Aisling pressed the paper to her chest, gasping around the sob lodged in her throat.
The grief she thought she had buried came roaring back, brutal and raw, shredding her from the inside out.
Her mother had wanted to come home.
Her mother regretted everything.
And her grandmother… God, her poor grandmother must have read this letter too late, the ink still fresh while her daughter lay cold across the sea.
Fresh tears blurred her vision.
She sank onto the floor, clutching the letter as if it could somehow rewrite the past.
Maeve hadn’t been a villain.
Noreen hadn’t been a tyrant.
They were just two proud, wounded women who loved each other more than they could say—and let fear and stubbornness keep them apart until it was too late.
"I wish I could have fixed it for you," Aisling whispered to the empty room. "I wish you'd had your second chance."
The letter felt impossibly heavy in her hands as if it carried not just words but entire lifetimes of sorrow, regret, and longing.
For a long time, she simply sat there, letting the pain wash over her. Not fighting it. Not trying to be brave.
As Aisling folded the letter from her mother back into its battered envelope, she caught sight of something tucked beneath the false bottom of the trunk. A second envelope, yellowed with age, her name scrawled across the front in her grandmother’s neat, familiar hand.
Her heart kicked against her ribs.
She tore it open with trembling fingers.
Inside was a letter. Unsent. Never mailed.
Dearest Aisling,
There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t think of you. I see you in the curve of a cheek, the sound of a laugh, the tilt of a stubborn chin. I should have fought harder to be a part of your life, should have traveled to New York and found you myself. Pride and grief kept me rooted here in this empty house. I thought I was protecting my heart. I see now that all I protected was my loneliness.
You were born from strong women. But oh, darling girl, how I long to know you, to hear your voice, to tell you I loved you all along.
If this letter ever finds you, know that my love was never absent, only hidden behind regret too vast for words.
Forgive an old woman’s mistakes. Forgive my silence. You were never forgotten, never unloved.
All my love always,
Grandmother Noreen
Tears blurred the words until she could barely see.
They had both wanted reconciliation.
And neither had found the courage to bridge the gap.
The weight of all thatcould have beenpressed down on her shoulders, but in the hollow space grief carved out, something unexpected bloomed, resolve.
Aisling pressed the letter to her chest.No more walls. No more stubborn pride. No more wasting years pretending it didn’t hurt.
If there was even a sliver of a chance to build something real, with her father, her future, maybe even with Ronan someday, she had to take it.
