Kate had been traveling the road for hours, the rain her sole companion. It was an entertainer, that Irish rain, performing an endless variety of tricks for her amusement. It blew sideways, pounded and sighed and dripped. It hailed neat little balls of ice that melted off her hood and shoulders. She did her best to ignore it. She knew the type. She was from Seattle, after all, the city of her birth, life, and heartbreak. She’d left a few days after the separation on a day much like this nearly a month ago. She didn’t know if she’d ever return, but the rain, or its cousin, followed, along with the memories that had driven her from that place.

The story was simple enough, or seemed to be, on the surface, as stories often are. She adopted a deadpan delivery in the telling, an amusing shtick, as if she were a warm-up act at a comedy club. She’d told the story on so many occasions, drawing laughs and knowing nods and sympathy, that she had the timing down pat. Three minutes. Three minutes was all it took to dissect the end of a five-year relationship.

It came down to this, she said: Ethan ran off with a model. A girl with black hair and pale skin and aquamarine eyes and a sizable trust fund. A girl who would have been courted by princes and lords if she lived in another time and place. A girl thin and angular as a praying mantis, who wore Kate’s designs at her failure of a fashion show and claimed to be her friend.

The model spoke five languages, was a champion fencer and violin virtuoso. Kate lacked such impressive qualifications. She knew enough French to order three courses in a café or ask directions to the train or toilet, so long as accents and dialects weren’t too strong. She could run a seven-minute mile. She thought of herself as pretty, not beautiful. Petite, not tall. She tended to be lucky at cards, though little else relating to games of chance. She loved Fellini movies and popcorn and chocolate cake. And she loved Ethan, still, after everything that had happened.

She couldn’t stop thinking about him, imagined making arguments far more winning than she was capable of in real life. Real life was empty rooms. Real life was eating and cooking for one. Real life was less laundry and a cleaner apartment. (He was a pack rat and a piler—he should have come with a warning.) Real life was waking up alone. Which was all right, because she was furious about the betrayal. Furious, yes, though still in danger of succumbing to the impulse of forgiveness, as she had before. No more. She was resolute, intent on enjoying this sojourn as much as possible, keeping sorrow at bay. The road lay before her, plain and simple, offering two ways to go, forward or back, no forks or splits or detours, just wide-open fields of lumpy, foxglove-strewn green. The road made no excuses or apologies. It didn’t have to. It was what it was. It went on, walls of moss-bearded stone hemming in the narrow lane, past ruined farmhouses with half-collapsed roofs and blackened eyes. She’d been walking and hitching for nearly a month, in the far western part of the country now, one of the few areas in which signs of civilization were slim to nil. She liked it that way. She’d toured Dublin in four days. Dublin, both grand and gritty: the halls of Trinity, the Book of Kells, the Georgian streets, the museums, with glass-encased mannequins and mummies with tattered clothes and bad teeth and marble eyes; heroin addicts stealing her backpack (she gave chase, recovered the bag, she could be swift and fierce when she wanted to be); housing estates and suffocating smog. There were two sides to everything. Two sides, if not more. She’d taken one bus, then another, heading for the mythical west, buses that didn’t take her as far as they were supposed to, missing connections, finally breaking down entirely, the station agents saying new vehicles would arrive within the hour, then two, then three, claims that took on the air of fairy tales. In the end, she grew tired of waiting and set off on foot, eventually winding up here, exhaustion making the scene all the more surreal.

Each step she took left a mark, some visible, some not, marks that said, I was here, I exist. That was one of the reasons people went away, wasn’t it, to forget, to reinvent themselves?

She’d been a quiet person at home, had let the gregarious people in her life—Ethan, her friend Ella, even her mother—take the lead, happy to be the soft-spoken sidekick who offered the occasional sage remark, witty aside.

She was on her own now. It felt strange, yes, but she was ready for something new, to be someone new.

The air smelled of grass, damp, dung, and peat smoke from a distant fire, though she saw no indications of life in the immediate vicinity, other than cows and sheep. They weren’t the sheep of her dreams, white and pure and fluffed, but dingy and yellowed and matted. Maa, said the sheep. Maa, she replied, the exchange bringing her to the point of tears, because it was something Ethan might have done, when they were easier together and kindnesses and clowning were possible. Maa? as if the animals had lost their mother, as she had done, that February.

