Bernie had been awake since 5:00 a.m., thinking. Kate needed another reason to stay in Glenmara. The lace was a start, a thread tying her to the community, but she could snap it any moment and walk away, up the road down which she’d come. Had it only been days she’d been in the village? It seemed as if Kate had been with them longer, with Bernie longer.

Bernie looked for clues each day as she straightened the guest room—she didn’t snoop, no, of course not, that wouldn’t have been right, but she looked for hints in the arrangement of things: the rumpled sheets at the foot of the bed (restless sleeper, something on her mind, nightmares? About what?), the markers in the novels (thank goodness she wasn’t one of those people who turned down corners; Bernie couldn’t abide that)—the girl had gone for Edna O’Brien’s latest novel, no great surprise, and the William Trevor collection. Hmm, interesting. As Bernie emptied the wastebin, a crumpled scrap of paper tumbled out, a single letter on the lined page: E.

A lover perhaps? Had it gone wrong?

The girl needed someone new, Bernie decided, not necessarily a permanent attachment, but to take her mind off whatever it was, whoever it was, that haunted her from across the sea. Not that there were many candidates in Glenmara. Most of the men were middle-aged and married or elderly and widowed, not for the likes of Kate.

Bernie stared at the ceiling. The light fixture looked like an angel from one angle, a devil from the other, her eyes playing tricks on her. Hmm. Sullivan Deane. Sullivan Deane might do. He’d suffered a loss of his own, could use the company too (though he probably found enough in the neighboring villages, he wouldn’t have met anyone like Kate). How could she get them together? She’d already had Kate deliver the week’s Gaelic Voice. She could hardly put out a special edition. Wait. There was something one of the women had said the night before about Sullivan Deane. What was it again? Yes: Sullivan Deane’s laptop computer. She’d send Kate to see about it. So much could be accomplished with a little thought. She lay in bed as the sky brightened in the east, the sun rising through a break in the clouds, light spreading into the room. She let it envelop her in the possibilities before turning back the covers and hopping out of bed, one foot into a slipper, then the other, her robe next, a magician putting on her cloak. She’d make scones. The British occupation had its good points, scones being first among them. She loved scones and clotted cream and homemade strawberry jam. That’s what she’d serve that morning. And bangers and eggs. Juice too. Orange? Americans liked orange juice; everyone knew that. She lit the stove. What first? A handful of fresh flowers for the vase on the table. The peonies were in bloom, early this year. She walked out into the dew. A squadron of swallows circled her in tight loops. Pure joy, it was, joy. A sign that anything could happen. She was sure of that now.

“I’d do it myself, but I’ve got to run these down to the printer. I’m behind this week—and I never miss a deadline. So you’ll be doing me a favor, you see, asking Sullivan about the computer.”

“I’d be happy to help,” Kate said. “As you said, the Gaelic Voice must be heard.”

“Yes!” Bernie waved a proof of the next newsletter for emphasis. The latest crime headlines ran across the top:

Fergus sat by Bernie, whining for a scone. Bernie shook her head. “I’m sorry. You know the vet said they’re bad for your health. You have to eat your senior dog food now.”

Fergus sighed and shambled over to his bowl, giving her a backward glance filled with reproach.

“He dreams of burgers and scones,” she told Kate. “My husband spoiled him something awful.” Her gaze settled on his picture on the mantel, a brief yearning in her eyes, before she looked away again. “Take the car if you want,” she added. “Can be tricky to start, though.”

“The bike’s fine. I like the exercise,” Kate said. “Where does Sullivan Deane live?”

“Take the west road out of town, then left at the blue farm. It’s a stone house. He spent summers there with his grandparents when he was growing up. Holidays too. Been in the family for generations. Only place of any size around here that didn’t get taken over by the English. The Deanes were fighters. Always were, always will be.”

“He’s not going to shoot me, is he?” Kate laughed.

“No, that was long ago.” Bernie winked. “You’ll be safe enough.”

