Chapter 24
Irish
For a long moment after I told Skye I thought I was ready, neither of us moved.
The farmhouse had gone quiet around us as daylight thinned beyond the kitchen windows, the rooms settling into the small creaks and shifts of an old building cooling after sunset.
I had heard those sounds thousands of times growing up and hadn't remembered a single one until tonight.
The faint knock inside the wall near the stove whenever the wind changed direction.
The loose board somewhere above the kitchen that complained when the temperature dropped.
The old pipes ticking behind plaster because Da had refused to replace perfectly serviceable plumbing merely because Mam called it ancient.
For fifteen years, every memory of this house had begun and ended with blood.
Somewhere during the last few hours, Skye had forced nothing, demanded nothing, and somehow made enough room for other memories to return.
That should have made what I was about to tell her easier.
It didn't. Remembering my family alive only made the night I lost them feel more brutal because, for the first time in years, I could see everything that existed before it.
Skye remained a few feet away, close enough that I could reach her if I chose but far enough that the choice would remain mine.
She had become unusually good at that. The woman who had marched into Alderwick House alone because waiting offended every instinct she possessed had somehow learned patience with me, and I didn't know what to do with the fact that her restraint made me trust her more than any amount of questioning could have.
"I was twenty-three," I said finally.
Her expression didn't change.
I looked toward the kitchen table because looking at her felt impossible once the words started coming.
"Da and I had been fighting for months. Not constantly, but enough that every conversation eventually found its way back to the same argument.
He was distracted. Secretive. Always taking calls outside or locking papers in his study when he'd never cared who saw his work before.
Mam knew something was wrong. Maeve knew.
Eamon knew because he knew everything that happened in this house whether I wanted him to or not.
Even Finn knew, and he was young enough that Da still thought telling him not to worry ought to be enough. "
I moved toward the table and rested one hand against the back of the chair where Declan had once sat beneath mountains of paperwork.
"I thought he was in trouble with money at first. Then I thought maybe he'd made an enemy through one of the restoration groups because he kept driving to meetings and coming back furious.
Every time I asked, he told me he was handling it.
Every time Mam asked, he told her the same thing with slightly different words because he knew she'd throw something if he sounded patronizing. "
A faint warmth touched Skye's eyes.
"Sounds like your mother."
"Aye."
My mouth almost curved before the memory pulled it away again.
"The last week was worse. Da barely slept.
I came downstairs one night and found him burning copies of something in the fireplace.
When I asked what the hell he was doing, he told me to go back to bed like I was twelve.
I lost my temper. Told him if he'd dragged something dangerous into the house, the rest of us deserved to know. "
"What did he say?"
"He said that was exactly why he wasn't telling us."
Skye's brows drew together slightly.
"I thought he meant he didn't trust us." I looked down at the scarred wood beneath my hand. "Now I think he meant knowing would put us in danger."
The possibility had been living inside me since Cipher found Declan's name, but saying it aloud in the kitchen where we'd fought made it feel less like an idea and more like something I should have understood fifteen years ago.
"That night, we started again over dinner.
Mam tried changing the subject. Maeve told both of us we were behaving like idiots.
Finn sat there pretending not to listen while listening to every word.
Da finally told me to leave it alone, and I told him I was done being treated like some useless kid who couldn't be trusted with the truth. "
I could still hear the scrape of my chair against the kitchen floor and see Mam's face as clearly as if the argument were happening around us again.
"Da told me sometimes protecting a family meant carrying things they didn't need to carry. I told him that wasn't protection. It was control."
Skye inhaled quietly.
The irony didn't escape either of us.
"I said if he trusted us so little, maybe I shouldn't be there. He told me not to be dramatic." A humorless breath escaped me. "Worst thing he could've said. I was twenty-three and furious, which meant dramatic was practically a professional obligation."
"What did you do?"
"I left."
The word felt different spoken inside the house where that decision had begun, heavier than it ever had when I confessed it anywhere else.
