Chapter 20
Irish
The ferry crossed the Irish Sea beneath a sky the color of old steel, and I spent most of the journey standing near the rear windows pretending the weather had anything to do with why I couldn't sit still.
Skye had claimed a table several yards away with two coffees, her tablet, and the folder Cipher had assembled from the Croft House records before we left England.
Trigger and the others were traveling separately and would meet us farther west once Maverick finished arranging vehicles and a secure place for the team to work.
Toxic had agreed that entering County Clare with half a motorcycle club at our backs would attract more attention than we wanted before we knew exactly what Harrow had moved there, which meant the first stretch belonged mostly to Skye and me.
I should have preferred that. Recon had always been easier with fewer people, fewer voices, and less chance of someone noticing what I didn't want them to see.
Instead, the quiet left too much room for memory.
Ireland appeared gradually through the mist, first as a dark line along the horizon and then as something solid enough that distance could no longer protect me from recognizing it.
Fifteen years had passed since I'd stood on this side of the Atlantic, yet my body reacted before my mind caught up, my shoulders tightening and my jaw beginning to ache from how hard I'd been clenching it.
The farmhouse key felt heavier inside my jacket even though it weighed no more than it had when I carried it out of Carolina.
For years, I'd treated that piece of brass like proof that I could leave without surrendering everything, but as the shoreline grew closer, I began wondering whether keeping it had been less about ownership than refusal.
Some part of me had never truly believed I was finished with the house, even when I couldn't imagine walking through the door again.
Skye joined me without asking.
She stood beside the window, close enough that our sleeves touched, but she didn't reach for my hand or ask what I was thinking.
That restraint had become one of the things I noticed most about her.
When we met, she had challenged every silence because she believed unanswered questions were obstacles.
Somewhere between Alderwick House and Croft House, she had learned that some doors opened faster when nobody tried forcing them.
"That's Ireland?" she asked after a moment.
"Aye."
"Helpful. I was worried the ferry had taken a wrong turn."
I looked at her.
She kept her expression perfectly serious for perhaps two seconds before the corner of her mouth betrayed her.
"You nervous?" she asked.
"Aye."
There was no point lying to her anymore.
Her gaze shifted toward the approaching coast. "More than Croft House?"
"Different."
"Because this time you know what's waiting?"
I looked at the gray water sliding past beneath us. "Because I don't."
Skye nodded as though that answer made perfect sense.
We left the ferry with the rest of the vehicles and collected a dark SUV Maverick had arranged through a rental company that had no connection to the Order or anyone we knew.
The drive west took hours, but time behaved strangely once familiar names began appearing on road signs.
Dublin disappeared behind us. Then the motorways narrowed, towns grew smaller, stone walls started tracing fields in every direction, and the landscape became the Ireland I remembered rather than the Ireland tourists photographed.
Green fields broken by exposed limestone stretched beyond the road beneath weather that changed before a man could decide whether he needed a jacket, while low houses sat behind stone walls that looked older than most countries.
By the time we crossed toward Clare, I had stopped needing the navigation system.
Skye noticed when I turned it off.
"You know where you're going."
"I used to."
"That's not what I said."
I glanced at her.
She sat angled toward the window, watching the countryside while giving me the space to decide how much the answer deserved.
"Aye," I said. "I know."
The roads narrowed farther as we moved west. I recognized bends before reaching them and remembered which hills hid villages on the other side.
Some landmarks had changed. Petrol stations stood where empty fields used to be.
Houses had been renovated, businesses renamed, and one pub I remembered from my twenties had become a café advertising artisan coffee.
Other things looked untouched enough to make fifteen years feel like an illusion.
The first sight of the Atlantic nearly stopped me.
It appeared between two rises in the road, dark beneath the clouds and stretching toward a horizon swallowed by mist. My mother used to complain that the sea got into everything around here.
Clothes. Windows. Bones. Mam had loved it anyway.