When Kate arrived at the house, she was almost relieved there wasn’t a car in the drive, no answer when she knocked on the door. She’d sensed a setup in Bernie’s proposal. The last thing she needed was a romantic entanglement. She peered in the front window, saw a fiddle, an upright piano, an unlit fireplace. In a detached outbuilding, she glimpsed lines of pots, dripping with glaze the colors of the surrounding landscape—blues and lavenders, grays and pearls, greens and umbers—he must have made the bowl she liked at Bernie’s cottage. And in the corner, a sculpture: the curve of a woman’s torso and breast. Kate had never seen anything so beautiful.

“You’re not a burglar, are you?” Niall Maloney cycled up behind her.

She hadn’t heard him coming. His chain was well oiled, and he’d ridden straight over the turf, the wheel leaving a thin trail in the grass. She pressed a hand to her chest. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

“My daughter lives up the road—though it seems I’m not the only one doing the sneaking,” he teased. The straw basket mounted on the handlebars held a bag of meat pies, the grease seeping into the paper, the smell of warm, fresh-baked pastry and beef making her hungry again. Sometimes her mother had made pasties when Kate was growing up, using her Butte Irish grandmother’s recipe.

“Here,” Niall said, insisting when she shook her head. “Have one.” He handed her a small turnover, more of an appetizer, really.

She took a bite, somewhat disappointed. Lu’s pies had been bigger, made the way her grandmother made them, crammed with potatoes—potatoes being all her ancestors could afford; the meat came later, when they were done with the mines and secured jobs aboveground at the power company, her grandfather working his way up from the mailroom, her mother the first to go to college, the mines still and silent now.

A wind came up off the sea, bent the grass and lupines to earth, let them go—on and on it went, the pressure, the release.

“What are you doing here?” Niall asked. “After some pottery for a souvenir?”

“I’m looking for Sullivan Deane.”

“The girls are always looking for Sullivan.” His eyes sparkled. “Lucky man.”

“It’s not like that—”

“It isn’t? And here I was hoping for a bit of gossip.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but Bernie asked me to find him,” she explained with a good-natured smile. “She said he has a computer.”

“What’s she need that for?”

“A project for the lace society.”

“Entering the modern age, is she?”

“Something like that.”

“My grandson knows computers. Works for a software company in Dublin. I don’t understand a thing he says when he starts going on and on about cyberspace. Might as well be speaking Greek. But he’s made a go of it. Took me for a ride in his fancy car last time he visited. Christmas it was. The young ones don’t come home often enough—which makes your being here even more of a novelty,” he said, adding, “How do you like our little village?”

“It’s a lovely place.”

“It is, isn’t it? I’ve lived here my whole life. Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. It’s important to have a place to call home. A place where people know you.” He scratched his chin. A scruff of silvery beard had started to grow. “You’re from Seattle, aren’t you? Were your people Irish?”

“Some of them.”

“No wonder you seem so at home here.”

“It’s hard not to be. Everyone has been so welcoming.” Well, almost everyone; she thought of Aileen and Father Byrne. “Do you know where Sullivan is?”

“I think he went to the market in Kinnabegs. It’s his day to sell the pottery.”

“Is it far?”

“It’s a thirty-minute cycle from here. One of the towns scattered along the coast, bigger than ours, gets more tourists, though not much,” he said. “Some of the best scenery in the area.”

She thanked him and set off again. Even if she didn’t find Sullivan Deane, she’d see more of the countryside. She supposed the place looked much as it had for centuries, an occasional standing stone breaking the low rolling hills, monuments to forgotten gods, a horse among the buttercupped fields, whinnying for a handout as she went by. She hummed to herself, her voice blending with the wind, the spinning of the wheels, and headed for the sea.

