Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
A fter Bríd left, Aisling did what she always did when life felt like it was wobbling off its axis—she made a list.
Then another. Then a third, subcategorized by room.
Soon, she had color-coded Post-it notes and a growing mountain of goals: update plumbing, replace curtains, ghost-proof attic, install a goat-repelling fence. But behind the logistics lurked something deeper—something gnawing at her like a splinter under the skin.
She didn’t just want to restore the house. She wanted to understand it.
Understand them . Her mother. Her grandmother. Why the people who were supposed to raise her had left behind nothing but silence and crumbling mortar.
She needed answers.
She started in the back of the house—what had clearly been Noreen’s room—the one where she was sleeping now. It was updated and neat with all white linen and oak furniture, but it felt sterile, lived in but not alive.
Bríd had told her that her grandmother had moved downstairs when the stairs became too much.
No photos. No letters. No clutter. Just a sterile room until one of the main bedrooms was updated.
Aisling opened drawers and flipped through old catechism books, but nothing gave her insight into who Noreen had really been. A fiercely private woman, apparently. Which was inconvenient since she’d taken her secrets straight to the grave.
She almost gave up.
Then she went upstairs and wandered into the master bedroom.
It was larger, older, and clearly untouched for years. A bay window overlooked the western fields. A layer of dust blanketed everything except the floor. But in the far corner, half-hidden behind an armoire, she spotted a trunk.
Old. Iron-bound. Exactly the kind of thing novels used to hold treasure or bodies.
She knelt and flipped the latch.
The scent hit her first—cedar, paper, and the soft musk of time. Inside were photographs. Dozens of them. Some black-and-white, others washed-out color. Her grandparents' wedding, smiling stiffly in front of a lace-draped altar. Her mother as a girl, barefoot in the fields. Snapshots of picnics, birthdays, and grainy Christmas mornings.
People she knew—but didn’t. Moments frozen in time like ghosts mid-sentence.
She flipped through the layers until her hand brushed against something heavy.
Journals.
Bound in leather, yellowed with age, one of them cracked open as if waiting for her.
The first entry was dated:
Thursday, June 5, 1969
Today, Darragh Gallagher, our despicable neighbor, was caught—again—moving the property line markers. Tiernan nearly walloped him with a spade. This is the third time he’s tried to claim that stretch of pasture. Tiernan’s had enough. He says he’s building a stone wall and daring Darragh to move that.
I felt the baby kick today. Just a flutter, but it’s the first time. I lit a candle at the chapel and prayed we made it the whole nine months this time. I don’t think I can bear another grave.
Aisling sat back, heart caught somewhere between sorrow and awe.
Her grandmother was… real. Vulnerable. Funny. Fierce. And absolutely not a woman to cross.
She turned the page.
June 9, 1969
Darragh saw the foundation stones and lost his mind. He ranted about his grandfather grazing cows there in 1912 as if that gave him squatter’s rights. Tiernan threatened to call the Garda if he so much as sneezed near the wall.
The baby hasn’t moved since Saturday. I’m trying not to panic. The doctor says not to worry. I’m trying. But I don’t know if I can take another miscarriage.
She kept reading, flipping gently as if the paper might shatter under her fingertips.
There were prayers, longings, and so much raw grief. Three miscarriages. Silent nights soaked with tears. Candles lit, names never spoken again.
And then?—
July 19, 1969
I’ve been in bed for days. We lost her. Again. I can’t do this anymore. I love Tiernan, but I can’t look at him without feeling like I failed us both.
The Americans walked on the moon today. The whole world watched. I barely noticed. What use is space when your world is breaking under your hands?
Aisling pressed the book closed, heart hammering.
This wasn’t just about the feud. This wasn’t about roses or goats or property lines.
This was about loss . Layered and unspoken and buried in a trunk no one ever touched.
She turned the pages more slowly now, journal after journal, reading little windows into a life shaped by grief and grit. And Darragh Gallagher—what a piece of work.
At one point, he’d stolen the O’Byrne sheep for breeding season and “forgot” to return them. When confronted, he claimed they had “ defected to better pastures. ”
Another time, he dug up every rosebush on the shared fence line and replanted them on his land . His excuse?
“ They grew legs and walked toward quality soil. ”
Aisling laughed out loud. “Oh my God. He was Ronan before Ronan.”
But the laughter faded quickly.
Her mother appeared in the later entries. A spirited child. A bookworm. Bright and wild and curious. Noreen wrote about her like a gift from heaven.
And then— nothing.
The entries became shorter and more formal until they stopped altogether. There was no longer a journal, and she wondered if they had been misplaced or if this was the end. There was no mention of Maeve leaving, and there were no entries after 1994 as if Noreen had sealed her sorrow in ink and never picked up the pen again.
Aisling closed the journal and leaned back on the floor, staring at the trunk lid like it might open again on its own. There was so much more she wanted to learn about the women in her family.
A soft buzz pulled her back to the present.
Her phone.
She checked the screen.
Michael.
Ugh. No. Absolutely not.
She hit decline so hard, it was personal.
The man had the emotional depth of a puddle and the self-awareness of a chair. Why he still thought they had anything left to say was beyond her.
Still, her thumb hovered.
He’d been charming once. Safe. A plan. A future with spreadsheets and dinner reservations.
But maybe that was the problem.
He’d never wanted her chaos. Just her shine.
She slipped the phone into her pocket and wandered downstairs, her thoughts still spinning. The kitchen was dark except for the pale moonlight streaming through the lace curtain.
She opened the back door and stepped onto the porch, barefoot on the cool wood.
Above her, the stars were diamonds. The moon glowed full and round like it was watching.
So much peace.
So much... space.
Who had her mother been before she became Maeve the Single Mom in New York?
Why had she never returned? Why had she carried her secrets like armor?
And what about her sperm donor? That was all he’d ever been in her life. No father-daughter dances, no pep talks, no daggered looks at boyfriends. As far as she knew, he didn’t even know she existed or had walked away from her.
Aisling wrapped her arms around herself and stared up at the stars.
All she knew was that when Maeve found out she was pregnant, she left Ireland. Fast. No explanations. No letters home. No answers. And the only reason she knew that was because she was born six months after her mother left the Emerald Isle.
Once, when Aisling was sixteen and angry at the world, she’d asked her mother if she’d been raped. If that’s why she never spoke about her father.
Maeve had just smiled sadly and said, “No. I loved your father. We just couldn’t be together.”
No further details. No name. No picture. Just silence.
It haunted Aisling more than she admitted.
She didn’t need a daddy to save her. But she wanted to know what made her her. Did she look like him? Act like her father?
What part of her belonged to someone she’d never met?
What had been so bad that Maeve fled everything she’d ever known?
Maybe, just maybe, there were more of Noreen’s journals that she’d yet to find. Maybe they would tell her what had happened between her mother and grandmother.
And what part did her father play in separating mother and daughter? Was he the reason her grandmother and mother never spoke again?
Maybe she’d have to find him herself. Everything had started here in Ireland, so he must be here somewhere. But where? And who?
Aisling stepped back inside, quiet as a prayer, the memory of her grandmother’s handwriting still imprinted behind her eyes.
One thing was clear: she hadn’t just inherited a house.
She’d inherited a story.
And it was time she figured out how it ended. It was time for her to learn all the secrets.