No crying, she told herself sternly. She could keep herself in hand, smile in spite of everything. It wasn’t so hard, really. You can choose to be happy.

She didn’t mind the rain, not usually, but this was too much. I should have picked some place drier, she thought ruefully, like Spain. But even Spain had its challenges that year, with legions of stinging jellyfish, blackouts, and a plague of voles consuming crops and gardens; she’d read about it in the paper.

Shouldn’t the weather be nicer by now, so close to the first of May? She took shelter under a rhododendron, its blooms surrounding her with pinked fragrance, and nibbled on an energy bar, which tasted like sawdust in the best of circumstances, and these, assuredly, were not. She wasn’t hungry—she was never hungry at the beginning or end of a love affair, this one, especially, this one that was supposed to last. Everyone had been so sure she and Ethan would get married, that she would catch the bouquet at the medieval wedding they attended that March (the couple being devoted not only to each other but to the Society for Creative Anachronism), the event at which he left her, if not at the altar, just southwest of it, next to an ice sculpture of a knight in shining armor that had begun to melt, a moat of water at his feet, his sword soon no more than a toothpick.

“I can’t breathe,” Ethan said as they filed out of the room after the minister pronounced the couple man and wife. The turreted stone house in Seattle’s Denny Regrade neighborhood had been transformed into a castle, festooned with tapestries, standards and heraldry, the wooded grounds a miniature Sherwood Forest, a formidable scene, especially after multiple flagons of ale.

“I know what you mean,” Kate whispered in a mock-English accent. “This corset is an iron lung—though you do look rather comely in those tights.” The scent of prime rib and roast vegetables drifted from the banquet hall. She wondered how she’d manage to eat, wished she’d brought a change of clothes. She would have liked to slip into something more comfortable, but it wasn’t that sort of wedding. It was a theme party, and the bride was determined to have her way, mutton sleeves and all. Kate felt, by turns, amused and ridiculous.

“No.” Ethan avoided her gaze. “I mean, I can’t do this anymore.”

“This?” She didn’t let her smile falter, wouldn’t let him spoil the evening. “We can leave if you want, but Sean will be disappointed you missed the joust.” And she, too, because she’d hoped they could dance afterward. The bride’s parents had hired a pipe band, already skirling away. A jester tumbled down the great hall, narrowly avoiding a priceless Ming vase, jingling his bells. Fire eaters gulped flames on the balcony. She wondered if they ever burned their tongues.

“No. Us.” He let the words sink in a moment. “It’s over. I’m sorry.” He moved away, tottering slightly, loose from his moorings, though others probably put it down to drinking. Before he reached the exit, a friend reeled him in, clapped him on the back, and he allowed himself to be caught in this way, obviously grateful for the distraction. Within moments, he was raising toasts and laughing. He was, among other things, resilient—and clever enough to know Kate wouldn’t follow and make a scene.

She stood there, speechless, her expression not unlike that of the roast pig in the center of the feast, mouth agape, minus the apple. At first she’d wondered if witnessing the exchange of vows, the pledge of fidelity, the till-death-do-us-part, had unnerved Ethan. She could understand that. She could wait. She wouldn’t pressure him. She got a ride home with Ella, figuring she and Ethan would kiss and make up later, as they always did.

She was wrong. That night, he moved in with a friend, saying he needed the time and space to think. He left most of his things behind. Whenever she called, he was out. She wondered if he was even living there, but where else could he be? She waited two weeks, counting the days, until his friend finally took pity on her and confessed that Ethan had been seeing the model for months, that they were, in fact, soon to be engaged. Instead of Ethan and Kate moving to Manhattan to pursue their dreams (he in finance, she in fashion), it would be Ethan and The Model. Kate was left with no boyfriend and few buyers for her debut line. The concept hadn’t “clicked,” her rep, Jules, said; she needed to try something more “high concept”—never mind that she thought she had already, following his advice against her best instincts. The only takers were two small local boutiques, the money she earned hardly enough to pay her expenses, meaning she would have to start doing alterations. She was sick of letting down hems, making allowances, mending buttons and holes, tasks people could have done themselves if they’d only taken a few minutes. Less than it took to bring the garments to the vintage clothing store, Ella’s, owned by her best friend, where Kate tried to make ends meet. Her fingertips were rough from the work. Seamstress hands. Her mother had them too.

