Chapter Twenty
Alannah
Catríona Walsh has opinions about everything, and she isn’t shy about sharing them. We’ve barely stepped into the shop when she points to a green wool coat on the rack. “That one,” she says. “That’s the one. Try it on.”
“I haven’t even looked around yet,” I tell her.
“You don’t need to. I’ve already done that for you. Try. It. On.”
I slip out of the lighter coat I bought a few months ago after finally caving and going into town with what felt like every woman in my family, Catríona included, all determined to “help.” It had been warm enough then, but that was when autumn was only just beginning.
Now winter’s here, and the cold coming off the water cuts straight through it.
I reach for the green coat and shrug it on.
Catríona gives me a quick once-over, then nods. “There. I knew it. You should listen to me more often.”
I turn to look in the mirror on the shop wall.
The coat is a deep green, fitted through the waist, the wide lapels lying neatly against the front.
The brass buttons catch the light. I smooth a hand over the hem, straightening it where it falls just past my hips, the heavy wool thick beneath my fingers.
I glance at the tag hanging from the cuff, and my brows lift at the price. Then I look at the lighter, more casual coat I set aside a moment earlier. “It’s a bit grand,” I say.
“But it suits you,” Catríona says, then turns to the counter. “Excuse me. We’ll take this one.” The saleswoman comes over with a smile and removes the tag, then folds my lighter coat, wraps it in brown paper, and sets it aside for me to carry out.
The last few months have looked like this: Catríona appearing at my door already talking before it’s fully open, just like she did when we were young, dragging me into town or along the coast path or over to her house for dinner with her family.
She stepped back into my life like no time had passed at all, still every bit as warm, stubborn, and completely herself.
I hadn’t realized how much I needed that until it was already happening.
We step back out onto the street. The air is sharp. Christmas is only weeks away, and the town has dressed itself up for it—wreaths on the doors, lights strung between the shopfronts, a tree outside the post office someone has decorated with mismatched ornaments and far too much tinsel.
“Lunch,” Catríona announces. “I’m starving.”
“You’re always starving.”
“I’m a growing girl.” She grins.
We find a table in a small café off the main street, its windows steamed over from the heat inside and the smell of soup and fresh bread hanging in the air. Catríona orders for both of us without consulting me, which I’ve learned is just how she operates.
“Finn said you’ve been helping your grandda with the accounts,” she says, unwinding her scarf.
“Just the ledgers. Grandmam and my aunts don’t exactly enjoy sitting over columns of figures.”
Catríona looks as though she’s just bitten into a lemon. “And you do?”
The look on her face makes me laugh. “I do.”
The soup arrives, thick and hot, and we eat without rushing. Outside the window, people pass in coats and scarves, their arms full of parcels.
It’s good here. It took me a while to feel that. At first, I was too raw from everything that had happened to take much comfort in being home. But slowly, I’d begun to feel settled.
Still, the holidays have a way of bringing old hurts back to the surface.
I felt it last week, when Grandmam brought the Christmas boxes down from the attic.
I helped her unwrap the ornaments I’ve known since childhood—the little glass birds, the painted wooden angels, the star that has always sat at the top of the tree. Seeing them again felt bittersweet.
I’d had plans. Not grand ones. Just a house. Our house. The one with the wide windows and the water beyond the back fence, the one I’d worked so hard to choose the furniture and finishings for, hoping to make it somewhere that felt like ours.
Ronin and I had talked about our first Christmas there. The first of many, we’d said. Making our own traditions. I’d imagined waking up there on Christmas morning for the first time, in a house that was ours, that we’d chosen, that we’d filled with our own things.
I’d thought about the little room next to ours.
It was the smallest bedroom in the house, tucked at the end of the hall.
The first time we walked through, I hung back in the doorway while everyone else moved on, taking in the soft yellow walls and the large picture window overlooking the water.
Ronin was already in the next room by the time I followed.
For a moment, I saw it differently. A border of little lambs or ducks running around the walls. A rocking chair by the window. Later, when we hired the decorator, I asked her to leave that room as it was.
Not yet, I had thought. But someday.
I’d had plans. But there is no someday now.
There is no our house, no Christmas mornings waking up together, no building the kind of traditions we talked about. There is no small yellow room waiting to become something else.
I hadn’t expected that one to hurt as much as it does. It had only ever been a quiet, private hope I’d never even spoken out loud, and yet losing it still feels like losing something real. I press my lips together and look back down at my soup.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Catríona says.
