Page 75 of The Clifftop Cottage

He glanced back at his sister. There was something in her expression – distant, thoughtful. Something he couldn’t quite reach.

“You sure everything’s alright?” he asked again, more gently this time.

Sorcha paused. Then nodded. But it was slower now, less sure. “Just … missing Mum, I think,” she said quietly. “She loved Halloween. Used to drive us round in the car, remember? House to house, stopping at every single one.”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said with a soft smile. “Only she’d end up going in for a cuppa half the time. We’d be itching to get to the next house, and she’d be planted on someone’s couch, yapping away.”

Sorcha laughed, the sound short and fond. “She did love a blether.”

“That’s the understatement of the century.”

Her smile lingered as she lowered her gaze, her fingers smoothing absentmindedly across the worn table. “Lately … I think about her more and more. She wasn’t there for any of the births, you know? None of the chaos or the joy. Just this … absence. And I know it’s been years but …”

She stopped. Her voice caught. He saw it then – the lift of her shoulders, the way she braced as if holding something in.

“It’s okay, sis,” he said softly, reaching across to take her hand. He squeezed it gently. “You don’t need to be strong every single second.”

She nodded, laughed once, and then burst into tears.

He didn’t say anything. Just let her cry.

After a moment, she sniffed and stood abruptly, wiping at her face with the sleeve of her cardigan. Gabriel stayed seated, watching as she moved to a tall pine dresser in the corner, rifling through one of the drawers. She pulled out an old photo, creased at the edges, the colours slightly faded.

Their parents. Their dad with his arm slung around their mum, both of them laughing at something just out of frame. There was joy in the picture, a lightness.

Gabriel smiled softly. “I always loved that one.”

Sorcha nodded, holding it in both hands like it might break. Then she turned, clutching a pair of wax candles in her other hand.

“This why you asked me over?” Gabriel teased. “Need a trained professional for a candle-lighting?”

“Oh, very funny.” She gave him a look. “I just … I wanted to acknowledge them tonight. You know, really acknowledge the dead. Not just the silly costumes and buckets of sweets.”

He understood. Of course he did.

Together, they cleared a small space on the sideboard. Sorcha set the photo down and lit the candles carefully, one by one, the flames flickering to life and casting a warm, golden glow across their parents’ faces.

He wondered what Erica would make of this, of them honouring the dead properly.

Gabriel reached into the cupboard and pulled down two tumblers, then collected the bottle of whisky from beside the bread bin. He poured them each a modest dram.

“To Mum and Dad,” he said.

Sorcha raised her glass. “Mum and Dad.”

They drank in silence, the candles dancing gently between them.

Gabriel leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out beneath the table. He noticed for the first time tonight that Kenny hadn’t been around. Likely off doing something farm-related or tucked up for an early night, as he often was.

He’d known Kenny more than ten years now, and still they’d never quite clicked. Not in the way he’d once imagined they might.

Kenny was kind, inoffensive even, but distant. Always distracted. He had a knack for finding an exit whenever conversation started to stray deeper than surface-level. Gabriel had once chalked it up to nerves, or maybe shyness. Perhaps it was the closeness between him and Sorcha that made Kenny uncomfortable. Whatever the reason, it remained unspoken. Sorcha didn’t seem to mind or notice, really. She was always busy: children, chores, the constant cycle of a household.

But Gabriel … he wanted more than that kind of partnership. He always had.

He didn’t want a quiet agreement of a life. He wanted someone who reached for him first. Someone who chose him without hesitation.

He’d thought he’d found that once.