"I took the bike. Mam came after me to the front door. She told me to stop being an idiot and come back inside before the rain got worse. I told her I needed air."
My throat tightened.
"She said something before I left."
Skye waited.
I could see Mam standing beneath the porch light as clearly as though the door had opened and placed her there.
"She said, 'There's a difference between going somewhere and running from something.'"
Skye's eyes softened.
"I told her I wasn't running."
I swallowed.
"Then I did exactly that."
I pushed away from the chair and walked toward the sink because sitting still had become impossible.
The window above it reflected the kitchen rather than the dark fields outside, and for one strange second I could see Skye standing behind me in a room where no one outside my family had ever known how badly I had failed.
"I went to Eamon's first. He wasn't home.
Ended up riding for hours because I was too angry to go back and too stubborn to admit I'd overreacted.
Niamh called. Mam called. Maeve sent me a message telling me to stop behaving like an arse and come home before breakfast because Finn had eaten the last of something I'd apparently threatened him over. "
A laugh almost formed.
It died before reaching me.
"I didn't answer Mam."
Skye said nothing.
"I read Maeve's message and didn't answer that either. I told myself I'd go home in the morning after Da had time to cool down and I'd had time to decide whether I was apologizing or demanding answers again."
The old clock in the hallway ticked loudly enough that I could hear it from the kitchen.
"I came back just after seven."
My voice changed when I reached that part of the memory, and judging by the subtle shift in Skye's expression, she heard it as clearly as I did.
"The front door was open."
Her eyes didn't leave my face.
"It had been raining most of the night, so water had blown across the hallway floor. At first, I thought someone had left in a hurry. Then I saw blood."
I hadn't said any of this aloud in fifteen years.
The police had taken my statement, doctors had asked questions, and both Niamh and Eamon had tried to get me to talk afterward, but I had only ever given them facts.
I had never given anyone the memory itself, not the version that remained alive inside my head exactly as I had found it that morning.
"I called for Mam before I understood what I was looking at. Then Da. Then Maeve. I knew something was wrong, but there are moments when your mind refuses to accept what your eyes are already telling you."
My hand closed around the edge of the sink.
"Maeve was near the stairs."
Skye's breath caught softly.
"I found her first. She'd been coming down, I think. Or trying to get to Finn. I don't know. The police told me things afterward about trajectories and where everyone probably was when it started, but I stopped listening because none of it changed anything."
I closed my eyes and saw my sister's hair against the floor.
"I knew she was gone before I touched her."
When I opened my eyes again, Skye had moved slightly closer without my noticing.
"Finn was farther down the hall."
The name nearly failed me.
"He was nineteen."
I rubbed both hands over my face.
"Still had his whole bloody life sitting in front of him.
Wanted to travel. Kept asking when I was taking him to America because I'd made the mistake of telling him once that I wanted to see it.
He had maps hidden inside schoolbooks when he was younger.
Used to circle places and tell me which ones we'd do first."
My voice broke enough that I had to stop.
Skye didn't rescue me from the silence.
That was one of the reasons I managed to continue.
"He was close to Da's study. I used to think maybe he heard something and went looking. Now, with what we're finding, I keep wondering whether he knew more than we thought. Whether Da had trusted him with something or Finn had found it himself."
"That wouldn't make what happened his responsibility."
"I know."
The answer came automatically.
Believing it was harder.
"Mam was in the kitchen."
The room seemed to change around me as soon as I said it, and although I knew exactly where Mam had been lying, I couldn't make myself look toward that part of the kitchen.
"She'd probably come down because she heard something. Mam always went toward trouble. Used to drive Da mad. If there was a fight outside the pub, she'd be the woman walking into the middle of it telling grown men their mothers would be ashamed."
Skye gave the faintest smile through the grief in her expression.
"She was near the table."
I stared at the grain of the cabinets instead.
"Da was in his study."
The closed door waited beyond the kitchen. I hadn't opened it yet.
"I found him last."
Skye followed my gaze toward the door but didn't move.