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I shook my head, feeling a little guilty about it. I had vague memories of seeing pictures of them, and I knew that they were my mam’s childhood friends that she spoke of often, but I didn’t know who they were.
But Bridget didn’t seem to mind, instead her lips tilted up into a bigger smile. “That’s all right, my name is Bridget and this is Bela, we’re your mam’s oldest friends, love. We also have little girls of our own—though Aurelia isn’t quite so little anymore.”
Bela snorted, her eyes never leaving the road. “I’ll say, a full-blown teenager we have now.”
“Oh, hush, you can’t blame her for wanting to go to her dance,” my mam scolded the other woman. “I also still think you should have left her in Minnesota to look after herself.”
“And let her be distracted from the upcoming dance tests? Over my dead body,” Bela muttered. “Aurelia should focus on her ballet rather than some boy with shifty eyes.”
Bridget scrunched her freckled nose at the other woman. “You’re too strict on her. Don’t you believe in young love?”
“No,” Bela said, her tone blunt as she turned onto the bridge to cross the Liffey, joining the other cars clogging their way to the city center.
As the women in the car continued to chatter, I couldn’t help but feel left out. It was as if my mam had lived an entire lifetime while she was away. There were inside jokes I didn’t understand, other daughters she sounded affectionate toward, and a light in her brown eyes that I’d never seen when she was with me.
I wanted to continue our fight from my bedroom, but instead I stared down at the DVD case that was gripped tight in my hands. The colors of it had faded, but I could still see the happy smiles of the couple on it as they pressed their heads together.
“Leanbh?” my mam’s voice brought me from my morose thoughts and when I looked up at her I found a hopeful expression on her face. “I can’t wait to get you back to Minnesota, you’ll love it there—”
She never got to finish those words.
The tires of the car began to spin, no longer catching on the road and the car jerked toward the left, smashing into another car with a loud crunch before careening toward the edge of the bridge.
There was a great bump and then we were flying, my ears ringing as the women in the car screamed.
The impact of the car on the river below may as well have been concrete, a hole opening in the front windscreen.
My mam said something to me as water whooshed inside, and then there was blackness.
Chapter two
Edinburgh — Scotland
2018
“That’s it, Ciara, good,” Omar called from the sidelines as I landed a double with ease. “Try for three.”
I didn’t want to try for three. But one of the stipulations for being at this training camp was that what Omar asked for, he got.
My skates zipped across the ice as I regained momentum and envisioned the triple axel in my mind.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t me in my mind’s eye performing the stunt. No. It was my little sister in all of her redhaired glory as she flew through the air and landed smoothly, much to the amazement of everyone in the Olympic stadium.
Mine, however, was not quite as elegant.
My turns were fine—but that was never the problem. It was the landing that always got me.
The ice rose up to meet me, cold and hard as I crashed into it as the air whooshed out of my body.
“So, that is not how you do it,” Omar’s thick Russian accent filled my ears. “I am surprised you and your sister are not of the same caliber when it comes to skating. Nor, it seems, are you even on the same level as you were at the Olympics.”
Gritting my teeth, I sat up and brushed the frost off of my leggings. People had been comparing me to Brynn for ten years, so it didn’t even hurt my feelings anymore.
Comparing me to Brynn was ridiculous and stupid in the first place.
She’d been on the ice since she could walk—a natural is what every figure skating teacher we’d ever had gushed about.
But I’d put enough blood, sweat, and tears into the sport that I knew that I was on par with her, if only I could get out of my own fucking head.
