Chapter 32
Irish
The farmhouse looked different when we returned after midnight, although nothing about the building itself had changed.
The same stone walls rose from the dark fields, the same climbing rose pressed wild branches against the front of the house, and the same narrow windows reflected the headlights as I turned into the lane.
What had changed was the way I approached it.
Two nights earlier, I had stood at the gate with a key cutting into my palm and felt as though opening the door would drag me backward fifteen years whether I wanted it to or not.
Tonight I parked beside the house, killed the engine, and sat for only a few seconds before reaching for the door handle.
The grief was still waiting inside. So were Da's hidden archive, Finn's metal case, Mam's kitchen, Maeve's photographs, and every ordinary object that had survived people who hadn't.
None of that had become easier while we were away.
The difference was that the house no longer felt like something capable of deciding whether I belonged there.
Skye climbed out more slowly than usual, favoring her bruised shoulder despite every attempt she had made since Saint Brigid's to convince everyone it was merely inconvenient. I came around the SUV.
"Don't."
She looked at me. "I haven't said anything."
"You were about to offer to carry my bag."
"Aye."
"With the expression."
"What expression?"
"The one where you pretend it's assistance when you're actually trying to monitor whether I'm injured." I took the bag from the rear seat anyway.
"Your shoulder's bruised."
"My legs work."
"I noticed." Her eyebrows lifted. I realized what I'd said. A smile spread across her face.
"Did you?"
"Walk."
She laughed softly and headed toward the front door while I followed with both bags, which defeated whatever point she believed she'd made about independence.
The key turned easily this time. That mattered more than I wanted to admit.
I opened the door, reached inside for the hallway light, and stepped across the threshold without stopping.
Skye followed, and the farmhouse settled around us with the familiar sounds I had begun relearning: pipes ticking faintly inside the walls, the old clock in the hall keeping stubborn time, and wind moving along the chimney with a low whistle that had once kept Finn awake during storms. The house smelled faintly different after only two nights of heating and opened windows, less stale and more like timber, stone, coffee, rain, and the beginning of something being used again.
Eamon had left Finn's case on the kitchen table exactly where I told him to place it, wrapped inside a clean towel to protect the rusted metal from scratching the wood.
Beside it sat a note in his handwriting.
Didn't open it. Brigid tried. Stopped her. You owe me. Skye read over my shoulder.
"That sounds expensive."
"Everything with Eamon is expensive."
"You should probably pay him."
"I've been tolerating him since we were children."
"That isn't currency."
"Should be."
She set her bag near the doorway and walked toward the sink, filling the kettle before I could tell her to sit down.
I watched her move around Mam's kitchen with the cautious familiarity of someone who understood this wasn't her space yet but no longer felt like a stranger inside it either.
Two days ago, seeing another person reach for cups or open cupboards might have unsettled me.
Tonight Skye found the coffee, complained that Ireland was apparently conspiring against her preferred caffeine intake, and opened the wrong drawer twice before locating the spoons.
It felt normal. That word had become dangerous in ways bullets weren't.
"Coffee at midnight?" I asked.
"We nearly died in a fire."
"That's your argument?"
"It's an excellent one."
"You need sleep."
She glanced over her shoulder. "You nearly died in the same fire."
"I was nowhere near dying."
"Part of the ceiling fell between us."
"Technically, it fell behind me."
"Your standards are concerning."
I smiled despite myself. Then my attention returned to Finn's case.
The name still carried the image of him on the hall floor if I allowed my mind to move there, but other memories were beginning to fight for space now.
Finn laughing from the ditch while I tried not to get trampled by a ram.
Finn sleeping on my floor during storms. Finn hiding maps inside books and planning places he intended to see before the world took the chance away.
Somewhere in the last days, he had also become a nineteen-year-old boy entrusted with one task by a frightened father who didn't want his youngest son involved but had apparently run out of people he could trust. Skye set a mug beside me.
"Do you want to open it tonight?" I looked at the metal case.
"No." Her expression didn't change.
"We can wait."
