I looked at our joined hands. “Haven’t opened it since the week after the funeral. Ronan offered, more than once, to help me sort her things…but….”
I kept saying:not yetand that became a permanent condition.
Not yet had become my way of keeping her here a little longer, on the other side of a door I refused to open.
“Show it to me,” he urged.
He smiled at me. His dimples flashing.
“Okay.” We walked up together on the creaky staircase.
We stood in front of the door—it was old wood, the varnish peeling off.
“It’s time, Dee,” he murmured.
It was. And that terrified me.
How did he know me so well? How was I supposed to protect myself from a man who saw everything I tried so hard to hide?
I opened the door.
Her room was small, like they used to be in the old days.
The room carried the faint, stubborn chill of an old farmhouse that never quite dried out. The air smelled faintly of dust and cold cotton.
The space was untouched, appearing suspended.
I let go of Jax and opened the window to let in some fresh air. It faced the fields at the back, and in the afternoon light, the green outside was so saturated it looked almost unreal, the way Ireland sometimes did when the cloud broke.
Her bed was made—I had made it that last week, and then couldn't unmake it because unmaking it meant something I wasn't prepared for.
Her books were stacked on the nightstand in the same order she’d left them.
Ulyssessat on top—she swore she was going to finish—bookmark still wedged about three-quarters of the way through.
She didn’t finish it.
She hated that.
Because our Maggie wasn’t the kind of person who left stories unfinished if she had any say in the matter.
On the dresser: a small mirror, a jar of hand cream, a photo. The photo was us—me, Maggie, and our mam, taken the summer I was fifteen, on the cliffs. Maggie had her arm around me like she was holding me to the earth, which was what she always did.
I stood in the middle of her room and looked at all of it.
Jax wrapped his arms around me, his chest to my back, as if supporting me.
"She was the cook," I said. "I kept the accounts when we first took over the pub together, because she was feckin' hopeless with numbers.Dee, lass, she’d say,you count because God is my witness I don’t know how to." My voice went low, and I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. “Dee, lass, you talk to the doctor because I can’t understand half the gobshite he says.”
“You took care of her,” Jax said quietly. “I can’t imagine that being easy.”
“I loved her.”
He kissed my head. “Tell me about her.”
I turned to look at him. He wasn't asking about my sister to fill the silence; he was asking because he wanted Maggie in the room with us.
"She could make anyone feel like the most important person in the world." I relaxed against him as I reminisced. "Customers, strangers, people who came in furious and left laughing. She had a way of—she'd find the thing that mattered to a person and lead with that."