Kate skirted the bay with its flotilla of boats, painted green and blue and red, some advertising trips to the convent ruins offshore. A man sang in Gaelic as he mended his nets, a cap over his frizzled hair, his skin the texture of dried fruit. Another sold cockles by the bucket. Market stalls crowded the square beyond, where vendors displayed teas, preserves, and the usual linens—though none as fine as the lace society’s work. Kate searched for Sullivan Deane’s awning. Yes, there it was, by a stand selling local cheeses flavored with chives, rosemary, and pepper. He wasn’t at the table, only a blond, curvaceous girl—Kate had never seen anyone with such a small waist—who seemed to attract more attention than the goods themselves.

“You looking for Sullivan?” she asked Kate with an assessing look that suggested she knew him well. “You’ve just missed him. He went to the pub. He sometimes stops there before going home.” A slyness in her smile hinted Kate wasn’t the first woman to seek him.

“I’m not—,” Kate began to explain, then thought better of it. What did it matter if the whole countryside thought she was chasing after Sullivan Deane? That wasn’t her purpose.

As she turned away, she glimpsed a van parked behind the stand—the same van that had nearly run her off the road days before. The van driven by the man from the cliffs. Wouldn’t that just figure? He must be Sullivan Deane. She had mixed feelings about encountering him again, equal amounts anticipation and annoyance. But all she had to do was use his computer. How difficult could that be?

She rattled down the cobbled lane in the direction the girl indicated and parked the bike outside a pub called the Hungry Gull. Someone had had the foresight to print the name in English for the benefit of the tourists. She smoothed her hair before going inside. There were five patrons in the bar at that hour. The one nearest the door looked up as she walked in.

It was him. He wore black leather sneakers, jeans, and a fisherman’s sweater, a vaguely bohemian look that managed to be both put together and unstudied; his hair somewhat shaggy, a scruff on five-o’clock shadow on his chin. “Down off the mountain, are you?” he asked.

She’d half expected to see him, and yet she found herself having to catch her breath before speaking, and not because she’d been pedaling uphill. “So it would seem,” she said, adding, in reference to his nearly running her down in the lane a few days before, “though the hazards of the road are just as dangerous.”

He leaned back in his chair and grinned. “Scared you, did I?”

“I’d describe the experience differently.”

“As?”

“As: You nearly killed me.”

“The roads seem narrower than they are. There was plenty of room for both of us.” He shrugged.

“They do, do they? Easy for you to say from the comfort of a driver’s seat.”

“Looking for someone?” he asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. Do you happen to know Sullivan Deane?” she asked with a knowing smirk.

“You’re looking at him. What can I do for you?”

“I need to borrow your lap—,” she began, stumbling over the words. He had such a brilliant smile—and that dimple next to his mouth—

“My lap? That sounds interesting.”

“No, your top—” She was completely flustered now.

“Do I get to wear yours?” he asked.

Why wouldn’t he let her complete a sentence? She was perfectly capable of expressing herself eloquently. “What I was trying to say was—” She broke off again, expecting another quip.

“Yes?” He tried not to laugh.

“That I need to borrow your computer.”

“And here you got me all excited,” he said. “You American girls are rather fresh.”

“I wouldn’t have bothered you, but Bernie sent me. She said you had the only computer in Glenmara.”

“No hookup, though. Good you caught me here. Fine thing, their setting up Wi-Fi.” He offered her his chair, brushing her arm as he passed. She barely reached his shoulder. “For the tourists. Like you.”

“I’m not a tourist. I’m a traveler. There’s a difference.” She felt the warm spot he’d left behind when she sat down. She scooted to the edge of the seat and uploaded the pictures from her camera.

“Here, a traveler means a gypsy,” he said, “though you don’t look much like a gypsy to me.”

She could have been. She could have stayed with William, traveled the coast. “I’m on a trip, that’s all.”

“And what’s your destination? Surely not Glenmara?”

“Why not?”

“It’s not exactly a metropolis.”

“I’ve had enough of cities for a while. It seems you have too.”

“Yes.” He didn’t say anything more.

She suspected his reticence might have something to do with the tragedy the lace makers had alluded to, but didn’t press.

