When he slid behind the wheel, she was blotting her eyes with her fingertips. “All right?” he asked.
She nodded, averting her face.
His chest felt oddly tight. He didn’t know what to do for her.
“I need to apologize,” he said formally. “For the other night. It’s not my place to tell you how to manage your relationship with your sister.”
“No, you were right.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Toni needs to find her own way. And I need to let her go. To give her the confidence to be on her own.”
Generally, Tim liked being right. But her admission in this case didn’t make him feel any better.
At least the rain had stopped.
When he merged north on M50, Dee turned her head. “Where are we going?”
Tim cleared his throat. “I thought you could use...”Cheering up. A distraction.“A field trip.”
She leaned forward to read a road sign. “ ‘Malahide Castle’?”
“There’s a tour. Or we can walk around the grounds if you like. Or down to the beach.” Anything she wanted. Whatever she needed.
“It’s such a pretty day,” she said. “Let’s walk outside.”
It was, in fact, quite overcast. But trust Dee to see things in the best possible light.
They strolled up from the lot toward the castle, the round, crenelated towers rising from the green lawn and dense vines.
She turned to him, her face shining. “It’s like a fairy tale. Like ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ ”
He gestured toward her feet. “ ‘Puss in Boots.’ ”
She laughed, and his chest eased, loosening, lightening. For now, at least, he could make her feel better. She was with him now. Did it really matter why?
He bought tickets to the garden. They walked the landscaped paths, Dee smiling and exclaiming, pausing occasionally to take pictures with her phone: the drifts of daffodils under the gray-brown trunks of trees; the silvery lichen on the old stone walls; the frame of the glass conservatory, white against the bruised sky.
Children scampered past, shrieking, pursued by parents carrying coats. Couples wandered connected, arm in arm or hand inhand. Dee was still holding her phone. She bent to read an informational sign, her sweater tightening across her round bottom, and he wanted to touch her. Pat her. Right there, on the curve of her hip.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets.
George and Caroline Woodman were not given to public displays of affection. But once, at the holidays, Tim had walked in on his father in the library patting his mother’s bum, the gesture somehow more intimate than a kiss: familiar, natural, unthinking. Embarrassing.
“Imagine if your family lived in the same place for the past eight hundred years,” Dee said dreamily as he approached.
She wore her hair in a sort of a bun, with bits falling down. One dark strand blew across her lips. His hands clenched. “Imagine.”
She turned her head, her smile like the sun edging the clouds. “Shit. They do, don’t they?”
“Not eight hundred, no,” he said uncomfortably. “The house was built in the seventeenth century.”
“That’s so cool.”
“Drafty, at least.” He attempted a joke. “Impossible to heat, my mother says. And the chimneys smoke.”
She laughed. “But it must be nice to know where you’re from. To have that kind of family. History. Traditions.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Except it did. Or it had, to Laura. “Anyway, I’m in Ireland now.”
“Do you like it? Living here?”
