I fumbled out the silver bird brooch. Dara looked at the tiny, exquisite thing in the palm of her hand.
“Transmigration of the soul,” I said. Curlews called, unseen in the mist.
“I could put you back,” Dara said. “Go to Feargal, put you back into my childhood. The white house with the black paint and the trees around it. The Victorian conservatory. Barney the dog. Cat the cat. Make you my brother.”
“Why?”
“I like you. You’re… you. My brother. I need you, I think.”
“Dara, I wouldn’t fit into your childhood. Stephen O’Neill comes from that other childhood. What you remember could never produce me.”
Dara winced. Her hand closed on Kerry’s silver bird.
“Consider us separated at birth,” I said. “Orphans, adopted into different families. Separate lives. Intimate strangers. Learning about each other. Because you aren’t Kerry. You are the sister I should have had, that I never knew.”
“Yeah,” Dara said. She opened her hand and looked at the brooch. Then, suddenly, stunningly, she drew back her arms and threw it out over the sands. I saw it glitter in the sun, but I did not mark where it fell. We walked back across the tide flats toward the low willow-covered hills, following our water-filled footprints. Behind us, the feeding geese rose up and passed over us in a long straggling skein, calling to each other as they flew north.