Chapter 10: Roisin's dream
Thursday evening settled over the O'Sullivan house like a well-worn blanket. The rain had finally stopped, leaving the air clean and sharp, and the windows of the dining room held the last bruised light of the sky. The table was laid with three settings, as it always was now, the heavy wooden surface gleaming under the warm spill of the pendant lamp.
Seamus carved the roast chicken with the easy confidence of a man who had done it a thousand times, his big hands moving with surprising delicacy. He slid a portion onto Javier's plate first, then Roisin's, then his own.
"Plenty of gravy there, son. You're a growing lad."
Javier laughed and took the jug. "I'm twenty-five, you know."
"Still growing into yourself," Seamus said, settling into his chair with a satisfied grunt. "The brain doesn't finish developing till you're thirty, they say. You've got five years of catching up to do."
Roisin made a soft sound of amusement, reaching for her glass of white wine. Her eyes moved between the two of them, the way she always did these days, as if she were counting her blessings one by one. Javier caught her gaze and smiled, and something flickered in her expression before she looked away, reaching for the serving spoon.
"How was the gym today?" she asked, her voice a touch too bright.
"Good. Killian had me working on footwork. Says I'm too heavy on my heels after the fight."
"Your poor face," Roisin murmured, her gaze drifting to the fading bruise beneath his eye. It had turned a dull yellow-green at the edges, the purple all but gone. "Does it still hurt?"
"Only when I smile too wide. Or talk too much. Or breathe."
Seamus snorted into his pint. "Glad to see the cheek survived intact."
Javier grinned, and the three of them settled into the easy rhythm of dinner. They talked about Seamus's latest project, a renovation in Sandymount that was running behind schedule because of a slipped roof joist. Roisin talked about the boutique, about a new shipment of silk robes that had arrived in colours she described as "sunset on the Mediterranean." When she said those words, her eyes did that flicker again, landing on Javier for a half-second longer than necessary before sliding away.
Javier told them about his week. The lectures on cetacean acoustics, the lab work that was consuming more hours than he'd expected, Molly. He mentioned her in passing, a comment about how she'd found an error in his data analysis that had saved him a full day of rework.
"She sounds very clever," Roisin said, and the words came out even, measured. She forked a piece of chicken and brought it to her mouth.
"She is. Sharp as anything."
"Good for you, son," Seamus said, spreading butter on a roll. "A clever woman keeps a man honest."
Roisin laughed at that, a genuine sound that softened the corners of her mouth. "Is that so? And what would you know about being kept honest?"
"I know plenty." Seamus winked at Javier. "I married you, didn't I?"
The dinner wound down slowly, the way it always did, with cups of tea and a slice of the apple tart Roisin had baked that morning. Javier helped clear the table, his movements fluid and easy in the small kitchen, reaching past her to stack plates in the dishwasher. His arm brushed her shoulder, and she stilled for just a moment, the way she had been doing more and more often, before continuing with the washing up.
By half nine, Seamus was yawning in his armchair, the television humming low in the corner. Javier kissed Roisin's cheek before going upstairs, a quick, familial gesture that she received with a soft smile. She watched him disappear up the staircase, the tread of his feet on the old wooden steps, and then she turned back to the kitchen and the drying rack and the quiet hum of the house.
She went to bed early that night, before ten. Seamus was already snoring softly in the armchair, and she left him there, knowing he'd stumble up in an hour or two when the cold woke him. She changed into her nightgown, a simple cotton thing in pale blue, and slid between the sheets of the big bed. The house was quiet. Rain began to tap against the window again, a soft percussion that usually soothed her to sleep.
Tonight it did not.
She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, aware of the silence of the house in a way she hadn't been before Javier arrived. There was a new quality to it now. A living silence, threaded with the possibility of footsteps in the hallway, a door opening, the low murmur of a voice. She thought of him upstairs, asleep in the room that used to be her mother's sewing room. She thought of his body, lean and strong, the way he'd stood in the kitchen that morning, unaware of her watching from the doorway. The way the light had caught the muscles of his back, the faint mark of his shoulder blades, the curve of his spine.
She closed her eyes and pressed her palm flat against her chest, feeling the rapid beat of her heart.
It's just motherly affection, she told herself. The boy needs looking after. It's natural.
But the dream came anyway, and it was not motherly at all.
---
In the dream, she was in the house, but it was different. The walls were the same, the familiar cream and the dark wood of the banister, but the furniture was rearranged. The dining table was smaller, rounder, set by the window instead of in the middle of the room. There was no television in the sitting room, no clutter of Seamus's boots by the door. The house felt lighter, emptier, as if it had been stripped down to essentials.
