She moved slow, as if in a dream. She took the note and stared at it.
Catherine’s hands shook so hard she could barely tear the wax. I watched her thumb dig at the black seal, watched it crumble into the dirt. The note inside was folded twice, the edges stiff with dried blood or maybe mud—I couldn’t tell in the moonlight. She read it once, then again. Her eyes didn’t blink.
She started to speak, but the words failed her. Her knees buckled, and she sat down hard on the grass, the letter still clutched in her fist.
Nora was at her side in an instant, arms around her. Maeve stood behind, rooted, her shadow thrown huge on the stones. The fire spat and hissed in the sudden wind.
Declan stepped to the messenger, took his elbow, and guided him a few paces off. The man looked shell-shocked, face pale above his filthy collar. He kept glancing at Catherine, then at me, as if expecting a fight to erupt at any second.
Catherine stared at the paper, eyes wide and unseeing. For a moment, I thought maybe the words hadn’t registered yet. I prayed to whatever still listened that they never would.
She spoke in a whisper, so thin I almost missed it. “They’re gone,” she said.
Nora hugged her tighter. “Who’s gone?”
Catherine opened her hand. The letter slipped out, drifting to the ground. Maeve snatched it up, read, then gasped.
She read it aloud, voice cracked but clear.
From Kilbride:
They came at first light, four of them, uniforms black as night. They asked for Catherine, asked for you. Your mother and father said they knew nothing. They beat your Da, but he spat in their faces. They shot him in the yard. They hung your mother from the old cherry tree. They burned the house. I escaped. I am sorry.
— Kip Malloy
Nora shrieked, a sound like a rabbit in a snare. She pressed her face to Catherine’s shoulder and sobbed. Maeve went white, then red, then white again. She crumpled the letter, then hugged Catherine from behind, sandwiching her between the two sisters.
I wanted to move, wanted to go to her, but my feet were locked to the stone. I felt every word like a nail through the bone.
After a minute, Catherine looked up. Her face was wet and raw, eyes rimmed in red. She fixed me with a glare so sharp I thought it might kill me on the spot.
“This is your doing,” she said. The words were flat, almost calm, but they landed like a fist.
I shook my head, but she cut me off.
“If you had stayed dead, they’d be alive. If you’d never come back, my family—” She broke off, her voice shattering. “You changed everything.”
She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t hold. Nora and Maeve lifted her, each holding her up on a side.
Declan came back, his hand resting gently on her head. “It’s not his fault, girl,” he said, but she didn’t even look at him.
She looked at me, just me, and the hate in her eyes was something new.
“You killed them,” she said, not a whisper this time.
I felt my knees go. I dropped beside her in the mud, hands out, palms up. “I’m sorry,” I said, but even I could hear how small it was.
She recoiled, pulled away from me, her whole body shuddering.
“I never wanted this,” I said. “I came back for you, for us. I just wanted to—”
“Live?” she spat. “You wanted to live, so you took the rest of us with you. Into hell.”
Maeve glared at me over Catherine’s head. “You’re a curse, O’Toole. A walking curse.”
Nora hid her face in Catherine’s dress, shaking.
I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say.