Bríd sipped her tea, amused. “Under the grumpy exterior, he’s a good man. Better than his father. Maybe even a good candidate for husband and father.”
“No,” she said, pouring her guest a fresh cup of tea. “He can keep his grumpiness wrapped in barbed wire for all I care. I am not marrying a man who threatens to stew my goat and annex my property.”
“Spoken like a true O’Byrne.”
“I’m starting to think that’s not a compliment.”
Bríd just smiled and patted her hand. “We’ll see.”
Aisling shook her head, poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, and took a long, bracing sip.
One thing was clear: between ancient grudges, rogue livestock, creaking floorboards, and arrogant neighbors who thought they could charm their way through property lines, this six-month inheritance clause was going to be anything but boring.
And who would have ever thought they still betrothed infants? It should be against the law.
Hell would freeze over before she married Ronan Gallagher.
CHAPTER7
After Bríd left, Aisling did what she always did when life felt like it was wobbling off its axis—she made a list.
Then another. Then a third, subcategorized by room.
Soon, she had color-coded Post-it notes and a growing mountain of goals: update plumbing, replace curtains, ghost-proof attic, install a goat-repelling fence. But behind the logistics lurked something deeper—something gnawing at her like a splinter under the skin.
She didn’t just want to restore the house. She wanted to understand it.
Understandthem. Her mother. Her grandmother. Why the people who were supposed to raise her had left behind nothing but silence and crumbling mortar.
She needed answers.
She started in the back of the house—what had clearly been Noreen’s room—the one where she was sleeping now. It was updated and neat with all white linen and oak furniture, but it felt sterile, lived in but not alive.
Bríd had told her that her grandmother had moved downstairs when the stairs became too much.
No photos. No letters. No clutter. Just a sterile room until one of the main bedrooms was updated.
Aisling opened drawers and flipped through old catechism books, but nothing gave her insight into who Noreen had really been. A fiercely private woman, apparently. Which was inconvenient since she’d taken her secrets straight to the grave.
She almost gave up.
Then she went upstairs and wandered into the master bedroom.
It was larger, older, and clearly untouched for years. A bay window overlooked the western fields. A layer of dust blanketed everything except the floor. But in the far corner, half-hidden behind an armoire, she spotted a trunk.
Old. Iron-bound. Exactly the kind of thing novels used to hold treasure or bodies.
She knelt and flipped the latch.
The scent hit her first—cedar, paper, and the soft musk of time. Inside were photographs. Dozens of them. Some black-and-white, others washed-out color. Her grandparents' wedding, smiling stiffly in front of a lace-draped altar. Her mother as a girl, barefoot in the fields. Snapshots of picnics, birthdays, and grainy Christmas mornings.
People she knew—but didn’t. Moments frozen in time like ghosts mid-sentence.
She flipped through the layers until her hand brushed against something heavy.
Journals.
Bound in leather, yellowed with age, one of them cracked open as if waiting for her.