She was standing in the kitchen when she heard the front door open. Footsteps, heavy and a little unsteady, moved through the hall. Then he appeared in the doorway, Javier, but not as she knew him. He was the same age, the same face, the same lean body, but something in the set of his shoulders was different. There was a sulkiness to him, a defiance in the tilt of his chin. His shirt was untucked, his hair mussed, and there was the smell of beer and cigarettes hanging around him.
"Where were you?" she heard herself say, and her voice was sharp, maternal, a voice she recognised from her own childhood.
"Out," he said. He walked past her to the fridge, pulling it open with a careless yank and staring at the shelves. "With friends."
"It's half two in the morning. I was worried sick."
He shut the fridge without taking anything, turning to face her. There was a petulance in his expression, a teenage spite that she had never seen on the real Javier's face. "I'm twenty-five. I can come and go as I please."
"Not in my house you can't."
"Your house?" He laughed, a short, mocking sound. "You think you can tell me what to do because I live under your roof?"
Something hot rose up in her chest, a fury that felt real and righteous. She stepped forward, her hand reaching out to grab his wrist, and the contact seemed to change something in the air between them. He looked down at her hand on his arm, and when he met her eyes again, the defiance was still there, but under it, something else. A dare. A challenge.
"You need to learn some respect," she heard herself say, the words coming out low and steady. "Go to my room. Now. And take your clothes off."
His jaw tightened. For a moment, she thought he would refuse. But then he turned, without a word, and walked toward the stairs. She followed him, her bare feet silent on the carpeted steps. The house felt bigger in the dream, the hallway longer, and when he pushed open the door to her bedroom, the moonlight fell through the window in pale, silver bars.
He stood in the middle of the room, facing away from her. Slowly, he pulled his shirt over his head. She watched the movement of his shoulder blades, the dip of his spine. He unbuckled his belt, and his jeans fell to the floor, pooling around his ankles. He stepped out of them and stood in his boxers, waiting.
"All of it," she said.
He hooked his thumbs into the waistband and pushed them down. The moonlight caught the pale skin of his hips, the lean strength of his thighs, the shadowed curve of his backside. He stood naked, head bowed, his hands at his sides.
She crossed the room to the tallboy where she kept her things. The drawer opened smoothly, and her hand closed around something smooth and curved. A cane, polished dark wood, worn smooth at the handle. She didn't remember owning it in waking life, but in the dream it felt familiar, a natural extension of her hand.
"Sit on the bed," she said. "Over my knees."
He obeyed. He lay across her lap, his weight settling warm and heavy, his face turned into the duvet. She could feel his breath, the rise and fall of his ribs beneath her hand. She lifted the cane and brought it down across his bare skin with a sharp, clean crack.
He gasped, his hands fisting in the sheets. A bright red line bloomed across the pale skin of his buttocks.
"Count," she said.
"One."
She brought it down again. Crack.
"Two."
He counted through eight strokes, his voice growing tight, strained, breathless. By the end, his skin was striped with red, and she could feel him trembling against her. She set the cane aside and laid her palm against the heat of his skin, stroking gently, soothing.
"There now," she murmured. "It's over. You learned your lesson."
He turned under her hand, twisting to look up at her. His eyes were bright, wet at the edges, and there was a flush across his cheekbones. He reached up and cupped her face, his fingers sliding into her hair, and pulled her down to him.
The kiss was hungry. It was all heat and breath and the press of his body against hers, the way he climbed over her, straddling her thighs, the weight of him a comfort and a shock. She was naked too, she realised, her nightgown gone somewhere in the dream logic of the moment. His skin was hot against hers, slick where they touched, and she arched up into him as he lowered himself onto her.
It was not gentle. It was urgent, almost desperate, the way he pushed into her, filling her completely. She cried out, a sound that was half gasp, half sob. He moved with a rhythm that was deep and hard, and she wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him closer, telling him with her body not to stop.
He reached between them and touched her where she was slick and swollen, and she came with a broken cry, her body clenching around him. He did not stop. He kept moving, kept pushing, and she came again, a second wave that left her shuddering and breathless. And a third, a bright burst of pleasure that wiped out every thought in her head.
"That's it, mum," he whispered, the word a shock and a thrill, and the sound of it against her ear made her come again, a fourth time, harder than the rest. She felt him follow her, a shudder that ran through his whole body, and then he collapsed against her, his cheek pressed to her breast, his breath hot and ragged.
