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I don’t follow that thought.

“A word, if ye’ve a moment?” she asks.

“Of course,” I say at once, straightening. “Is something amiss?”

“Nothin’ at all,” she replies, smiling. “Quite the opposite.”

Her gaze moves over the room—the dressed doors, the neat piles of birch, the careful order carved out of what could easily have been chaos. She nods once, as if confirming something to herself.

“I wanted to thank you,” she says. “For today. For all of it.”

“It’s nothin’,” I say quickly. “Just what needed doing.”

“That’s usually how the most important things is done,” she answers gently. “Quietly. Without anyone thinking to remark upon it.”

She steps closer, lowering her voice.

“Days like this,” she says, almost to herself, “they make a body remember.”

There’s a shift in her expression. Not weakness. Not fragility. Only truth.

“Ya know, we had three sons,” she continues. “Two we buried before they ever saw a proper summer.”

It’s astonishing how a handful of simple words can hold so much ruin.

“Bealtaine always brings ‘em close again. I wonder what sort of men they’d have been. If they’d have been stubborn like their father. Or soft-hearted like James.”

Her mouth curves faintly at that.

“I’m blessed… blessed to have the son I do. And I love him dearly. I’d not trade him for anything the world could offer.”

I nod, unsure where this is going.

“But I’d’ve liked a daughter,” she says. “We tried for one, more than once. I used to imagine her, where she’d sit at the table, how she’d argue with her brothers, what sort of trouble she’d bring me.” She smiles faintly. “I think I might’ve spoiled her terribly.”

Something tightens low in my chest.

“I sometimes think,” she goes on, gentler now, “that perhaps the Gods, or the fates, decided I needn’t bear a daughter to know what it is to love one.”

Her fingers brush my sleeve.

“You made a place in our lives all the same.”

I can’t breathe properly.

“There’s no world in which I wouldn’t be proud of a having a daughter like you,” she says. “And grateful for her, as I am for you. You and Róisín have filled a place in me I thought would always stand empty.”

For a moment, the yard beyond the door ceases to exist.

My mother has been gone long enough that the ache no longer screams. It simply sits in me, quiet but constantly present.

Maeve has never tried to replace her.

She has simply stood beside me.

Taught me without saying she was teaching. Corrected me without humiliation. Trusted me with tasks that mattered. Spoken to me like I was capable of carrying more than I thought I could.

And now this.