And there was a morning of brilliant light that came across the surface of the sea and arrived so brightly that at first it
seemed the dazzlement of magic. The sky was cloudless and blue with the perfect weather of peaceful dreams. And into that
morning Stephen dressed himself and was waking Gabriella and bringing her tea and carrying Alannah in his arms through the
cottage to tell her mother how they could take the morning and drive into Ennis and buy a new cooker to replace the one that
was broken. And he had to find the baby's cloth shoes and pack the bag with nappies and powder and cream and the bottle and
the bibs, while Gabriella dressed in a burgundy dress and a black cardigan. And then they were driving into that brightness
that was not the brightness of November. They were packed into the car, with Gabriella holding Alannah in her lap in the back
seat and humming a tune for her and humming it over and over as the car drove on into Miltown Malbay and out the other side
and on past all the watery fields where cattle watched across the strands of barbed wire for the coming of fodder and where
none was coming, because there was nothing else on that road, no tractor or car, no man or woman, only the bright sunlight
that was too bright and the polished surface of the puddles that looked like glassy tears or the fallen fragments of a cold
heaven. And Stephen was driving and watching his hands turning the wheel and the road unspooling like a destiny before him
as they sped onward, and he was able to look in the mirror at Gabriella and Alannah behind him and behind them the road they
had come from and the fields flowing backward like a film blurring green and grey, and then there was suddenly the flooded
bend by Inagh and the car flashing into it and across the water until it hit the stone wall and Stephen flew forward into
the windscreen and felt the crash and the glass and the tremendous shattering and arrived in the terrible silence and the
taste of blood and looked back and saw that Gabriella and Alannah were dead.