She lay there, stroking his hair, his thinning, his soft, short dark hair, and felt something she had never felt before. A wholeness. A deep, rightness that she had never known in all her years with Seamus. This was what she had been missing. This was what she had been looking for.
"Cailín beag," he breathed, and she didn't know what it meant, but it sounded like love.
---
She woke with a gasp, her heart pounding against her ribs, her skin slick with sweat. The room was dark. The rain had stopped, and the silence of the house pressed in around her, heavy and total. Seamus lay beside her, snoring softly, his bulk a familiar shape in the bed. The clock on the nightstand glowed green: 3:47.
She was wet. She could feel it, the slickness between her thighs, the ache of her body still singing with a pleasure that had not been real. She pressed her hand to her own throat, feeling the gallop of her pulse, and closed her eyes, trying to slow her breathing.
It was just a dream, she told herself. Just a dream. The brain does strange things when it's restless. It means nothing.
But the images were still burned behind her eyelids. The heat of his body over hers. The way he had called her mum as he moved inside her. The sound of the cane cracking against his skin.
She turned her head and looked at Seamus. His face was slack with sleep, his mouth slightly open, a whisper of a snore escaping him. In the dim light, he looked older than he was, the lines of his face deep, the silver in his hair catching the glow from the window. She loved him. She loved him fiercely, in the steady, comfortable way of three decades shared. But she had never felt for him what she had dreamed for Javier. She had never been wanted like that. Consumed like that.
Her body throbbed, a pulse of heat between her legs that refused to quiet. She slid out of bed, careful not to wake Seamus, and went to the bathroom. She ran the tap cold and splashed water on her face, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, her hair mussed. It was the face of a woman who had been thoroughly kissed.
You're fifty years old, she told her reflection. He's young enough to be your son. He is your son, in every way that matters. Stop this.
But her body was a traitor. It remembered the weight of him, the depth of him, and it did not want to stop.
She went back to bed, lying on her side, facing away from Seamus. She lay very still, listening to the rhythm of his breath, waiting for sleep to come back to her. But the dream stayed with her, a bright, forbidden thing, and when she finally drifted off again, her last waking thought was of the touch of his hand in her hair, and the sound of his voice saying her name.
---
Morning came too quickly. The light was grey through the curtains, and Seamus was already up, padding around the bathroom, coughing and muttering before his shower. Roisin lay still, listening to the water run, and then to the click of the bathroom door, and then to his heavy tread down the stairs.
She should get up. There was breakfast to make, the coffee, the routine. But her body felt heavy, weighted down by the lingering remnants of the dream. She turned over onto her back and stared at the ceiling, and then she heard it: the sound of Javier's door opening across the landing. The soft creak of the hinges, the pad of his bare feet on the wooden floor, the creak of the second stair, the one that always squeaked.
She closed her eyes and listened to him moving through the house, down to the kitchen, where Seamus would greet him with a gruff good morning and put the kettle on. The dream pressed up against her with a terrible intimacy, the memory of his skin against hers, and she thought of him downstairs, in his track bottoms and his t-shirt, entirely unaware of the grip he had on her.
She got up. She showered, letting the water run hot and hard against her skin, as if she could wash the dream away. She dressed carefully, in a pale grey wool dress and a string of pearls, the uniform of the woman who ran a boutique and a home with equal competence. She braided her hair back from her face and checked her reflection before going downstairs.
The kitchen was warm, already smelling of coffee and toast. Seamus sat at the table with his paper, and Javier leaned against the counter, cradling a mug in both hands. He was barefoot, his dark hair still rumpled from sleep, and when he saw her, he smiled.
"Morning, Mum."
The word hit her like a physical blow. For a moment, she couldn't breathe. The dream flashed through her like lightning, the sound of his voice, husky and urgent, saying the same word as he moved inside her.
"Morning, love," she managed, and her voice sounded strange to her own ears, too bright, too careful. She crossed to the kettle and poured herself a cup of tea, keeping her back to him, taking a long moment to compose her face.
"You're up early," Javier said. "Couldn't sleep?"
She turned, forcing a smile. "A little restless, that's all. The rain."
"Aye, it was hammering down in the night," Seamus said without looking up from his paper. "Sounded like the end of the world."
Roisin sat down at the table with her tea, making a careful point of not looking at Javier. She could feel him there anyway, a warmth at the edge of her vision, and she hated herself for how aware of him she was.
