Status Updates From Felicia's Journey

When he arrives in Duke of Wellington Road, darkness has long ago preceded him and for a few moments he sits in his car after he has drawn it up on the gravel, not wishing to open the front door and step into the hall until he has gathered a little strength that may be of assistance in the silence of the house. In time he finds it, and mounts the four steps to his hall door.

Only being together, only their love, can bring redemption: she knows that perfectly. She knew it when Christmas passed and he did not return. She knew it during the snow that came in January; she knew it when the first week of February came gustily in, when she went to see his mother.

'There's nothing wrong in it,' he murmured, saying more, nothing wrong in it when two people love one another. Yet the night she wrote the letter she felt that maybe, after all, there had been: the old-fashioned sin you had to confess if you went to Confession; the sin of being greedy, the sin of not being patient.
And why should she have supposed that the happiness his love had given her was her due, and free?

Still searching among the faces around her, she again experiences the sense of punishment she was first aware of the night she wrote the last of her letters: a call to order, a call to account for the happiness she had so recklessly indulged in.

'The other day I thought it was you was the bride': the Monday after the wedding it was when he spoke to her on the street, coming up to her outside Chawke's.
She loves making it happen again, better than any dream or any imagining because it's real. 'Ah no, no,' she said, shaking her head, not adding that she didn't think she'd ever be a bride.

This is like the 25th book I’ve read for Irish lit classes and somehow it’s the first one with my name in it