Little George was born in the early hours of the morning, after a long and difficult labour. The doctors ruled stress had caused the difficulties, and while baby George was whisked away to be assessed, Calum took his wife's hand in his, tears in his eyes as he cursed Roisin. He had no idea if the woman had deliberately used the court system against her niece to give her a difficult labour, but either way, it didn't matter. For in Jenny's face he could see the same signs as when Finn had died at the start of the year, and he knew what was coming. "I won't let Roisin get her hands on our son," he vowed, squeezing her hand tightly.
Jenny gave him a weak smile, her pallor too strong to be mistaken for anything other than approaching death. "Give him a good life," she whispered. "He'll want to know the truth, but don't tell him unless he asks. I don't want him worrying and wondering who his parents were when he grows up; he deserves peace. And you know blood doesn't make family; love does. If he asks why you didn't say anything, tell him that."
Calum leaned down to give her a tender kiss on the lips. "Say hello to Finn for me," he said, and Jenny smiled again.
Rosaleen and George Sr then came to the bedside to say goodbye to their dying daughter, and when the sun came up, banishing the night's shadows, Jenny's spirit slipped quietly into the dawn.
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After Jenny's funeral, Calum threw himself into the work needed to turn his squidding boat into an empire. He worked long hours, while Rosaleen and George took care of their grandson, knowing their son-in-law needed to keep himself busy lest grief take hold of him and drive him over the edge.
One thing Calum refused to do was marry again. He did agree to a wet-nurse for baby George, but he himself would never take another woman to wife. It wasn't fear of being disrespectful to Jenny's memory - and she herself would have told him to stop being an idiot. It was the knowledge in his heart that no woman would ever come close to matching his wife. He tried telling himself he was being an eejit, but deep down, he knew there was no changing his mind. Rosaleen, seeing that she was fighting a losing battle, wisely refrained from further persuasion, understanding how he felt - she herself had refused to look at another man after losing her husband, believing him dead thanks to Roisin's machinations.
Roisin, thankfully, stayed true to her word and refused to have anything to do with her sister, brother-in-law, nephew-in-law, and grand-nephew. Whenever she saw any of them in the street, she lifted her chin and walked away, or flat out ignored them, much to the relief of all involved. In fact, not long after Jenny's funeral, she moved back to her hometown of Straffan, and the only word anyone heard of her after that was when she passed away not long after baby George's first birthday.
But one last needle of spite had been left; when going through her belongings, Rosaleen discovered a letter, written to her grand-nephew, dated not long after his birth. It was, in Rosaleen's opinion, the most sickening and saccarhine thing she'd ever seen; Roisin painted herself as the wronged great-aunt who only wanted to get to know her grand-nephew better, vilifying her daughter and son-in-law as monsters who would do all they could to separate a loving aunt from the nephew she would never be allowed to see thanks to the malice of his parents. The letter also told baby George the truth about who his father was, hinting that Calum had angled for a marriage to Jenny supposedly against her will, and that he'd jumped at the chance to wed her before Finn was hardly cold in the grave.
Never mind that marriage was willingly entered into on both sides! Rosaleen thought, sickened. She skimmed the rest of the letter, before throwing it into the fireplace and setting it alight. There was no sense burdening her son-in-law with further worries; Roisin had clearly lost her mind after losing her court case, and while Rosaleen was glad her sister was no longer around to cause trouble, she was also saddened at how far Roisin had fallen from the bright-hearted girl who'd had high hopes of marrying a lord and becoming a high-born lady. 82Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPCQ7c3Ou7Z
Once the letter was a pile of white ashes on the hearth, Rosaleen swept the hearth clear and desposited the ashes in the garden, thinking with a grim flash of humour that perhaps the flowers in the garden might get a bit of fertilsing. Either way, her sister's foibles were no longer her concern. Roisin was dead, and her ambitions, fears, hopes, dreams and desires were dead with her. Life went on for the living, and as she returned to her work of sorting through her sister's belongings, Rosaleen Doyle thanked God her own life was looking much better than it had over twenty-one years ago.
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