Chapter 17 Bringing Him Home
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
brINGING HIM HOME
Colin entered the bedroom slowly, still raw from his conversations with Norm—with David. Joshua and Nate had returned over an hour ago, but Colin had stumbled to the backyard after talking with David, and he and Joshua had not yet spoken.
Now, he expected silence. Maybe even distance. But Joshua stood near the window, holding something in his hand. His face was calm—not angry, not broken, just resolved. He was a man standing in the eye of a storm that had passed but left its mark.
Colin froze. Suddenly terrified.
Joshua turned and held out an envelope. “This is for you.”
Colin took it with tentative fingers. Slid out the contents. A single plane ticket. To Dublin.
He stared down at it, confused. “What—?”
Joshua’s voice was quiet but firm. “You leave tomorrow. It’s all cleared with Esther. Your family knows you’re coming.”
Colin looked up, startled.
“Not because I don’t want you here,” Joshua said.
“Because God knows I do. With every breath I take, I want you beside me.” He exhaled slowly, the air trembling in his chest. “But because I think—no, I know—you need to find yourself. Without guilt constricting every breath. Without the need to prove anything to anyone. Without pretense or penance. Without rage, when what the world needs from you is justice.”
Colin drew Joshua close and pressed their foreheads together, fighting back sobs.
Joshua lifted his head until their eyes met, then leaned another inch closer and whispered: “I love you, Colin. With all my heart. Forever.” He drew in a shaky breath.
“But you’re lost, my darling love. And I can’t find you.
” He lowered his head, and Colin saw the tears fall from his eyes.
Then he lifted his head until their eyes once again locked.
“And even worse, mo mhuirnín, you can’t find yourself. ”
Colin’s eyes welled.
“Go to Ireland,” Joshua said, his voice a sob in the darkened room, his face streaked with tears.
“Walk where your ancestors walked. Sing the music you carry in your blood. Remember who you were—before all this pain and ruin took you away from me. Go find the man I love!” He closed his husband’s hand around the ticket and then cradled Colin’s face between his palms. “And when you find him… please bring him home to me.”
The air smelled different in Dublin. Wetter. Softer. Like earth and ancient memory.
Colin stepped out of the terminal with only a small carry-on slung over his shoulder. He hadn’t packed much. Just the essentials—and one photograph of him and Joshua, tucked deep inside his duffle bag.
He didn’t speak to anyone. Didn’t smile. Just moved through customs, then made his way to the train that would take him south.
To Killarney. To Aileen. To the place that had always called to his bones when nothing else made sense.
The taxi rumbled up the narrow gravel lane, tires crunching over stones still wet from morning rain. Colin sat in the backseat, his head resting against the cool glass of the window. Trees arched overhead—familiar, ancient. A canopy of green that whispered welcome in a language older than sorrow.
The driver pulled to a stop in front of a large yellow house at the edge of town. Smoke curled from the chimney. A lace curtain fluttered in the front window. She was waiting for him.
Aunt Aileen stood on the porch, wrapped in her thick wool shawl, hands folded in front of her like she’d been standing there for years—like she’d always be standing there.
Colin stepped out of the cab. Shouldered his bag.
Their eyes met. She didn’t speak. Neither did he.
She just came down the steps and wrapped him in her arms. He sank into the hug like a man who’d been treading water too long.
Let his head drop to her shoulder. Let the tears come—silent, steady, unstoppable.
“There now,” she murmured, stroking his back. “There now, mo chroí. You’ve come home to us, so you have.”
Inside, the fire was already lit—the kettle already whistling. His room was made up just as he’d left it. Just as it had been all those years ago—when he’d come here broken and grieving after Kathy.
Nothing had changed. Nothing except him.
That night, he sat by the hearth while Aileen knitted in her chair across from him. No questions. No conversation. Just the soft crackle of the fire and the rhythm of needles clicking in her lap.
He hadn’t known how badly he needed the quiet until it wrapped around him like a balm.
Tomorrow, he’d walk the park trails again. Visit Ross Castle. Breathe the green back into his lungs. But tonight? Tonight, he was simply home.
Morning light slanted through the kitchen window, warming the scrubbed wood table.
Aileen moved easily around the stove, the clink of porcelain and the hiss of steam familiar, comforting.
She placed a pot of tea between them, then poured it into two mismatched mugs—just like she had when he was a boy.
