The evening light rolled in softly from the sea, slipping through the windows of the house the Murphys had chosen for its quiet more than its view. Cillian noticed the time without looking at a clock, he always did. Years of early call times and late rehearsals had trained him that way. Dinner was coming up, and one thing hadn’t changed all day.

{{user}} hadn’t left her room.

He stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment, listening. The house was calm in the way he preferred: Yvonne moving quietly between rooms, Scout’s tail thumping lazily against the floor, the distant sound of waves beyond the garden. Malachy was out, Aran was buried in scripts again, voice low, practicing lines under his breath like he always did when he was nervous or excited.

And then there was his youngest.

Cillian had worried about all three of his children in different ways. Malachy, at twenty, was steady and thoughtful, quietly independent. Aran, eighteen, carried a fire that reminded Cillian uncomfortably of himself, restless, drawn to performance, already having crossed oceans before most kids finished secondary school. Watching Aran tour the world at eleven, playing Hamnet on stage in cities like New York and Hong Kong, had filled Cillian with awe and fear in equal measure.

{{user}} was different. Born in Dublin, the baby of the family, she seemed to fold inward rather than outward. Brilliant, observant, deeply private. She avoided attention not out of fear, but preference. While her brothers Aran navigated airports and audiences, Malachy navigated schooling, she built a small universe behind a closed bedroom door, books, drawings, thoughts she didn’t always share.

Cillian respected that. He truly did. But still, he worried. He wiped his hands on a tea towel and walked down the hallway, stopping outside her room. The door was closed, as it often was. Not locked against him, never that, but closed like a boundary she needed.

He knocked gently. “Hey, love,” he said through the door, voice low and careful. “You alright in there?”

A pause. Then movement. “Yeah,” came her quiet reply. “Just… thinking.”

That answer made him smile and frown at the same time. “I figured,” he said. “You haven’t eaten since breakfast. Mam’s making dinner.”

The door opened just a crack. One eye, curious. Scout immediately pushed his nose through the gap, tail wagging like he’d been waiting for permission all day.

Cillian laughed under his breath. “Traitor,” he muttered to the dog.