Aileen got home well past midnight. Sile and Rourke were asleep, Sile with an arm around her doll, Fi—she still loved her dolls and stuffed animals; the other children, except for her son Tom, who had his beloved Mr. Bear when he was small, hadn’t had much use for them. But Sile, her baby, who was getting breasts and hips, who’d just had her first period at the age of twelve, clung to the remnants of childhood and was still willing, every now and then, to take her mother’s hand.

Rourke must have stayed awake as long as he could, judging by the Dick Francis mystery open on his chest, waiting for Aileen to get home. He was sleeping on his back again, his natural position, to which he returned at every opportunity, catching a few blissful winks until she nudged him to roll over because he was snoring again. Despite the sharpness of Aileen’s general disposition, she could be gentle, and she was gentle with her husband, because in spite of outward appearances—he was a large man—he was more sensitive, easily hurt, than people realized. She stood in the sliver of light from the hall, watching him. He slept on the right side, she on the left. He still had a fine profile. With his hands clasped over his chest, he looked like a sleeping king. All he needed was a crown and scepter.

Aileen didn’t wake the one child who remained in the house, the husband who dreamed. When it was quiet like this, she felt her love for them keenly, touched the mementos on the bookcase, the pictures of her and Rourke at the seaside taken years ago, when he tossed her in the water, shrieking, then dove after her, held her so close it felt as if they were one person, skin to skin. Their faces were soft then, unlined, filled with wonder, at the start of it all. She sighed, thinking of how young they’d been, how quickly the years had passed, incidents, large and small, hurts and joys, passing, passing, until she reached this point, standing in her living room, remembering everything, as the moments continued to slip away, becoming part of the irretrievable past.

Her mind circled in on itself when she stayed up late like this. Too much had happened in the last twenty-four hours. It seemed like such a long time ago that Sorcha called, that Aileen tore down the road to Moira’s house. She knew she should try to get some sleep, but her mind raced, one thought plowing into the next with relentless momentum. It was like being on a sinister carousel; she couldn’t make it stop, couldn’t get off. She looked in Rosheen’s room, clean now, because Aileen had neatened it to cope with her absence, to avoid acknowledging the space devoid of her daughter’s presence, the chaos that was Rosheen. It appeared her daughter had come home, briefly, when Aileen wasn’t there, to retrieve a T-shirt and pair of jeans. Aileen wondered if she timed her visits, spying from the hedge to make sure she was out. The thought saddened her.

She kept thinking a dramatic event would force Rosheen to admit she needed her: that a friend would overdose, or Ronnie would cheat on her, or there would be an accident, and she would call Aileen, her voice shaking, tearful, Mam, please, come get me, Aileen crying too, coming to the rescue at last. Aileen could see it as if she were watching a film, she the star, the mother, who would do anything for her children.

But it wasn’t a movie, was it? There was no phone call. Life didn’t work like that. Not hers, anyway.

There was only that empty room with the fringed purse missing from the doorknob, letting her know Rosheen was moving farther away from her with each passing day, until she’d reach the point of no return. Aileen hoped it didn’t come to that. But what could she do? She felt trapped inside herself, inside that life, clutching the snarled cord of their relationship, seemingly impossible to unravel.

Aileen sat by the window, arms locked across her chest, fingers pressing into her skin hard enough to leave marks. She gazed at the shelled drive, bits of broken cockle and periwinkle glowing dimly in the half-light, the winding lane, deserted now. A scythe of moon pierced a torn cloud. Wings fluttered in the dark, an owl or a bat most likely, though she let herself believe it was Rosheen somewhere nearby. The minutes crept by, Aileen sitting there, waiting, the futility finally too much for her, hands a-fidget in her lap. She had to do something.

And then she knew. She nearly laughed, wondering why she hadn’t thought of it before. She went upstairs, the idea taking shape in her mind. She searched Rosheen’s overstuffed drawers until she found what she was looking for: a plain sensible bra her daughter no longer wore, shoved in the back of the bureau, near some days-of-the-week knickers she wouldn’t be caught dead in now.

Downstairs, at the kitchen table, Aileen took out her scissors and cut. She’d watched Kate lay the foundations; she knew what to do. She labored until morning, not in haste or fury but in concentrated precision, working the lace, the ribbons, until light, not from the buzzing bulb overhead, but the wide open sky, filled the room and revealed what she’d made. She held up her hands, those veined and roughened hands that had changed nappies and washed dishes and done laundry and slapped smart-mouthed faces and clenched in rage, hands that had made this one beautiful thing she hoped her daughter would like.

The finches in the hedgerow, where Rosheen had hidden as a little girl, sang as the sun rose, marking the beginning of another day. Aileen smiled to herself as she laid the bra on her daughter’s bed, where she was sure to find it, the lace a cross and bones on the left breast. It was exquisite, that skull, true.

“I love you,” she whispered. “Wear it well.”