That didn’t stop the wondering. Two months of living next door to Emma again. Would they slip back into their easy summer rhythm, walks in the woods and quiet evenings at the pub? Would either of them mention the kiss? Would Emma pretend it never happened, or had she carried it too? Natalie doubted she could last more than a few days before the words spilled out. She had thought about confessing it on the plane, rehearsing variations in her head like lines for a scene she would never film. The pull felt stronger now, dangerous in its quiet persistence.
The boreen narrowed, hedges brushing the rental car. She reversed neatly for a passing tractor, lifting one finger in the local salute. Her chest warmed at the small ritual. Kilvolan always asked her to be present. The cottage came into view, grey stone solid against the sky, rosebushes heavy with familiar pink blooms along the front wall. She killed the engine and sat a moment in the quiet rush of the river below and riotous birds in the ash tree. No sirens, no helicopters, just the low hum of this place that let her breathe.
The front door opened. Gran stepped out in her navy cardigan, white hair pinned in its neat bun, moving slower than last year but still upright. Natalie met her halfway across the gravel, folding into thin strong arms that smelled of hand cream, bread, and peat smoke. She pressed her face into her grandmother’s shoulder and inhaled deeply, the knot of the past year loosening further.
“Let me look at you,” Gran said, pulling back with weathered hands on Natalie’s elbows. Those piercing blue eyes, the ones Natalie had inherited, scanned her face with slow care. “You’re the image of her. More every year.”
Natalie blinked hard at the roses, throat tight. She studied her grandmother in return, grateful for another July together. These weeks were sacred. Nothing in LA could touch them.
“Come on in. You must be exhausted.”
Natalie followed her grandmother inside. The scents hit her at once—roses from the windowsill and the yeasty smell of rising bread. The heavy oak table stood scarred from decades of use. Gran filled the kettle with steady hands and clicked the kettle on. The sound of it coming to life filled the kitchen with its familiar rising hum, the first sound of every morning in this house for as long as Natalie could remember. Her grandmother’s hands moved with quiet purpose, selecting the blue mug from the shelf, the one that had always been Natalie’s. The one no one else was allowed to use. Natalie watched those hands, weathered and strong.
“Tea won’t be a minute,” Gran said, voice carrying the soft lilt that always made the years between visits disappear. “How was the drive?”
“The roads were quiet. I’m finally getting the hang of driving on the wrong side of the road.”
Gran made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “It’s only wrong to you.”
Natalie smiled. “The other side of the road then.”
Her eyes moved to the window without her permission. The window that faced the boreen, and beyond the boreen, the low stone wall, and beyond the wall, the roof of Emma’s cottage. No car in the drive. The curtains were drawn.
She looked away before her grandmother could notice her looking, but the looking itself had already happened, and something in her chest had already tightened.
“I thought Emma would be here,” she said, keeping her voice casual. “Her car wasn’t out front.”
Gran didn’t turn from the counter. “Emma’s in Australia.”
The words hit hard. The distance felt impossible. Emma had mentioned college friends living there during their late-night talks at O’Shea’s last summer. Maybe she’d be back next week. August at the latest.
The kettle reached its boil with a sharp click that made Natalie flinch. Gran poured the water over the tea bag in each mug, the steam rising in fragrant curls. Everything about the moment should have felt perfect. The mug waiting. The bread scent. Her grandmother’s steady presence filling the space with the kind of peace Natalie chased across continents and never quite caught anywhere else. Yet her eyes kept returning to that empty spot where Emma’s car should have been.
Her grandmother carried mugs to the table. “Her friends from college had been out there a few years already. Aoife kept asking her to come. And with her parents gone these past years, there wasn’t much to keep her here. Young people leave. It’s the oldest story in the village.”
Natalie’s jaw tightened. Her mother had left at twenty-two with a scholarship and a one-way ticket, carrying the guilt until she died. “When will she be back?”
Gran lowered herself into the opposite chair with the careful slowness of her eighty-eight years. “I don’t know if or when she’ll be back.”
The simple line hit like cold water. Natalie’s stomach dropped so sharply she had to set the mug down before her fingers betrayed her with their sudden tremble. The kitchen tilted for a moment.
Emma had moved to Australia. Not a vacation. Not a temporary escape. The realization sank in slowly, each layer colder than the last.
She wouldn’t see Emma this summer.
Maybe not ever again.
The woods behind the cottage, the archway, the path along the Volan River stretched out empty now. Their summer rhythm, the one Natalie had counted on even while telling herself she shouldn’t, had been cut without warning. She stared at her mug. Five summers of almosts pressed down on her chest.
She’d been looking forward to seeing Emma. The thought hit sharp and unwelcome. They could never be together properly—not with Natalie’s life across an ocean and Emma rooted here. But the pull remained, growing stronger each July.
Natalie had walked away.
What else could she have done?
Yet she’d hoped this summer might be different.
“She writes to me,” Gran said. “Every few weeks which is really sweet of her. She knows I don’t like to text, and she tried to show me how we could do video calls, but I’m glad she writes. It’s been a long time since anyone has sent me a letter. And Emma writes properly. Tells me about her life. She’s working in a hospital in Sydney, a bigger one than Galway.”
