“
Hello, my loves." Padraig enters carrying a stack of wood. My heart reaches for him; it has never stopped moving toward him since the evening at the castle, or maybe even before, on a bridge over the River Cherwell when he ran after me to walk me halfway to the Kilns.
Padraig's hair is silver, pure silver, as if a child with a paint box took his bright red curls and painted them. His face is lined with wrinkles to mark his smiles. Twenty best-sellers my husband has written now, fairy tales and legends of the Irish countryside, even while tutoring at Merton for all these years. But the book young George and I are reading?
Once Upon a Wardrobe.
I wrote it.
My brother illustrated it. Of course, he hadn't known he was illustrating a book; he merely drew while I told him stories.
The book came later.
Much later.
Padraig drops the logs into the fire and comes to kiss us both. "What part are we on?"
"The end," George says, "until we read it again."
I look up to Padraig, and he smiles down at me with that crooked and dear grin that melts everything in me. I think of the first time I knew what that smile meant - on my front porch on Christmas morning - but it was at my brother's final good-bye that I knew for sure.
”
”