Page 119 of The Devil's Pawn
And this time, that feels better.
25
EPILOGUE
SAOIRSE
Eighteen months Later
The coast is quiet this morning, and I still do not trust quiet on instinct. I trust it on evidence.
The house sits above the water where the grass bends low in the wind and the path down to the shore is packed hard by our feet now, mine, Cillian’s, and the small, uneven steps of the child currently shrieking with joy at her father’s terrible attempt to hide behind a driftwood post.
“I can still see you,” I call from the blanket.
Cillian peeks around the post with our daughter on his hip, pretending shock. “That ruins the game.”
She laughs so hard she hiccups, then smacks his shoulder with one sticky hand and points at the sea as if she owns it. She has his eyes and my stubborn mouth, and every day, she finds a new way to prove both.
The morning mist rolls in and out in slow sheets, and the surf is gentle enough that he lets her toddle at the edge while he holdsboth her hands and lifts her over the foam. She kicks at the water and squeals, and he laughs with his head thrown back like a man who had to fight for the right to make that sound.
There are men on the ridge line still, dressed like walkers and fishermen and neighbors, and there are cameras hidden where gulls nest and couriers who never use our real names. There are locks, routes, false registrations, and stories we tell to the world with straight faces and clean paperwork.
I used to think that meant we were still trapped in the same old life.
Now I know the difference between a prison and a perimeter.
Cillian turns back toward me with our daughter balanced against his chest and starts up the path. His hair is longer than it used to be, the hard lines in his face eased by sleep and fatherhood and a year without funerals. He still scans exits when he enters a room. I still clock license plates without meaning to. Some habits do not leave, and some scars become instruction instead of open wounds.
He reaches the blanket and crouches, setting our daughter down between us. She climbs straight into my lap, wet shoes and all, and offers me a shell with the solemnity of a queen granting land.
“For me?” I ask.
She nods with fierce conviction. “Mama.”
Cillian sits beside us and leans in to kiss the top of her head, then my cheek. “She found six more before this and rejected them all.”
“Standards,” I say.
“Definitely yours.”
I rest my head against his shoulder for a moment and watch the sea disappear and return through the mist. We have built a home with reinforced doors and soft blankets, with books in the kitchen and ledgers in locked drawers, with laughter in rooms that once would have held only plans. We still argue. We still keep things too close sometimes. We still have to choose honesty on purpose.
There are still lies between us, but they are not the old kind.
I look at him, then at our daughter trying to eat the shell she just gifted me, and I take it gently from her hand.
“There are still lies between us,” I say, and Cillian turns to listen, his mouth already knowing the rest. “But now, they’re the ones we tell the world to keep what we love safe.”
He reaches for my hand and threads his fingers through mine.
“Better lies,” he says.
“Much better.”
The mist thickens along the shoreline, and we stand together, him lifting our daughter onto his shoulders while I gather the blanket and the shells and the ordinary pieces of a life I once thought I would never get to keep. Then we walk down toward the water, into the pale gray veil rolling in off the Irish coast, and the three of us disappear into it side by side.