“Just thinking.”
She doesn’t press. That’s the thing about her—she knows when to leave things be. She tears off a piece of bread and nudges the basket toward me. “Your grandmam’s invited the lot of us for Christmas Eve,” she says. “Mam’s already said yes, so there you are—my Christmas present to you.”
“The whole lot of you?” I laugh. “That’s quite the gift.”
“I know,” Catríona says, looking far too pleased with herself. “And I’m the best part.”
***
Christmas Eve arrives the way I remember it from when I was a girl, with days of preparation and a house that grows louder with every hour that passes.
The house smells of pine and cloves and the good candles my grandmam always saves for special occasions.
The tree stands in the corner of the sitting room.
Catríona, Róisín, and I put it up a few weeks ago while my grandmam was in town.
We made popcorn for the garland, but after Róisín started a popcorn war, it took us three batches to get enough strung for the tree. The memory still makes me smile.
I sit on the window seat, watching everyone.
My grandda is beside the fire, telling Uncle Conor and Finn’s father, Eamon, a story I know I’ve heard before.
Catríona, her mam, and Róisín sit together on the sofa, glasses of wine in hand as they talk.
Grandmam and my aunts have taken over the kitchen, so no one else is allowed in.
My job was the shortbread—apparently no one else can get theirs right—but once the last tray came out of the oven, I was told to get out from underfoot.
This is my family, everyone together for Christmas in a house that has held us for generations. But with everyone here, it’s hard not to think about Mam and Da.
Neither of them has written. Neither has called.
I’d asked my grandmam about it a month or so ago, when we were sitting by the fire one evening while the radio played softly in the corner. I had turned the question over in my mind for days before I finally asked it. Whether I should write them myself. Whether it was my place to reach out first.
My grandmam had shaken her head without looking up from her knitting. “Leave it be, love,” she said, her voice gentle but certain. “If they want to make things right, let them be the ones to come to you.”
So I left it alone. Some days, that’s harder than others.
I understand why my grandmam said it. I do.
Reaching out, smoothing things over, making it easier for everyone—that isn’t my work to do.
What happened wasn’t my fault, and I don’t owe anyone the comfort of pretending otherwise.
But they’re still my parents, and this is my first Christmas without them.
The cushion dips beside me, pulling me from my thoughts. “There you are, Lannie,” Finn says. “Do you remember when we were ten and Declan convinced us the Christmas tree was haunted?”
I look at him. He’s smiling, waiting for me to answer. It takes me a second to realize what he’s talking about, then I laugh. “Yeah. He moved the angel when no one was looking and pretended to be terrified.”
“And you believed him.”
“I was ten.”
“I didn’t believe him,” Finn says very seriously.
“You absolutely did. You wouldn’t go near the tree for two days.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it again. “I was being cautious,” he says finally.
That does it. I break into a fit of giggles. He’s so full of it. I can still see the terrified look on his face, the way he hid behind me and made me walk past the tree first.
Finn glances sideways at me, something softening in his expression. “There it is,” he says quietly.
“What?”
“That laugh. Haven’t heard that one in a while.” He looks away and clears his throat. “Catríona’s been stealing all your time lately. I was thinking maybe I could borrow you for a bit tomorrow. We could go for a walk down by the cliffs or something.”
I can’t remember the last time it was just the two of us. The thought makes me smile. I bump my shoulder against his. “A freezing Christmas walk by the shore? How could I turn that down?”
A corner of his mouth lifts. “Knew you wouldn’t.”
“What else do you remember?” I ask.
He doesn’t even have to think about it. “You still owe me a tanner from that football match when we were eleven.”
My head snaps toward him. “I absolutely do not.”
“You lost the bet.”
“You cheated.”
“I was strategic.”
“You moved the goalposts.”
“Creative problem solving,” Finn says calmly.
I shake my head, but I can’t stop grinning.
My grandda’s deep laugh has me looking over.
Declan must have come in while I wasn’t paying attention.
He’s pulled a chair up beside Grandda, and whatever he’s saying has him laughing while Eamon and Uncle Conor sit nearby, talking between themselves.
From the kitchen, I hear my grandmam humming “The Rose of Tralee” while Aunt Maeve tells her she might at least pretend to sing a Christmas tune.
Around me, the room is warm, full of voices, laughter, and the familiar chaos of family.
I didn’t plan for this to be my life. I’d had plans. But then, everyone does.