Colcannon For The Long Winter

The pot had been sitting on the back burner for hours, not quite simmering, not quite resting—just existing in that patient, domestic way food does when it knows it will be needed later. Colcannon was like that. It did not rush. It waited. Potatoes softened into themselves beneath a lid fogged with steam, kale slumped into submission, butter melting not in a hurry but with dignity. It was a dish that understood winters, understood patience, understood that hunger was not always loud.

Samuel Joseph Ihle noticed the smell before he noticed anything else.

It reached him halfway up the stairs of his apartment building, warm and green and buttery, threading itself through the cold December air like a memory that had decided it would not be ignored. He stopped on the landing between the second and third floors, one hand on the railing, scarf half-unwound, and closed his eyes.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he told himself, quietly. “You’re hungry. That’s all.”

But hunger did not usually smell like his grandmother’s kitchen. Hunger did not usually smell like peat fires and old linoleum and the radio tuned permanently to AM talk shows. Hunger did not usually smell like Ireland, which Sam had never actually been to, but which lived in him anyway—in his name, in his father’s stubbornness, in his mother’s quiet way of doing things right without announcing them.

Hunger smelled like burnt coffee and vending machines. Hunger smelled like deadlines.

This smelled like colcannon.

He climbed the rest of the stairs two at a time.

Jodie Elizabeth Williams-Ihle had kicked off her shoes and tied her hair up with a pencil—one of Sam’s, he noted absently, the good kind Danny Van Hoosier had bought him specifically to stop him from chewing pen caps. The kitchen window was fogged white, the overhead light casting a soft halo around her as she stood at the stove, wooden spoon in hand, stirring with a seriousness usually reserved for Senate hearings and city council scandals.

“You’re home early,” she said, without turning.

“I smelled potatoes,” Sam replied. “I followed my nose like a cartoon character.”

She smiled, just a little. “Good. That means it’s working.”

He set his bag down and leaned in the doorway, watching. There was comfort in the way she cooked—not flashy, not experimental, but confident. Jodie cooked the way she reported: she researched, she respected the source material, and she did not rush the ending.

“Since when do we have kale?” he asked.

“Since Grace dropped off a box of produce from her cousin’s farm,” Jodie said. “And since you forgot to cancel the grocery delivery.”

Sam winced. “Right. That.”

She turned then, spoon paused midair. “Relax. We’ll eat it. Or freeze it. Or give some to Jesse. He eats like a Victorian orphan.”

“Only because he lives one floor up,” Sam said. “If he lived any closer, he’d just eat with us.”

Jodie lifted an eyebrow. “He already does that.”

The pot burbled softly.

Sam stepped closer, peered inside. “Colcannon?”

“Colcannon,” she confirmed. “I figured it was cold. And you’ve been… distant.”

He stiffened—not much, just enough for her to notice.

“Distant how?” he asked.

Jodie set the spoon down and wiped her hands on a dish towel. She did not accuse. She never accused. She simply observed.

“You’ve been chewing on your thoughts,” she said. “Not your pens. Your thoughts.”

Sam exhaled, long and slow. “There’s a story.”

“There’s always a story,” she said gently.

“Yes, but this one—” He faltered, then laughed, awkwardly. “This one is… old.”

She waited.

At the newsroom that morning, between coffee refills and the low hum of printers, Sam had been handed a manila folder with no return address. Inside were photocopies—old police reports, yellowed newspaper clippings, a church ledger. Names he recognized. Dates that made his stomach tighten.

His father’s name.

His grandmother’s name.

A footnote about a boarding house fire in 1963, ruled accidental, no charges filed.

But accidents had patterns. Sam had built a career on that belief.

“I think someone is trying to tell me something about my family,” he said finally. “And I don’t know if I want to hear it.”

Jodie studied him the way she studied reluctant witnesses—with patience and respect and a clear-eyed understanding that truth, once uncovered, could not be put back.

“You don’t have to decide tonight,” she said.

“I know.”

She turned back to the stove. “But you do have to eat.”

Dinner was quiet, but not tense. The colcannon was everything it was supposed to be—creamy and green, butter pooled in the well at the center like a promise. Sam ate slowly, deliberately, as if each bite anchored him a little more firmly to the present.

“This is good,” he said.

“I know,” Jodie replied, not smug, just certain.

Afterward, they sat on the couch with blankets and the muted glow of the city beyond the window. Snow had begun to fall—not dramatically, not yet, but with intent.

Sam stared at the folder on the coffee table.

“My dad never talked about his mother,” he said. “Just said she was… complicated.”

Jodie snorted. “Everyone’s grandmother is complicated.”

“Yes, but mine apparently may have lied to the police.”

Jodie leaned her head on his shoulder. “Did she have to?”

He shrugged. “That’s the question.”

The next day, Sam went to see his father.

The house was exactly as he remembered—neat to the point of austerity, everything in its place, the smell of black coffee and furniture polish lingering like a held breath. His father, Heinrich Samuel Ihle, sat at the kitchen table with the newspaper folded just so, glasses perched low on his nose.

“You look tired,” Heinrich said.

“So do you,” Sam replied, kissing his cheek.

They sat. Coffee was poured. Silence settled, familiar and heavy.

“I’m working on a story,” Sam began.

His father’s jaw tightened, just a fraction.

“About what?” Heinrich asked.

“About a fire.”

The silence sharpened.

“I need to ask you some questions,” Sam said. “Not as a reporter. As your son.”

Heinrich folded the newspaper. “There are some stories that don’t belong in print.”

“I know,” Sam said. “That’s why I’m here.”

His father stared into his cup. “My mother cooked colcannon when she was nervous.”

Sam blinked. “What?”

“She said potatoes remembered the hands that touched them,” Heinrich continued. “That if you mashed them with anger, they tasted wrong.”

Sam swallowed.

“The night of the fire,” Heinrich said, voice low, “she burned the colcannon.”

The story came out slowly, haltingly, like a confession that had waited decades for air. The boarding house had been overcrowded. Safety ignored. Complaints dismissed. A man had threatened to report the owner. A bribe had been offered. A candle left too close to a curtain.

“No one meant for anyone to die,” Heinrich said. “But someone did.”

“And the report?” Sam asked.

His father met his eyes. “It was easier to call it an accident.”

Sam drove home in silence.

That night, Jodie reheated the last of the colcannon.

“So,” she said, handing him a bowl. “What do you want to do?”

Sam stared into the steam, into the green flecks of kale, into the soft white of the potatoes.

“I want to tell the truth,” he said. “But not all of it.”

Jodie nodded. “That’s a valid choice.”

“Is it?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Truth isn’t all or nothing. It’s responsibility.”

He smiled faintly. “You always say that.”

“I’m always right.”

They ate.

The article ran a week later—not about names, not about guilt, but about forgotten fires and the cost of silence. It sparked conversation, not outrage. Reflection, not blame.

Heinrich sent Sam a note. You were careful. Thank you.

Winter deepened. Snow piled. The city slowed.

One evening, Jesse knocked and let himself in, as usual.

“What’s that smell?” he asked.

Jodie grinned. “Colcannon.”

Jesse beamed. “Blessed be the Irish.”

Sam laughed, the sound surprising him with its ease.

As they ate together, the warmth of the apartment pressing back against the cold, Sam thought about stories—how some were meant to be shouted, and some were meant to be shared quietly over a bowl of something warm.

Colcannon waited for no one. But it remembered.

And that, Sam decided, was enough.