"I thought I might go into the shop early," she said. "The new stock arrived, and I want to get the display window sorted before the weekend rush."
"Busy week," Seamus said, turning a page.
"It is." She took a sip of her tea, letting the heat settle her. Across the table, Javier was watching her. She could feel the weight of his gaze, and she kept her eyes fixed on the steam rising from her cup.
"You're all right, Mum?" he asked, and his voice was soft, gentle, full of a concern that she knew came from a place of genuine care.
She looked up then, and met his eyes. They were dark, warm, and utterly innocent of the images that had been living in her head all night. He had no idea. He would never have any idea. And it was that innocence, that total, trusting innocence, that broke something open in her.
She smiled. "I'm grand, love. Just tired, is all. The rain kept me up too."
He nodded, accepting the answer. He turned back to his coffee, and Roisin looked down at her own hands, wrapped around the warm curve of her cup, and tried to believe that the dream meant nothing. That it would fade, like all dreams, by the end of the day.
But she knew, with a quiet, terrible certainty, that it would not.
The boutique was a sanctuary of soft fabrics and muted light, but this morning it offered Roisin no comfort. She moved through the racks of silk blouses and lace-trimmed slips on autopilot, her hands finding the hangers, straightening the displays, smoothing the shoulders of a jade-green dress that had arrived in Tuesday's shipment. The shop was due to open in twenty minutes, and she had already re-arranged the window display twice, moving a mannequin from the left to the right and back again, unable to remember why she had bothered.
She stopped in front of the full-length mirror by the fitting rooms and studied herself. The grey wool dress, the pearls, the neat braid. She looked like the woman who ran this shop, the woman who had built it from nothing over thirty years, the woman who served her customers with warmth and competence and never once let them see the chaos inside her. She looked like a woman who had not spent the night dreaming of her lodger's naked body across her lap, the crack of a cane against his skin, the sound of his voice calling her mum as he buried himself inside her.
Her reflection smiled back at her, calm and certain. It was a lie. She took a breath and turned away from the mirror, and the first customer of the morning had already been waiting at the door when she unlocked it.
The morning passed in a blur of women trying on bras and complaining about their husbands and asking if the new silk robes came in a size larger. Roisin smiled and nodded and made the appropriate noises, and all the while the dream simmered beneath the surface of her thoughts like a pot left on a low flame. Every time a customer said something that reminded her of Seamus, she felt a pang of guilt. Every time she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror, she saw the woman from the dream, bare and wanton and utterly transformed.
At lunchtime, she sat in the small back office with a cup of tea and a sandwich she had no appetite for. The radio played softly in the corner, a news bulletin about a strike at the docks, and she stared at the wall and let the dream come back to her.
She had never in her life struck anyone in anger. She had never wanted to. The idea of hurting someone, of causing pain, had always seemed monstrous to her, and yet in the dream she had not simply struck him. She had relished it. The weight of the cane in her hand, the clean crack of it against his skin, the way his body had flinched and then settled, the way his voice had counted out the strokes with a breathless obedience that had made her feel powerful in a way she had never felt before. She had felt, in that moment, like a force of nature. Like a woman who could command the world with a word.
And he had let her. He had submitted, willingly, hungrily, and she had taken what he gave her and wanted more.
She set the sandwich down and pressed her hands flat against the desk. Her palms were damp. Her heart was pounding again, the same urgent rhythm that had woken her at three in the morning. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe slowly, tried to steady herself, and the memory of his body moving against hers rose up unbidden, the heat of him, the depth of him, the way he had filled her so completely that she had forgotten her own name.
She had never been fucked like that. Not in thirty years of marriage, not in the stolen nights of her youth, not ever. Seamus was a kind and generous lover, attentive in his way, but there had always been a gentleness to him, a careful consideration that she had never known how to name until she had dreamt of Javier. In the dream, there had been no care, no consideration. There had been hunger, and urgency, and a possession so total that she had come apart under him like a wave breaking on rocks. The pressure of him, the heat, the way he had taken her as if she belonged to him completely—it had left her breathless and trembling, her body humming with an energy she hadn't known was possible. The contrast with Seamus's lovemaking was stark, almost painful in its clarity. Where her husband had been a gentle tide, Javier had been a tsunami, sweeping away everything in its path and leaving nothing but her raw, exposed self in its wake.
