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Ellen nods at once and slips into the kitchen without a word.

Róisín is moving around Mannie easily, setting plates, murmuring something under her breath as she passes. She’s moving around him in a way that tells me she’s at ease. As though she’s already been given answers I don’t have.

Behind me, Robert and Alex are entering together, moving carefully. Alex’s humour is muted for once. Robert looks much like I feel—drawn tight, eyes shadowed, carrying the weight of a night that won’t let go.

Róisín hears them before she sees them. She turns at once, eyes sharpening as they land on Alex.

“There you are,” she says, already crossing the room. “How are you feelin’?”

Alex’s mouth curves into that familiar, too-wide smile, the one he uses when determined to put others at ease despite himself. He lifts a hand and pinches her cheek, gentle for once.

“Better,” he says. “Thanks to you, doctor. Never been wrapped so neatly in my life.”

She usually swats his hand away.

Instead, she offers him a sheepish grin.

“It’ll need tendin’ to again after we’ve eaten,” she says, fingers already checking the edge of the bandage beneath his sleeve. “Ya pulled at it in yer sleep.”

“Did I?” he asks, innocent as a lamb. “Terrible patient, I am.”

She huffs, but there’s no real heat in it. “Aye. You are.”

Then her gaze shifts to Robert. “And you?”

Robert shrugs, the movement stiff. “I’ll live.”

“That’s not a proper answer,” she says, already reaching for his arm. Her touch is brisk, but no less careful.

“Rosie,” Robert breathes out, sounding more tired than ungrateful. “You needn’t hover over me.”

“Alright, then,” she says pleasantly. “If ye’ll not have me, I’ll leave ya with the ole rough-and-tough handed Taskill and his tender mercies.”

Alex and Robert stiffen in unison.

“No thanks,” they say at the same time.

Róisín snorts. “Thought so.”

I don’t blame them.

Da’s hands are built for splitting wood and manual toil, not mending torn flesh. I’ve seen him stitch a saddle back together with the same care he’d use on a wound, which is to say—none at all. Whatever survives his attention does so out of stubbornness, not skill.

Ma enters from the kitchen a beat later.

The sight of us—bruised and bandaged and far too quiet for a morning—softens her at once. There’s relief in her eyes, and a quiet ache behind it, tempered by the simple fact that we’ve made it down and are behaving ourselves.

“Good morning to ya,” she says gently.

I answer her in kind, even with a hundred questions crowding my tongue. “Mornin’, Ma.”

She gestures to the table. “Sit… please. Eat while it’s warm.”

We move at once.

Mannie goes to rise, and I read the intent in him immediately.

“Please, allow—” he starts.