells. 

  She kept the boys' stomachs full, and Iris's heart warm, and that's all she could really ask for.

  JJ lent a hand for Kie, and she climbed onto the boat in a far easier manner than Pope had. She set the cooler down with muted clanking, and grinned at them prettily.

  "Good morning."

  "Kie, the light of my life," Iris praised.

  "What'd you bring?" John B asked, trying to keep the hunger from his voice, but he's got that feral longing in his eyes that told Iris what she already knew—his stomach had been growling all morning. "Juice boxes?"

  "Oh, you know. Yoghurt and carrot sticks."

  Maybank looked at it ravenously. "How about my kind of juice box?"

  Kie opened it with a bit of theatre. It was full of Coronas and sandwiches in ziplocks. Pope slanted a dry, reprimanding look at JJ as he instantly snatched up one of the beers, and Maybank only shrugs, "Most important meal of the day."

  John B gunned the engine, and they drifted into the estuary. Kiara unfurled a colourful towel from her backpack to sunbathe on, JJ plonked himself at the prow, nursing a beer and a shit-eating grin, and Pope lied back down next to Iris, the two of them parallel lines under a marmalade sun.  

  Even if Iris Mariano's time was running out, she was glad they all had one more summer together.