“It’s okay.” Emma wrapped her hands around the edge of the table, pressing her palms flat against the wood. “Trish rang me. I got on the next flight. Two days of airports and buses and I look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge but I’m here.” She swallowed. “I’m glad I’m here. I’ll get to say goodbye.” Something tightened in her throat. “Is she.” Emma tilted her head toward the living room. “Is she in there?”
“She is. Go ahead.”
Emma stood. Her legs carried her the twelve steps from kitchen to living room because they’d made this journey hundreds of times.
The room had been rearranged. The sofa was gone, the kitchen chairs lined the walls in two neat rows. Candles on the mantelpiece. A small vase of garden roses, pale pink. And in the centre of the room, resting on a low table, a wicker coffin. Woven willow, golden-brown, the weave tight and clean and simple in a way that looked exactly right for a woman who had no patience for fuss. Emma’s vision blurred and she blinked hard and took another step.
Bridget’s hands were crossed over her chest, the rosary beads wound through her fingers, the dark wooden beads she’d kept on her nightstand. Her white hair was brushed and pinned back the way she’d always worn it. Her face was still. Smooth in a way that living faces never are, the lines softened, the set of her jaw released. She looked ten years younger. She looked like she was having a nap in the front room and would wake in a minute and ask who’d left the back door open.
Emma’s hand found the edge of the wicker coffin. The willow was cool and rough under her fingertips. She stared at Bridget’s face and waited for it to make sense, but it didn’t.
The guilt was worse than the grief.
“I’m sorry.” The words barely came out. “I should have been here.”
She stood there until she heard Natalie’s footsteps behind her and the gentle clink of two mugs.
They sat in the kitchen chairs along the wall, side by side, facing Bridget. The tea was strong. Emma wrapped both hands around the mug and let the heat burn into her palms.
“I’m surprised you did this.” Emma kept her voice low, the way you did in a room like this. “Had the reposing here.”
Natalie held her mug on her knee. She looked straight ahead at the wicker coffin, at her grandmother’s still profile.
“Well, it’s a first for me. I’ve never been to an Irish funeral or wake.” She paused. “But my own comfort isn’t the point, is it? The village needed to say goodbye and this is where she lived. This is where they knew her. It felt wrong to take that somewhere else.” She took a slow breath. “It was actually a nice evening. Strange, but nice. Sitting here with her, listening to all these people come through with their stories. Sixty years of stories. Who she’d helped. Who she’d given cuttings to.” A faint, exhausted smile came to Natalie’s lips. “The funeral director walked me through the options. Said if I didn’t want to do ithere, the nearest funeral home is in Clonbur and that’s what a lot of families are choosing now. Having the reposing at home isn’t an assumption anymore, he said. He took his time. Explained everything. And I just had a gut feeling that this was the right thing.” She turned the mug slowly in her hands. “It was the first decision out of probably a dozen. I don’t remember doing any of this for my mother. I think I was barely functioning and the funeral home must have handled everything. The casket, the memorial service, all of it. It was just a blur.”
Emma took a sip of tea. “Bridget didn’t leave any instructions?”
“Not that I’m aware of. I just tried to make the best decisions without overthinking it.”
“I think you made the right decision. Being here with her. The coffin especially.”
“Yeah?”
Emma’s mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile but was close enough. “Myself and Bridget went to a funeral about ten years ago now, for a school friend of hers. And the family chose this gorgeous walnut coffin. It had The Last Supper carved into the side panels if you can picture that. Beautiful craftsmanship actually.” She glanced at Natalie. “And we came back here afterwards and one of the first things out of her mouth was, what sense was there picking a coffin like that? Thousands of euros spent and it’s seen for a few hours before it’s put in the ground. I’ll never understand why everyone doesn’t go with a plain wooden box or one of those basket style ones.” Emma paused. The memory was so vivid she could hear Bridget’s voice in the room, the particular cadence of a woman who had lived through enough to know exactly what mattered and what didn’t. “And the flowers. Don’t get me started on the flowers, she said. The expense. The fuss. For someone who’s not even there to appreciate it.”
Natalie turned to look at her fully. The candlelight caught the wet on her lashes.
“She really said that?”
“Yes. She wasn’t a contrary woman. Far from it. But she had very particular opinions about unnecessary expenses on behalf of the dead. And I get where she’s coming from but… I also get how hard it is not to, when it’s your own. When you’re standing there and someone’s asking you to choose and all you can think is that this is the last thing you’ll ever get to give them.”
Emma took a deep breath.
“When my father and my brother died in a car accident...” Emma paused, trying to gather her thoughts. “I was so young. I can barely remember the funeral. But my mother told me years later that she picked the best of everything. She said she knew it was probably foolish, spending that kind of money on something they’d never see, but she couldn’t stop herself. It was the only thing she could still do for them.”
Natalie was very still beside her.
“And then when my mother died,” Emma continued. “I was in college, and it just happened so fast. She was healthy, or so I thought in June, but she was gone before Christmas. She did take the time to write down what she wanted. I think it had less to do with what she actually wanted and more to do with not wanting to put that burden on me.”
Emma set her mug down on her knee and stared at the steam rising from it. She’d surprised herself. The words had poured out without her permission, the story about her parents, about her mother’s careful planning, about the weight of choosing final things for people who couldn’t choose anymore.
She and Natalie had always talked, but the flow had been different. Natalie would tell her about Los Angeles, about being recognized everywhere, about how Kilvolan was the only place she could walk into a shop without someone pulling out theirphone. Emma had listened, asked questions, and offered the kind of steady presence that let Natalie share whatever was on her mind.
But Emma hadn’t offered much in return. Not like this. Not the raw stuff that lived underneath the surface.
She thought about that night in O’Shea’s. The confession about her teenage crush had been deliberate, a test to see how Natalie would react. She’d wanted to know if Natalie would flinch or step back or give her something that would confirm what Emma thought she’d been feeling between them.
But Natalie had just smiled and said Trish was a good looking woman and why wouldn’t Emma have had a crush on her. No reaction. No tells. Emma had been almost certain there was something there, but Natalie had given nothing away.