The way he had called her mum. The word, in his mouth, had been the most erotic sound she had ever heard. It should have been wrong, obscene, a violation of everything she held sacred, and it had been all of those things, and it had also been the thing that had tipped her over the edge into a pleasure that had left her shaking and slick and utterly undone. His voice had been rough, thick with desire, yet somehow tender, and the way he had whispered it against her skin, the vibration of it in his chest as he held her close—it had been too much, too intimate, and exactly what she hadn't known she was craving.
She opened her eyes. The office was quiet, the radio still murmuring. She looked down at her hands and saw that she had twisted the edge of her sandwich wrapper into a tight, ragged spiral.
What kind of woman does this make me? she thought. What kind of mother?
She was not his mother. She was not. She had told herself that a hundred times since he had moved in, and it had never felt quite true, because she mothered him, fed him, worried about him, loved him the way she would have loved a son. But a mother did not dream of her son's body. A mother did not feel a pulse of heat between her legs at the memory of his skin against hers. A mother did not wish, in the darkest, most shameful corner of her heart, that the dream had been real.
She pressed her fingers to her temples and tried to think. What did she actually want? She did not know. The question echoed in the quiet space between her thoughts, unanswered and unsettling. She had spent her life doing what was expected of her, being the good wife, the good daughter, the good shopkeeper, moving through days with a practiced grace that concealed the hollow spaces within. She had told herself that it was enough, that a life of quiet contentment was all anyone could truly ask for, the same tune played on a familiar instrument. And then Javier had walked into her coffee shop with his warm eyes and his easy laugh and his heart-breaking earnestness, and he had cracked something open in her that she had not known was closed. His presence was like sunlight breaking through clouds after weeks of grey, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air—particles she hadn't even noticed were there. The familiar rhythm of her days had been disrupted, replaced by a silent hum of possibility that both terrified and exhilarated her.
She loved Seamus. She loved him with the deep, steady love of a lifetime shared, and she would never do anything to hurt him. But he had never made her feel like the woman in the dream. He had never looked at her with that desperate hunger, never taken her with that consuming urgency, never made her feel as if she were the only woman in the world and also the most dangerous one. And now she had tasted it, even in a dream, and she did not know how to go back to being satisfied with less.
She finished her tea despite not wanting it, and she went back out onto the shop floor, and she served her customers with a smile that felt like a mask. By the time the afternoon ended and she locked the door behind the last woman, she had decided one thing: she would not act on this. She would not let it change anything. She would be normal, and warm, and maternal, and she would bury the dream so deep that it would never surface again.
She drove home through the grey evening, the wipers clicking a steady rhythm against the drizzle. The house was warm when she let herself in, and the smell of something cooking drifted from the kitchen. Seamus was at the stove, stirring a pot, and Javier was at the table with a textbook open in front of him, a pen behind his ear.
"There she is," Seamus said. "We were wondering where you'd got to."
"Sorry, love. The shop was a madhouse."
Javier looked up and smiled, and Roisin felt the same physical jolt she always felt, the same embarrassing skip of her heart. She crossed to the kettle and busied herself with making tea, keeping her back to them both.
"How was your day, Mum?" Javier asked.
"Grand, love. Busy. You know how it is."
She heard the chair scrape back, and then he was beside her, reaching past her to grab a mug from the cupboard. His arm brushed her shoulder, and she flinched. She felt him pause, felt his gaze on her, and she kept her eyes fixed on the kettle, willing it to boil.
"You all right?" he asked, his voice soft.
"I'm grand. Just tired, is all. The rain kept me up."
It was the same lie she had told him that morning, and she hated herself for it. He stepped back, leaving her to her tea, and she stood at the counter for a long moment, staring at nothing, before she turned and carried her cup to the table.
Dinner was roast lamb this time, with potatoes and a thick gravy that Seamus had made from the pan juices. The conversation was easy, the way it always was, and Roisin let herself be carried along by it. She asked Javier about his lectures, about Molly, about the motorbike. She asked Seamus about the Sandymount job, about the weather, about anything that would keep the attention off her. She ate her food and she made the right noises, and by the time the plates were cleared and the tea was poured, she had almost convinced herself that she was fine.
Then Javier stood up to help her with the washing up, and his hand brushed hers as he reached for a plate, and the dream came surging back with such force that she had to grip the edge of the sink to keep from swaying.
"Sorry," he said, and he had not even noticed. He was already turning away, reaching for the drying rack, and she watched the movement of his shoulders beneath his jumper and felt the heat of the dream rise up inside her like a tide.
