When Steven died, there was a hole in the heart of me, and only two choices. Bleed to death or grow another skin.

It took a long time.

How much do you remember, Kathryn, of the day you saw your brother die? You were ten years old, old enough to understand dying. Old enough to struggle against the grip on your arm, holding you back. To feel, later, that guilt: you couldn’t save him, couldn’t stop it. You grew up in the shadow of that day, but have always refused to speak of it. My fault. My shame. I was not there to help you.

A thing I have noticed in my life: the effort of keeping a thing unspoken sharpens the pain of remembering it.

If I had been able to see past the loss of Steven, if I had seen you as I see you now, just seen you, I could have told you plain that every day for the rest of my life I would thank God Clementina was there to pull you back. If I had shown you my grief, maybe you wouldn’t have bundled yours away. If I had told you about the little boy on the Knab I couldn’t save …

I could have helped you, Kathryn. We could have helped each other.

But I sank, lambsie, sank beneath the skin of the sea. It was left to Clementina.

This thing has been worrying at me ever since I began writing, picking holes in my sleep. I don’t know how my Kathryn grieved. And I don’t know what she said of that day, if she ever said a thing.

I took it into my mind to risk breaking all we had sealed away. To ask Clementina. I canna say she encouraged me. Such a frown. Even now, a grand old lady of eighty-four, there is no-one on this earth like Clementina for slapping you about the face with no more than a look over the rim of her teacup.

Is that what ye’re doin’, quinie, with your books? Haulin’ up such things as have been put to rest? Shaking her head. I don’t hold with it. If ye’ve a mind to write wee stories for our Laura, ye can do it without causing anybody pain, not Laura nor her mother, neither.

Have ye been talkin’ to Kathryn, then? I ask darkly.

She sniffs. Always did have more sense than her ma, Kathryn.

I look at her, lambsie, I look at my Clementina, who has seen the worst times, the very worst of me, the times I thought to die. She’s seen it all, aye, and borne it all too, and stepped in always. Never have I been a wise woman—I’ve just blundered my way through it all. But Clementina, she is the wisest person I know, and she always tells me straight.

Ye don’t think I should write it all?

All?