Page 49 of Faithless Vows

“No.” The word comes out flat. “I’m not signing.”

My mam speaks carefully. “If she’s finding some peace over there...”

“She’s my wife,” I say.

“On paper,” Seamus says. Quiet. Final.

I want to argue. The words are right there, pressing at my teeth. But I can see Alannah’s face in my head. The way she looked at me in that bar at the hotel. Before I opened my mouth. Before I put my hand on her wrist and marched her into that ballroom. I put the letter on the coffee table and push myself to my feet.

My da walks me out. In the hall, he rests his hand on my shoulder, and the weight of it is heavier than usual. “When the papers come,” he says, his voice low, “don’t make it harder than it already is.”

I don’t answer. I take my coat from the hook and let myself out.

***

I don’t bother with the lights when I get home. I know my way well enough by now. Six months of moving through this place in the dark will do that. I shrug off my coat, leave it over the banister, and walk through to the front room, where the window faces the water. The harbour is dark, snow coming down in a slow, steady drift, settling on the glass. I sink into the chair closest to the window and lean back.

The room is exactly the way she planned it. She chose all of this—where the chairs would sit, which way the table would face, the colours for the walls. Everything. And she never got to live a single day of it.

In the corner, stacked against the wall, is a pile of unopened boxes. Christmas decorations. I went out at the beginning of December for lightbulbs and ended up in the holiday section of the store, staring at the displays—ornaments, strings of lights, garland, stockings. She’d talked about it when we signed the papers on the house, our first Christmas, how she wanted lights in the window and the whole place done up. I found myself grabbing a cart and filling it without really deciding to, choosing things I knew she would have liked, the ones she would have chosen herself. I told myself that if she came home, we could still go out and get the tree and have that first Christmas she’d dreamed about.

I stare at the boxes in the corner until the shapes blur.The Walsh lad.Someone who knew her before I did. Someone hergrandfather had once planned for her to marry, before Seamus and my da got in the way. Before Boston. Before me.

I don’t know how to fix something when she won’t come back to let me try. I’ve turned that over for six months and I still don’t have an answer. You can’t apologize to an empty room. You can’t do better for someone who isn’t there.

Everyone keeps telling me what I can and can’t do. I can’t go to Ireland. Apparently, that would be a death sentence. When I asked Seamus for his father’s address so I could write her, he refused. Said his daughter deserved some peace. And now I’m supposed to sit here in Boston and wait for papers to sign while her grandfather dissolves my marriage and lines up someone else for her life.

I won’t.

My thumb finds my ring. The knotwork presses into my skin. Outside, the snow keeps falling. Somewhere out there across all that dark water, she’s moving on without me.

And that isn’t something I’ll accept.

Chapter Twenty

Alannah

Catríona Walsh has opinions about everything, and she isn’t shy about sharing them. We’ve barely stepped into the shop when she points to a green wool coat on the rack. “That one,” she says. “That’s the one. Try it on.”

“I haven’t even looked around yet,” I tell her.

“You don’t need to. I’ve already done that for you. Try. It. On.”

I slip out of the lighter coat I bought a few months ago after finally caving and going into town with what felt like every woman in my family, Catríona included, all determined to “help.” It had been warm enough then, but that was when autumn was only just beginning. Now winter’s here, and the cold coming off the water cuts straight through it. I reach for the green coat and shrug it on.

Catríona gives me a quick once-over, then nods. “There. I knew it. You should listen to me more often.”

I turn to look in the mirror on the shop wall. The coat is a deep green, fitted through the waist, the wide lapels lying neatly against the front. The brass buttons catch the light. I smooth a hand over the hem, straightening it where it falls just past my hips, the heavy wool thick beneath my fingers.

I glance at the tag hanging from the cuff, and my brows lift at the price. Then I look at the lighter, more casual coat I set aside a moment earlier. “It’s a bit grand,” I say.

“But it suits you,” Catríona says, then turns to the counter. “Excuse me. We’ll take this one.” The saleswoman comes over with a smile and removes the tag, then folds my lighter coat, wraps it in brown paper, and sets it aside for me to carry out.

The last few months have looked like this: Catríona appearing at my door already talking before it’s fully open, just like she did when we were young, dragging me into town or along the coast path or over to her house for dinner with her family. She stepped back into my life like no time had passed at all, still every bit as warm, stubborn, and completely herself. I hadn’t realized how much I needed that until it was already happening.

We step back out onto the street. The air is sharp. Christmas is only weeks away, and the town has dressed itself up for it—wreaths on the doors, lights strung between the shopfronts, a tree outside the post office someone has decorated with mismatched ornaments and far too much tinsel.

“Lunch,” Catríona announces. “I’m starving.”