"I don't mean I never want to know."
"I know."
"I just don't want every night in this house to become another investigation."
Something softened in her face. The thought had surprised me too.
For fifteen years, I had preserved the farmhouse because selling it felt like betrayal and living in it felt impossible.
Now I had spent two days turning Da's study into evidence storage, measuring hidden walls, tracing Harrow through old papers, and preparing to hand pieces of my family's lives to detectives who would finally reopen their murders.
All of that mattered. But if the only purpose of returning was to convert the house into another crime scene, then Harrow would still own more of it than I did. I touched the edge of Finn's case.
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," Skye agreed.
I carried it into Da's study and placed it on the desk near the folders we'd already preserved.
The hidden archive remained open behind the bookcase, its shelves carefully photographed and partially reorganized under Cipher's instructions.
For a moment I stood there looking at Da's handwriting across boxes that had survived fifteen years behind a wall while the rest of us convinced ourselves his secrets had died with him.
Then I closed the concealed door, not permanently but simply for tonight.
The shelves swung back into place with a quiet click. Skye watched from the doorway.
"Better?"
"Aye." We returned to the kitchen. She had taken the chair across from Da's rather than the one she'd used before. I noticed immediately.
"So that's your seat now?"
She looked down. "Do I have a seat?"
"Apparently."
"I can move."
"I didn't ask you to."
Her gaze met mine. Something small and domestic passed between us, far too intimate for a conversation about chairs.
She stayed where she was. I sat at the side of the table rather than the end.
For several minutes, we drank coffee and listened to the rain begin again against the windows.
There were dozens of things we should have been discussing: Brennan reopening the murders, Croft in custody, the residents from Saint Brigid's, Harrow somewhere beyond our reach, Vale disappearing into whatever infrastructure he had spent years creating, and the Order already shifting assets before authorities understood what they were looking at.
Instead, Skye traced one fingertip along a scar in the table and asked me how it happened. I knew exactly which mark she meant.
"Maeve."
"Naturally."
"She dropped a hot pan."
"That doesn't make a gouge."
"She dropped it because Finn threw an orange at her." Skye stared.
"And?"
"And she tried throwing the pan back."
"The pan."
"It wasn't hot anymore."
"That's your defense?"
"I wasn't involved." She narrowed her eyes.
"Why don't I believe you?"
"Because you're suspicious by nature."
"Callum." I smiled into my coffee.
"Fine. I gave Finn the orange."
She laughed, and the sound filled the kitchen in a way that made something inside me tighten unexpectedly.
I remembered hundreds of moments of laughter in this room rather than one specific memory.
Mam threatening us with whatever utensil happened to be nearest when we annoyed her.
Da telling terrible jokes without changing expression.
Maeve laughing loudly enough to make everyone else laugh whether the story was funny or not.
Finn trying to imitate Da's serious voice when he was twelve and failing because he couldn't keep from smiling.
For years, the silence after their deaths had been so overwhelming that I convinced myself silence was the house's natural state.
It wasn't. The house had been loud. Skye looked at me.
"What?" I hadn't realized I was smiling.
"Nothing."
"That wasn't nothing." I leaned back.
"It used to be loud here." Her expression softened.
"Good loud?"
"Mostly."
"Mostly?"
"Four children, depending how many cousins or friends were in the house. Mam had a generous definition of dinner guests."
"That explains Brigid."
"Brigid invited herself."
"Of course she did." I looked toward the sitting room beyond the doorway.
"Da hated the television too loud. Mam hated quiet meals. Maeve played music while marking schoolwork. Finn couldn't walk through the house without banging into something. I used to complain I couldn't hear myself think." Skye said nothing. The memory kept coming.
"I spent years remembering this place as silent."
"Because that's how you found it."
"Aye."
"That doesn't mean that's what it was." I looked at her. She had given me a version of that lesson before. Buildings remembered what people forgot. Maybe they also remembered what grief tried to replace. I stood abruptly. Skye's eyebrows lifted.
"What?"
"Come on."
"Where?"
"Sitting room."