Orla had adored dragonflies, and damselflies. Emer remembered summer evenings back in Ireland, swimming with Orla in Lough Bane. The two of them hypnotised by the bright blue tiny damselflies flittering above the cold water. Orla had made a painting afterwards. Emer could still picture it on an easel in the good room. A view of the lough with its golden reeds and blue damselflies. But if you looked close enough, each damselfly was a tiny fairy. To her sister, all of nature became an enchanted kingdom. Where was Orla now? Emer wasn’t religious, but she’d been around death enough to believe everyone possessed a soul. This eternal essence was somewhere.
On the afternoon before she died, Orla had told Emer she’d seen their mother in her hospital room. Ethan had gone out for a coffee and it was just the two of them. Emer had been reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to her sister, when Orla had reached out and gripped her hand tight.
‘Can you feel it?’ Orla had said to her.
Emer would never forget the expression on her face. Orla had glowed, as if all the pain and suffering had washed out of her.
‘Feel what?’
‘All the love,’ Orla whispered. ‘Mammy’s here. And Granny and Grandpa.’
Emer had felt it. A thickness in the room, as if she were surrounded by a great crowd, and yet it was just the two sisters.
In her more positive moments since Orla had died, Emer reminded herself of that last afternoon. Her sister was not alone. She was with Mammy, wherever that might be.
But in her darker moments, she thought about the big box of ashes Ethan had taken with him to New York. He had offered her some of them, and she’d said no. But the day before she’d left, when he was out, she’d taken the lid off the box and looked at the grey ashes. They could be ashes of anything. The horror of their ordinariness made her turn away suddenly, and she’d knocked the box onto the wooden floor of Ethan’s house. Panic consumed her. She tugged at the kitchen drawer, pulling out a big tablespoon, and crouched down scooping the ashes back into the box with the spoon. She wanted to get them back in as quick as possible but the more she rushed, the more spilled over the edges of the spoon back onto the floor. ‘Oh no, oh no,’ she moaned as tears filled her eyes. She tried to stay calm, work methodically, all the while speaking to Kate inside her head. Telling her she loved her. She was sorry.
Ever since, she’d been tortured by the idea she hadn’t managed to scoop all Kate’s ashes up and put them back in the box, or worse – and which was very likely – that mixed up now with her sister’s ashes were bits of dust and grit from between the floorboards in the house in Quincy. Why did she always mess everything up?
‘Hey, you okay?’ Henry said to her, his face creased in concern.
She was crying and hadn’t even noticed, but now the tears had started, Emer couldn’t stop. She hadn’t cried when Orla had died; the shock had knocked the tears right out of her. And now, weeks later, it was all coming out. Of all places, in front of someone she hardly knew.
‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to say, pulling a tissue out of her pocket to dam the flood.
‘Let it out, that’s my advice,’ Henry said.
‘It’s just this place is so beautiful, and it reminds me of my sister, Orla,’ Emer said in a broken voice. ‘I told you about her before. She was a painter. Made a beautiful picture of damselflies back home one time. She would have loved it here.’
‘What happened to your sister?’ Henry asked gently.
‘She died. Five weeks ago.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Henry said, and she could hear the compassion in his voice.
‘She had cancer, too. Different from Susannah’s. It was very aggressive, but it was an infection which killed her in the end. She was so weak from all the chemo; she went downhill very quickly.’ Emer raised her face to the sky, let the tears drip off her chin. ‘She was only twenty-six.’
Henry said nothing. What could he say? There were no words in the whole world which could give her comfort. She drew her knees up to her chest and buried her face. She felt Henry’s hand on her back, and Shadow pushed his snout between her arms to lick her salty cheeks.
‘Oh no, Shadow, stop.’ She found herself being tickled by the sensation of the dog’s tongue on her skin, but the husky wouldn’t let up.
‘He won’t stop,’ Henry said. ‘You’re part of his pack, and he needs to make sure you’re okay!’
She sniffed, using Henry’s damp tissue to blow her nose. ‘I’m okay,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t say sorry,’ Henry said. ‘Emer, it’s good to let it out.’
But as they walked back to Henry’s pick-up, Emer felt there was a new awkwardness between them, as if she’d shown too much of herself. As they reached the parking lot, Henry turned to her.
‘Emer. Do you think it’s wise to be looking after Susannah, considering what you’ve just been through?’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ she said, suddenly defensive.
‘I’m not saying otherwise, but you’ve just been through huge loss, and now you’re here and in a position where you’re going to experience that loss all over again.’
‘I need to do this. For my sister.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Emer looked into Henry’s kind eyes.
‘I let her down. I wasn’t with her when she
