Chapter 3: The Days In Between

In the quiet that followed the fire, there was no dramatic turning point — just the slow, grinding passage of days that felt longer than they should have. William remained without a home, adrift in the ruins of a life that once held the simple comfort of his father’s voice in the kitchen. The repairs to the house in Bray were promised, postponed, then promised again. Each delay tested the limits of patience, of hope.

Josephine moved between two worlds in those days. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were for Bray — for William. She made the journey like clockwork, arriving with a quiet steadiness that kept his world from collapsing entirely. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and weekends, she returned to Dublin, where I tried to offer her a little warmth, a bit of normality, and a place to simply be.

We never called it a schedule, but it became one. A rhythm of resilience.

There were no grand gestures, no headlines after the first one. Just the same cup of tea passed across a kitchen table. The same gentle questions, the same silences. Josephine never complained. She didn’t need to. I could see it in her — the fatigue beneath the surface, the way her eyes lingered longer on the bus timetable than they used to. She carried more than her bag on those commutes. She carried the weight of two grieving boys, and no one ever really asked her how she was doing.


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