“My mother took days to fall asleep after my father died,” Declan said. It took Jordan a moment to realize that he was referring to the dreamt Aurora, not his biological mother, Mór Ó Corra. It was the first time she remembered him doing so. “He was dead right away, of course. Brains bashed in. They had to take some of the gravel driveway with him to clean up the scene, if you can imagine, that’s your job, the shovel, make sure you get all the pieces, don’t want the kids tripping over gray matter. They didn’t take my mother, though, because she didn’t look dead yet. She looked fine. Fine as you could expect under the circumstances. No, it took her days. She ran down, like a battery. The further she got away from him, the longer it had been since he was alive, the less she became, until she was just … asleep.”

It was not his ordinary storytelling voice. There was no theater. He was looking at nothing.

“Ronan and Matthew wanted her awake again, of course—Why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t you? Truly, why wouldn’t you, I see that now. I see it from their point of view. But Ronan and I fought. I said it wouldn’t matter, she was nothing without Dad. Always an accessory to him, a reaction to him. Why wake her? You couldn’t wake the dead along with her, so she’d always be a frame for a destroyed painting. We were orphans the moment Dad died because she was just organ death. What was she except for what Dad made her to be? What could she do except what he had made her to do? She had to love us. She was always just an external hard drive for his feelings. She—”

“Just stop,” Jordan said. “You have to know now. Saying she wasn’t real doesn’t make it any easier. Just different. Anger doesn’t mess up mascara as much.”

His eyes were bright but he blinked and they were ordinary again.

“Ronan’s trying to wake up the world. I’m trying to think of how to talk him out of it, but what he’s talking about is a world where she never fell asleep. A world where Matthew’s just a kid. A world where it doesn’t matter what Hennessy does, if something happens to her. A level playing field. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but it’s not like I can’t see the appeal, because now I’m biased, I’m too biased to be clear.” Declan shook his head a little. “I said I would never become my father, anything like him. And now look at me. At us.”

Ah, there it was.

It took no effort to remember the way he’d looked at her the first moment he realized she was a dream.