My calves burn, and my breath rattles somewhere between my chest and throat. I am running out of oxygen, but I’m not slowing down. This is what I’ve been waiting for. Not just Mal, but also the truth.

The truth about Callum.

The truth about my father.

About my mother.

The story of me.

I slice through the streets of Tolka, passing the newsagents, the pubs, the quaint inns, the spilled flowerpots, and Gaelic-graffitied brick walls of the alleyways—the beautiful, pastoral lie covering the rotten secrets I am about to unveil. And I don’t stop until I’m at the door of the address I found.

I clutch the little note to my chest, the paper so thin and inky my jacket and fingers are stained, and manage a few knocks on the door before my legs give in and I collapse on the stoop.

The door swings open, and I straighten up, clearing my throat.

“Hi, is Father D…”

I stop dead when I see the person in front of me. Because that person? It’s not the old man with the bushy eyebrows.

It’s the person Mal never told me about.

Purple eyes like Mal’s.

And features so eerily identical to mine.

Kathleen’s features.

Chapter 18

Seven years ago

Mal

Kath is pregnant.

I don’t even pretend to be surprised when she shows up at my door, sans the skimpy clothes, clad in her usual sensible cardigan and thick leggings and carefully combed hair, and rubs her flat stomach tellingly.

“May I come in?” She clears her throat.

She knows as well as I do that we fucked up royally that night. It’s not about the fact that I didn’t use a condom, or that I was completely ossified when it happened, or that she was a virgin (who’d always proclaimed, as long as I can remember, that she wanted to wait till marriage). And I don’t even want to touch the dubious-consent subject. But the worst of it is the fact that I had to tell Sean what happened—he was one of my closest mates, after all—and Sean and Daniel cut Kiki and me off from their lives completely.

Apparently, Sean had confessed his love to Kath one night. I was aware of his feelings, too. Bit of a shit thing to do, I admit.

Well, maybe a lot.

Kath and I deserve it—every nasty eye roll from the O’Leary twins and shake of the head from Maeve and Heather.

I could tell Sean I wasn’t fully there, that I didn’t know what I was doing, and it’d be the truth. My memory of that night is vague at best. But I don’t want to throw Kath under the bus, even if she ran me over with that particular decision.