She could stand outside in weather that sent everyone else running indoors and claim a storm was only dangerous if you behaved like an idiot in it.
Skye looked toward me when I slowed.
"You okay?"
I wasn't all right, not remotely, but I was still driving toward everything I'd spent fifteen years avoiding, and for the moment that had to count for something.
The village appeared not long afterward.
Smaller than I remembered and somehow exactly the same.
A cluster of stone buildings sat along the road, with a church tower rising behind them and shops squeezed together beneath painted signs.
There was a new pharmacy where an old hardware store had been, but the bakery remained in the same location, as did the little grocery where Mam used to send Finn and me for milk before dinner. I drove through without stopping.
Skye didn't comment.
The farmhouse waited several miles beyond the village.
I hadn't planned to go there first.
That was the lie I told myself until I turned onto the road.
Skye looked at me but said nothing.
The lane narrowed between stone walls before curving toward fields that rolled unevenly toward the distant coast. The house wasn't visible until the final bend, hidden behind old trees and a stretch of overgrown hedgerow I immediately knew needed cutting back.
My chest tightened before the roof came fully into view.
The farmhouse stood exactly where memory had left it, its gray stone walls rising beneath a dark slate roof between two chimneys, white-framed windows overlooking the low wall surrounding the front garden.
Someone had maintained the property well enough to keep it from falling apart, though not enough to make the place look as if anyone had actually lived there in years.
But the gutters were intact, the windows unbroken, and the roofline showed newer slate in several places where repairs had obviously been made.
I knew the management company I paid every year sent photographs and invoices.
I rarely looked at them closely. Seeing the house in person made those payments feel suddenly absurd.
For fifteen years, I had spent money preserving a building I couldn't enter.
I pulled onto the gravel and switched off the engine. Neither of us moved as rain whispered against the windshield. Skye looked toward the house, but I could feel how deliberately she avoided looking at me.
"That's it," I said.
"The farmhouse."
"Aye."
The word came rougher than I intended. We sat there another minute. Then I opened the door.
Cold air hit me the moment I stepped from the SUV, carrying the smell of wet grass, old stone, and the faint salt of the Atlantic on the wind. I had forgotten that home possessed a scent of its own until one breath carried fifteen years of memory straight through me.
Skye followed several paces behind as I crossed the gravel.
She didn't walk beside me this time, and I appreciated the distance because every step toward the house pulled something old and violent through my chest. I saw Finn racing down the front path with one shoe untied.
Maeve sitting on the low wall marking school papers.
Mam shaking a dishcloth through the kitchen window because I'd come home late and she refused to admit she'd been worried.
Da standing near the front door after our last argument, his expression hard enough that I had convinced myself leaving was the only way to win.
The warmer memories lasted only until the house transformed in my mind into what I had found afterward: the front door standing open against the weather, rain spreading across the hallway floor, and blood staining places where blood should never have been.
I stopped before reaching the steps, and Skye stopped several paces behind me without asking why.
The farmhouse key was already in my hand before I realized I'd reached into my jacket for it, the worn brass digging into my palm as I stared at the front door.
Skye came a little closer but still didn't touch me, and when she said I didn't have to go inside today, I almost argued simply because admitting she was right felt too much like surrender.
Instead, I pushed the key into the lock and discovered it still fit perfectly.
My fingers rested against it without turning.
For one terrible moment, the years between then and now collapsed and I could feel the hallway beneath my boots again, hear myself calling names into rooms that would never answer, and smell rain coming through a door that should have been closed.
I finally pulled the key free and stepped back.
I wasn't going inside today, and although part of me expected the decision to feel like failure, it didn't. Not entirely.
I stepped back from the door.
Skye didn't say she was proud of me or tell me I had done enough. She simply nodded toward the SUV.
"Supplies?"
I exhaled slowly.
"Aye."
"If we're staying anywhere near here, I'm going to need food."
"There's a pub."
"That isn't groceries."