Colin sat, hands folded around the mug. He hadn’t spoken much since arriving. She hadn’t pressed him.
That was her gift—presence without pressure.
“Sleep all right?” she asked gently, settling across from him.
He nodded. “Some.”
Aileen studied him over the rim of her cup. “You’ve lost weight.”
“I’ve lost a lot of things,” he murmured.
The silence between them stretched—not uncomfortable, but thick with memory. Colin looked out the window, eyes distant. “I keep thinking how much he loves it here,” he said finally. “The light. The quiet. The way the wind sounds different in the trees.”
Aileen waited.
“God, Ahn-tee, I want him with me,” Colin whispered, his voice choked. “Not for me. For him. Because this place… it heals things. And he’s hurting too.”
She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. “You carry him,” she said. “He may not be sitting in that chair, but he’s here, mo mhac. In your blood. In your bones. In your heart. In every step you take toward yourself.”
His throat tightened.
“I don’t know how to come back to him,” he said. “I don’t even know if I can.” He looked into her eyes, his own welling with tears. “And that terrifies me.”
Aileen gave his hand a squeeze. “And sure, didn’t you come back here all the same?”
He nodded.
“Then that’s your start, mo mhac. This land knows you well—it hasn’t forgotten. And it’ll help you remember yourself, so it will.”
Colin looked down at the tea. It smelled of bergamot and comfort and just…
home. The ache in his chest didn’t fade—but it softened a little.
He thought of Joshua’s hands. His voice.
The way he would murmur ‘mo ghrá milis’ when no one else could hear, and a warmth stirred beneath the sorrow, born from the memory of that gentle voice and the life waiting for him across an ocean.
The path to Ross Castle twisted through a forest that breathed in shades of green. Moss blanketed the stone walls along the trail, the one the tourists never walked. The air was cool and damp, the kind that clung to skin and memory alike.
Colin moved slowly, hands in his jacket pockets, his boots crunching softly over damp leaves. Every step echoed in the quiet, like the land was listening.
The castle rose from the mist ahead, its stone walls standing as they had for centuries—weathered, unshaken. Just like he used to be.
He paused at the water’s edge, where Lough Leane lapped gently against the shore.
The castle now loomed behind him, a sentinel of another time.
He remembered coming here after Kathy’s death—how he’d stood in this very spot and let the silence seep into his bones until something inside him finally unclenched.
But now? The silence hurt. Because Joshua wasn’t here to share it.
He turned slowly, looking back along the trail. He could almost see Joshua walking it with him—curious, quiet, taking everything in. Asking questions. Reaching for his hand. Smiling that soft, private smile that always felt like a secret meant only for him.
Colin sat down on the low stone wall beside the castle and pulled his jacket tighter. The lake stretched out before him, gray and endless. The wind carried the scent of peat smoke and wildflowers.
He bowed his head. “I miss you so much,” he whispered, his voice breaking in the still air.
A raven called from somewhere high above. The water rippled, stirred by the breeze. But the air remained still around him, as if the world itself was listening.
He didn’t expect an answer. But for the first time in weeks, he didn’t feel entirely alone.
He pulled his phone from his pocket. Not to call. Not to text. Just to look.
A photo glowed back at him—Joshua, standing by this very lake on their honeymoon. Wind in his hair. Laughing at something stupid Colin had said. Colin stared at the image, thumb brushing the edge of the screen.
“Don’t call,” Joshua had told him. “Don’t text. It’ll tear you in too many directions. Just please find yourself, my love, and come home to me healed and whole.”
Colin swallowed hard, then stood and put the phone away. He turned back to the trail and kept walking.
The bus ride to Galway was long and gray, the kind of journey that made it easy to disappear into the window glass and forget you had a body at all.
When it pulled into the station, Colin stepped down into the mist and found Danny already waiting. Same thick sweater. Same worn cap. Same patient eyes that had never needed many words. Danny nodded once. “You look like shite… and that’s me being generous.”
Colin huffed a laugh. “Thanks.”
They hugged—brief, firm, like men who’d done this before. Like muscle memory.
“Come on, so,” Danny said, slapping his shoulder. “Boat won’t clean itself, now will it?”
On the dock, the salt air stung Colin’s lungs in the way only Galway could. Danny handed him a brush and a bucket, and they worked in silence, scrubbing the deck and untangling lines. The wind tugged at their jackets, and gulls wheeled overhead, loud and insistent.
It felt like being fourteen again—only heavier.