She finished the dishes on autopilot, and she kissed him goodnight on the cheek, and she went upstairs with Seamus to the big bed. She changed into her nightgown in the bathroom, avoiding her reflection, and she lay on her side in the dark and listened to her husband's breathing slow into the rhythm of sleep.
The dream came again that night, and the night after that.
It was always the same. The rearranged house, the slammed door, the slick aftertaste of beer and defiance. The cane in her hand, the crack of it, the counting. And then the turning, the reaching, the kiss that was never quite kissed before he was inside her, filling her, moving in her, his voice in her ear, mum, mum, mum, until she came undone.
She woke each time gasping, her heart thudding, her body aching with a need she could not name. She lay in the dark beside Seamus and stared at the ceiling, and she told herself the same things. It is just a dream. It means nothing. He is your son in every way that matters. But the words had lost their power. The dream had become a language she was learning to speak, and it was speaking back to her in a voice that sounded like her own.
On Saturday morning, she drove to the boutique on autopilot, her mind elsewhere, and she spent the day in a fog. She sold a chiffon blouse to a woman who tried it on, recommended a supportive bra to a young girl who was crying in the fitting room, and she did all of it with a smile on her face and the ghost of a dream pressed against the back of her mind like a shadow. At lunchtime, she locked herself in the office and sat with her head in her hands, and she tried to think of a way out.
She could ask Javier to leave. It was a terrible thought, and she knew she would not do it. He was part of the household now, as woven into the fabric of their lives as the kettle on the stove or the creak of the third stair. She could not imagine the house without him, could not imagine her mornings without his smile and his easy laugh, and the thought of hurting him, of sending him away because of something her own mind had conjured, was worse than anything she had dreamed.
She could tell Seamus. The thought made her stomach turn. She knew her husband, knew his kind heart and his steady, unshakeable loyalty, and she knew he would not judge her. But she also knew that telling him would make it real, would drag the thing out of the shadows and into the bright, unforgiving light of day, and she was not ready for that. She was not sure she would ever be ready.
And she could do nothing. She could bury it, suppress it, smile and mother him and pretend that her dreams were nothing more than the restless fancies of a woman who had never quite had everything she wanted. She could do what she had always done, what she was good at, what had carried her through thirty years of a good and decent life.
She chose that. Of course she chose that. She had never been brave, not really, not the way Javier was brave, not the way Seamus was brave. She had built her life on careful decisions and measured steps, and she was too old to learn a new way of being.
So she went home that evening, and she kissed Javier goodnight, and she lay in the dark and waited for the dream to come and take her under again.
And it did.
It came with the same urgency, the same hunger, the same terrible rightness. But this time, there was something new. This time, when Javier turned to her in the dream, when he reached for her and pulled her down to him, she saw his face clearly, the fine bones, the dark, expressive eyes, the slight shadow of stubble on his jaw. He looked at her with a tenderness that broke her heart, and he said her name, not mum, her name, Roisin, and the sound of it was so intimate, so raw, that she woke with a sob caught in her throat and tears on her face.
She lay in the dark, crying, silent, utterly alone. The rain had stopped again, and the room was still. Beside her, Seamus slept on, his breathing deep and even, his bulk a warm, familiar presence that she had loved for so long that she had forgotten how to name it.
She sat up slowly, careful not to wake him, and she walked to the window. The night was clear, a scatter of stars over the rooftops, and she could see the lights of the city in the distance, a million lives burning bright and separate. Somewhere out there, one of those lights belonged to her shop. One of them belonged to this house. She had built a life there, a good life, a life she was proud of.
And now, inside that life, a fissure had opened. A crack that she did not know how to close.
She turned from the window and looked at the bed, at the man she had loved for most of her life. She thought of Javier in the room across the landing, of the warm innocence of his smile, of the way he had called her mum and meant it as love. She thought of the dream, of the way she had wanted him, and the shame of it burned in her throat like bile.
She went back to bed. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, and she let the tears come. They were quiet tears, the kind she had learned to shed alone in the dark, and they tasted of everything she could not say. She cried for the woman she had been, and the woman she had become, and the woman she did not know how to be. She cried for the son she had never had, and the dream that had turned him into something else. She cried because she did not know what else to do, and because she was too old to learn a new way of being, and because the heart did not care about age or reason or the measured steps of a careful life.
When the tears finally stopped, she was empty. Hollow. She lay very still, listening to the rhythm of Seamus's breathing, and she felt the first grey light of dawn creep through the curtains. She did not get up. She could not. She simply lay there, and she let the morning come, and she waited for the dream to take her under again.