Page 1 (1/2)

Prologue

A secret is a strange thing

There are three kinds of secrets One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for One to keep it One to never know The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself Every day, thousands of confessions are kept fro that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid

And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind A secret no one knows about Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it

Sometimes, some rare ti too big for theto contemplate

All of us have secrets in our lives We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played Secrets and cockroaches -- that’s ill be left at the end of it all

Ronan Lynch lived with every sort of secret

His first secret involved his father Niall Lynch was a braggart poet, a loserbit of hard luck bred in Belfast but born in Cuh Niall was a rogue and a fiend, the Lynches were rich Niall’s eone for h it was hard to say if this was because of his career or because of his being a scoundrel He always returned with gifts, treasure and uniinable a was Niall hi felt like it would be the last, and so every return was like a miracle

"When I was born," Niall Lynch told his round shook"

This was already a lie, because if God truly had broken the mold for Niall, He’d made himself a knockoff twenty years later to craft Ronan and his two brothers, Declan and Matthew The three brothers were nothing if not handsoh each flattered a different side of Niall Declan had the sa its hand Matthew’s curls were netted with Niall’s char that was left: molten eyes and a s of their mother in any of them

"It was a proper earthquake," Niall clarified, as if anyone had asked hi Niall, they probably had "Four point one on the Richter scale Anything under four would’ve just cracked the mold, not broken it"

Back then, Ronan was not in the business of believing, but that was all right, because his father wanted adoration, not trust

"And you, Ronan," Niall said He always said Ronan differently from other words As if he hadlike knife or poison or revenge -- and then swapped it out for Ronan’s name at the last moment "When you were born, the rivers dried up and the cattle in Rockingham County wept blood"

It was a story he had told more than once, but Ronan’s mother, Aurora, insisted it was a lie She said when Ronan ereers and the Henrietta ravens laughed When his parents bickered back and forth about his birth, Ronan never pointed out that both versions could be true

Declan, the oldest of the Lynch brothers, once asked, "And what happened when I was born?"

Niall Lynch looked at him and said, "I wouldn’t knoasn’t here"

When Niall said Declan, it always sounded like he meant to say Declan

And then Niall vanished for another month Ronan took the opportunity to search the Barns, which is what the sprawling Lynch farm was known as, for evidence of where Niall’s money came from He found no clues of his father’s work, but he did discover a yellowed newspaper clipping in a rusting metal box It was from the year his father was born Drily it reported the story of the Kirkby Stephen earthquake, felt through northern England and southern Scotland Four point one Anything less than a four wouldn’t have broken it, only cracked it

That night, Niall Lynch came ho above hi sun els, which was the better part of a lie already Niall’s face was s of the day you were born," Niall said, "Ronan"

He wiped the blood on his forehead to show Ronan that there was no wound beneath it The petals snared in the blood were shaped like tiny stars Ronan was struck with how sure he was that they had come fro

The world gaped and stretched, suddenly infinite

Ronan told him, "I knohere the money comes from"

"Don’t tell anyone," his father said

That was the first secret