“I have to get out of here,” she’d told Ella. Not just the shop—the city, the state, the entire country. To Ireland. Land of her ancestors, land of the green, of rainbows and magic and pots of gold.

She and her mother had intended to go together, but her mother’s cancer had accelerated, taking her before they made the trip; she made Kate promise to travel on her own, left her a small inheritance to finance the venture. Then Kate and Ethan meant to visit, as part of a European tour, which Kate had thought of as their future honeymoon, and Ethan, she now realized, probably hadn’t.

There she was, halfway around the world, heading down this potholed, split-lipped road that went God only knew where. Trying to forget the way Ethan’s hair stuck up in the morning, the way he made her coffee and burned the toast, the way his eyes held so many colors—flecks of green and gold and brown and blue. She’d never seen eyes like that before, had been seduced by them the first time he’d asked her a question in a college literature class seven years ago. They had been studying Thomas Hardy that term. Had that been a bad sign? They were friends in the beginning. She watched him date a succession of people, waiting to be chosen, waiting for the night she and Ethan would drink too much, fall into bed, and become inseparable.

She’d be more careful next time. She’d only date men who chose her first, when they were sober and sure. She’d only date men with solid, reliable eyes, eyes that had settled on being one color, say brown. Yes, brown. If she ever trusted herself enough to date again.

Bells. There on that Irish road, she heard bells. Had she frozen to death? Were they rung by angels? Fairies? The wedding jester, returned to mock her? Or was it a beast of a man wielding chains, who would murder her in the ditch, the news of which would eventually reach Ethan, plunging him into paroxysms of guilt?

No, she wasn’t famous enough to rate the media coverage, though she’d dreamed of being known for her designs, once; she would be a footnote on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer obituary page, “Local aspiring fashion designer dies on lonely Irish lane.”

She shrank into the bushes, waiting for whatever it was to pass or put her out of her misery.

A horse snorted, hoofbeats plodded. A wagon appeared, painted with exuberant flowers, an ode to Peter Max in mod red, yellow, and green, canvas stretched over the top. A stocky traveler held the reins to the portliest equine she had ever seen. The man and his colorful cart looked as if they’d stepped out of a fairy tale or the Beatles film Yellow Submarine.

She stared at him through the leaves in surprise, and he, at her. “Haven’t washed away yet, have you?” he asked.

She shook her head. The branches showered her with water, drops pattering on her hood in hollow applause.

“Where are you headed?” He wore a canvas coat, vest, jeans, and, rather incongruously, brand-new sneakers, his skin tanned as cognac and heavily lined. There was a natural openness in his face she rarely encountered at home.

“Someplace dry,” she replied with a half smile, dipping her chin slightly.

“You won’t find it standing there—though those leaves are rather becoming on you.”

She fingered a length of honeysuckle vine. “The arboreal look is very in this season.” She felt her cheeks begin to color.

“Is it now? You’re giving the wearing of the green a whole new meaning.” He tipped the rain from the brim of his hat. “Would you like a lift?”

She brushed the lichen from her jacket, hesitating. Instinct told her to trust him. Besides, she had to consider her options, her present situation. There was nothing but the road and the sheep and the drip-drip-drip of rain. And then there was him, offering her what could be a pleasant alternative. Perhaps it was time to take a chance. He looked harmless enough.

“Can’t stay out in this weather, that’s for certain,” he continued. “You’ll catch your death.”

She imagined herself expiring in a field like a tragic heroine in a Victorian novel. “Or drown.” She held out her hand, palm up, catching raindrops, letting them fall.

“Come on then.” He patted the seat beside him. “Hop up. I could use the company.”