Chapter 9
The morning after the funeral, Emma had knocked on Natalie’s door with the intention of asking to borrow her car.
She needed to sort a dozen small things that had been piling up since she’d landed, errands that required wheels and a few hours in Galway, and she’d stood on the step rehearsing her ask because it felt wrong to bother anyone the day after they’d buried their grandmother.
She’d considered calling Trish, but Trish would be working, and the dealership closed at six.
So she knocked. Natalie opened the door barefoot, mug of tea in hand, and before Emma could finish speaking, Natalie said she’d come along.
Said she could use the drive and didn’t want to spend the day in the house.
Emma thought about Galway in July—the festival crowds, the tourists, Shop Street packed with people—and almost said something.
But Natalie’s face looked lighter than it had all week, and wanting a day out the morning after your grandmother’s funeral wasn’t strange.
It was healthy. So Emma said okay and hoped the sunglasses would be enough.
Now they were on Shop Street and the sun was shining, with buskers dotted along the busy pedestrianized street, the crowds moved around them. Tourists wandered with ice cream and shopping bags. Locals cut through at twice the speed.
Natalie walked beside her. Emma tried not to look at her and failed.
White linen trousers sat low on her hips. An olive sleeveless top showed her collarbones and arms. She wore sandals, hair down past her shoulders, sunglasses covering half her face. Her phone was in her back pocket.
She looked like she belonged somewhere else—some square in the south of France, maybe, or a terrace restaurant in California.
The white trousers. The way she moved. She seemed unaware of it, which made it harder not to stare.
She wasn’t performing. She was just walking down a street in the sunshine, shoulders relaxed, stride easy.
“I’m starving,” Natalie said. “We should find somewhere to eat.”
Emma’s stomach tightened, the smallest flicker of something she couldn’t quite name. Galway in July, a restaurant, Natalie with her sunglasses off. She glanced at the crowd. Did Natalie realize how risky that would be? Or was she just so happy to be out in the sunshine that she didn’t care?
“Yeah, sure. What are you thinking?”
“Somewhere with a table outside? It seems criminal to waste this.”
She was right. The day was too good to sit indoors. Natalie had lifted her face toward the sun, eyes closed behind the tinted lenses. Her expression was softer than Emma had seen in a long time.
They kept walking, keeping an eye out for an empty table.
The sound of a fiddle grew louder, a fast reel that had drawn a small circle of onlookers, their heads bobbing in time with the music.
Emma automatically angled herself around the edge of the crowd.
Natalie stayed close. Then their arms brushed—just once, just barely.
The woman appeared from the cluster near the fiddle player, stepping forward with the velocity of someone who had recognized a face and was acting before she could talk herself out of it.
“Sorry, are you...” She was in her late twenties, flushed, smiling so hard her cheeks were pushing into her eyes. “Are you Natalie Clarke? Oh my God. I’m such a huge fan. I’m so sorry to bother you, could I just get a quick photo?”
Behind her, two friends had already appeared with phones raised.
Emma watched Natalie’s face change. Not visibly—not in any way the woman or her friends would notice. But something shifted. The line of Natalie’s mouth softened into a smile that was warm and gracious. Open but bounded. Generous but measured.
“Of course.” Natalie took her sunglasses off and held them at her side. “Here, come stand beside me.”
The woman laughed and pressed in close. One of the friends took the photo.
Natalie said something Emma didn’t catch, something that made the woman laugh again, and the interaction was over in forty seconds.
Natalie touched the woman’s arm as they separated, and the woman walked back to her friends glowing.
But the damage was already spreading.
Other people were noticing Natalie. A man to their left had stopped walking.
A teenage girl three meters away held her phone up, filming.
The recognition spread outward in waves.
Someone gets a photo. The people nearby look to see who.
Others look to see why everyone’s looking.
Within ten seconds, the anonymous stroll was over.
Natalie put her sunglasses back on. Her chin lifted slightly. Her shoulders drew back, no longer relaxed but not quite tense either.
“Natalie.” Emma’s hand found Natalie’s elbow. “We should go.”
Natalie nodded.
Emma turned them. Not sharply or fast—nothing that would draw attention. She angled through a gap between a couple with a pram and a group of Spanish students, then set a brisk pace. She knew these streets the way she knew the hospital corridors.
The day’s warmth pressed against her neck and arms. Natalie kept pace beside her, silent, sandals tapping against the paving stones.
Emma didn’t look back. She’d planned to suggest a walk on the prom after lunch, maybe ice cream in Salthill, the beach if the tide was out.
All of that was gone now. It had vanished in the time it took one woman to say the word fan.
They reached the car park on the seafront. Natalie’s rental car sat in the corner space where they’d left it, baking in the sun. Emma held out her hand.
“I’ll drive.”