“Morning!”

“Hey,” I said, while Connie grunted. “What’s up?”

“Just thought I’d see if you were up yet. I made breakfast, if you wanna join us?”

“Of course,” I smiled, and before I could say anything more Connie was on her feet, heading toward the door. “Listen, Orla, I’m really sorry—”

“Don’t be at all,” she protested, “we had an unreal night after you left. Seriously. Are you alright now?”

A few steps ahead of us, Connie shrugged and threw us an unreadable look over her shoulder.

“She’s okay now, Orla. We had a great night anyway, too.” I watched as her lips quirked up into a smirk, and fought to hold back the groan that threatened to escape me. “Maybe we should do it again sometime.”

Chapter 8

July 1994

We strolled together through the endless rows of headstones, all standing erect in reverent silence all around us. The yew trees hunched across the footpath, gnarled branches reaching across to block out the early morning sun to form almost a tunnel for us to walk through. I had never liked accompanying my grandparents on their weekly visits to the cemetery as a child. Seeing the cracked and moss-laden tombstones that stood forgotten on every side, inscriptions weathered away; it haunted me, in a sense. Most of those who lay beneath our feet were now joined by the very same people that mourned their deaths once and so it would be, someday, for us, too. Visiting the cemetery forced me to reckon with my own mortality far too young. It forced me to realize, far too soon, the insignificance of my very own life, barely a ripple in the waters of time. Each of those headstones stood for a life that had been loved and lost, a person who shared in all the trials and tribulations, successes and achievements, losses and victories, as I would. And now all that remained was a barely decipherable epitaph and a crumbling stone to mark their passing from our world.

It had been a long time since I visited my father’s grave. Claire rarely took to visiting the cemetery herself. Less because it frightened her and more so because she gained next to nothing from it. Her husband lay beneath the ground there, sure, but that wasn’t his resting place, in her eyes. He lived on in the music that she played, the jokes we shared. There were far better ways to keep his memory than a bouquet of flowers that would, in turn, wither and rot. And yet there we were, Connie and I, barely after sunrise, trudging through the overgrown weeds in search of a headstone nobody had sought out since my grandparents’ passing.

We found his grave with relative ease. Surprising, given the infinite rows of granite all around us. We didn’t need to kneel or approach it too closely to make out the inscription etched on its face.

“Thomas Ryan, born fifteenth March 1956, died fifth July 1979,” Connie read out from my side. “Remembered by his parents John and Anna, his wife Claire, and daughter Alex.”