And now what? He stood for a long time at Ib’s bed, watched the stern little face relax and untangle in the sweetness of a child’s dream. Could he bring in more disruption—another man even? Another man.

His blood ran cold. What if she wanted to take them away? To live with her new family.

But no. Not his sweet Amena. Not his wife.

But she was not his wife anymore. And could anyone truly still be sweet after a war? After believing she had lost her own children?

Puzzled, he clicked on his Facebook once again. He had left it there, after he stopped checking it pathologically, religiously, all the time. Why, why had she never looked for him? Never found him? Was she being held, married against her will? The message was still there. But nothing more. He pulled down the poetry book, looked for answers, found none.

But she had looked happy. She looked happy in the photograph. She looked happy. How could she be happy?

KONSTANTIN COULDN’T HELP it, he was excited. For the first time he missed his phone. He’d have liked to look up some pictures of her. Remind himself. But what should he do? The problem was it was near impossible to ask her to something, given they had to stand next to each other at the sink all day long. What if she said no? Why had she run away?

He was so used to just having women show up, like taxis. Whereas with Isla . . . she was so quiet and shy, he was going to have to tempt her out. He wasn’t even sure she liked him.

Although, that smile . . .

FINTAN LAY AWAKE, still worried about his betrayal of Colton, which had happened again—even if Colton wouldn’t have minded, not in the slightest, had told him a million times that he was still young, that he had to get back out there.

Even so, it felt wrong. It felt like cheating, even if it was cheating on a dead person.

Fintan glanced downward. Under his arm, Gaspard slept the sleep of the dead, a heavily tattooed arm pulled over his eyes, his legs kicked out in front of him; fast asleep and utterly content in his own inked skin.

This was comforting in itself. Fintan thought back to their conversation earlier. He had tentatively asked Gaspard what he was getting out of this, and Gaspard had looked at him, incredulous at the question, then launched into a very complicated discussion about salmon heading upstream, which Fintan hadn’t entirely understood.

“Ze feesh, he ees home, yes? But the water, eet ees always moving .”

“So, is this a good thing?” Fintan had ventured.

“Bien sur, of course! Day by day this is good, this is fresh, this has clear eyes.”

“Do you mean me or the fish?”

“Today, you.”

And just watching him, feeling his warm body, Fintan gradually drifted off.

Chapter 49

T he Seaside Kitchen was insanely busy from the second it opened, with the Mure Angel still lighting the dark up the hill ahead.