One minute we were looking at the gatepost on the farm lane that Paddy was proud to have fixed up—badly, but with enthusiasm—and the next we were standing at the back door of the farmhouse. Jax was looking at me with that expression of his—patient, like he knew I might bolt—and I thought,fine.
Fine. I’ll open the door.
I hadn’t been inside in a long time. It had been too hard. But it had been over a year since we lost Maggie.
Ronan was at the pub, and in any case, no onelocked their doors in Ballybeg. I put my hand on the knob and turned it, stepping into the kitchen.
It smelled the same.
That was the first thing.
Old wood and something sweet underneath—Ronan had been baking in here, I knew, but beneath that it was the smell of the house itself, older than anything we'd put in it. It smelled like my mother, which was impossible because my mother had been gone twelve years, but there it was.
Jax said nothing, which was the right thing. He was good at that, despite appearances. For all his talk, he knew when to be quiet.
I stood in the kitchen and looked at the Formica counter that Da had patched with the wrong shade twice, and the window over the sink with the latch that never quite caught, and the hook on the wall where Maggie's old apron still hung.
Green with a white border.
She bought it at the market in Ennis when she was fifteen, declaring she was going to be a serious cook and needed proper equipment.
She wore it until she couldn’t cook any longer.
I tied it on when I cooked for her while she was sick.
I doubt Ronan ever put it on; he’d probably say that shade of green clashed with his complexion.Ha!
"She cooked here?" Jax asked, looking at the apron.
"Aye." I swallowed, looking around like you dowhen you haven’t been in a familiar place in a while, as if checking to see what has changed and what remains the same. "For Maggie, the kitchen at the farm was herrealkitchen. The pub was work. This was where shepracticednew recipes." I moved to the counter and put my hand on it. "I remember Ma standing here on a Saturday morning, making brown bread, the radio on low.”
I chuckled. “Ma had a singer’s voice. Maggie, not so much. But she sang anyway. We replaced the old radio with a Bluetooth speaker. My sister had a fondness for Taylor Swift.”
I hummed a few lines of her favorite,Shake It Off.
Jax let out a soft laugh.
“She had a terrible voice.” My thumb moved along the edge of the counter. "She said the bread didn't mind."
Jax tipped his chin in acknowledgement.
I turned and walked through to the hallway, and he followed, because that was what Jax Caldwell did: he followed where I went, and he didn't make a fuss about it, and it was one of the things about him that I didn't have a name for yet, the way he moved through the world in relation to me. Always caring for me, being there.
I was getting used to it.
Scary thought.
I put my hand on the banister and felt the smoothplace halfway up where Maggie and I had worn it down over decades of use.
“Your bedrooms are up there,” he said. It wasn’t a question, just him telling me that he knew that was where Maggie passed away.
“Aye.”
“You want to see her room?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“When was the last time you were there?” He took my hand in his and laced our fingers together.
