Page 120 of The Dark Before Light

Impossibly beautiful, like some forgotten dream.

Or a remembered one.

Epilogue

Kieran

363 days later

The forecast called for rain when I checked it last night, but the skies over Galway are a stunning cobalt. I’m not the least bit surprised. In fact, I wouldn’t blink if a fairy popped out of a tree and said my gran had strong-armed a god into polishing the sky with his beard.

In the last year, I’ve given up on pretending I don’t believe in magic—at least in private.

I do have a reputation as a scientific genius to maintain.

Despite the clear sky, the air is glacial. Talia is bundled up appropriately while I shiver in a peacoat. My dad’s fault. When we left his house this morning, he gave Talia a kiss on the cheek and Mam’s favorite wool hat and scarf. To me, he gave a ration of shit for allowing California to thin my Irish blood.

I’m paying the full price for my pride now.

Even our three shadows are in insulated jackets, heavy boots, and beanies. Probably having a nice big laugh at my expense, the fuckers.

“I don’t remember it being this beautiful,” says Talia with hushed awe. Her sharp gaze roams over the mortuary chapel, the sea of gray headstones, and lingers on stretches of grass that are an almost surreal bright green.

I squeeze her hand. “Might have something to do with the fact it was dusk, spitting rain, and you were plastered.”

She smiles, throwing me a quick glance. A gust of wind sneaks under my collar. I flip it up, compressing my head like a turtle. I can’t feel my fucking ears.

“Here, take this.” Talia tugs me to a stop and unwraps her scarf.

“Nah, I’m good.”

She rolls her eyes and loops the scarf around my neck, twisting it under my chin. “Don’t be a brat.”

I grin. “But you like it when I’m a brat.”

Her cheeks, already rosy in the cold, flush darker. Instead of rising to the bait, though, she tugs my hand. “Come on, we’ll walk faster. It’s this way, right?”

Picking up our pace does help. Also helpful—thinking about waking up two days from now in tropical heat, as well as what I have planned for the day after that. And the little box stored in the bottom of my luggage.

By the time we reach Gran, I’m almost thawed. We come to a stop a few feet from the headstone we slumped against as teenagers. As strangers.

“What does it say?” she asks, her gaze on the Gaelic inscription on the headstone.

My throat tightens, my voice emerging hoarse. “It’s a line from a poem, On Raglan Road by Patrick Kavanagh. ‘And I said,/ Let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.’”

Talia wraps her arm through mine. “That’s lovely.”

Reading the words again, a smile twitches my lips. “A few months before she died, she showed me the poem and told me she wanted the line for her epitaph. Even highlighted and underlined it and swore to haunt me if I let Dad put a generic or religious quote on her headstone.” I shake my head ruefully. “I gave her shit because the poem itself is pretty depressing, about a failed relationship. But Gran said that’s the whole point—finding light in the dark. We only appreciate the dawn because of the night that precedes it, and we only survive the night because of the moon and stars.”

Talia’s arm slips from mine. My thoughts on Gran, I don’t notice she’s not beside me until she says my name. I turn on my heel.

And freeze.

She kneels before me, looking up at me with hopeful eyes and a soft smile. Rosy cheeks and a red nose. My mam’s hat askew on her head. A silver ring pinched between her fingers.

“I love you, Kieran. Will you marry me?”

I’m horrified.

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