“Do you have a name?” he asked, changing the subject. “Or are you like one of those characters in an existential novel?”

“It’s Kate.”

“As in The Taming of the Shrew?”

“As in Katharine Hepburn.”

“You’re not sending pornography, are you?” He leaned over her shoulder. “I could get in trouble for that.”

“It’s a business proposition.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“A new line for the lace society.”

“I see. Stirring things up, are you?”

“Just trying to help. Would you mind?” She couldn’t work with him standing over her like that.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to distract you.” He went to talk to the barman, glancing in her direction occasionally. She looked away whenever their eyes met, stole another peek when his back was turned.

She tried to focus on the task at hand. After all, she had things to do. She sent pictures of the lingerie to the various tourist boards. She thought about sending some to Ella, who’d wanted another update. “You have to let me know how you’re doing. Promise me that, Kate, or I swear to God I’m not letting you get on that plane in the first place,” she’d said as she saw Kate off at Sea-Tac Airport. But then she decided against it. Better to wait until she was sure where this was going first.

She logged into her Hotmail account. Not much in her in-box but advertisements offering to enlarge her nonexistent penis and, of course, another message from Ella: “It’s been raining here for days. We might as well be in Ireland!” Kate’s pulse quickened, as it always did when she checked the column of new mail lately, anticipating a message from Ethan that never came. She’d gone over the scenario in her mind, considering whether she’d want to hear from him—they’d broken up and reconciled before. Or did she just need to have the last word, to be the one to reject him, once and for all? If he did try to make contact, it would be by instant message, she supposed, sent on the impulse, the cursor flashing. That would be what he was reduced to—a miniature blinking rectangle, a door too small for her to walk through.

“Kate?”

“What?” She looked up. Sullivan had been saying her name. She quickly closed the screen, hands shaking.

“Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” she lied.

He raised an eyebrow but didn’t pursue the matter. “At least let me buy you an ale,” he said. “I owe you one after teasing you so mercilessly.”

“You don’t owe me anything, and besides, to be honest, I don’t like ale very much.”

“Are you sure you’re Irish?” He slid a glass across the table. “Why don’t you give it another try? Maybe you’ll change your mind. Besides, I could use the company, and I’m guessing you could too.”

How soon did she know she was going to sleep with him? Maybe from the beginning. She hadn’t meant to that day, but he was irresistible, presented her with the possibility of forgetfulness in another’s touch. He took the bicycle by the handlebars, intending to give her a ride to Bernie’s house in his van.

“I can manage, really.” She took hold of the seat. She wasn’t exactly drunk but had had enough—one glass was all it took, she had so little tolerance—to make the prospect of riding to Glenmara challenging if not impossible…and that of being with him more appealing.

“Are you kidding?” He laughed. “You can’t walk a straight line, much less cycle one.”

They engaged in a playful tug-of-war over the bicycle and the direction they were taking. She let him win.

He stood on the running board and lifted the bike up with one easy movement, fastening it into the rack atop the van, which also had slots for kayaks and surfboards. “There,” he said. “All set.”

The van smelled of clay and paint, the air moist and close. She felt the springs through the seats, but they didn’t bother her. Nothing bothered her. She was warm and relaxed. She hadn’t felt this way in weeks, maybe ever. He turned on the radio, hummed along to a song by the Frames. Kate hadn’t heard that particular tune before. A melody that would play in her head over and over in the next few days, reminding her of him, of that night.

He rolled down the windows, the wind in their hair as they sped along the lane. He drove with both hands on the wheel. She wondered if he’d always done that, or if an event in his past had made him more careful.

She touched him first, needing something from him, a temporary oblivion; perhaps that was what made her put a hand on his thigh. He might have asked her if she was sure, stopping the car along a deserted road. She didn’t remember if she replied or if she just let her lips meet his in answer. At first she was aware of the boxes of fragile vessels around them, the vases and bowls and plates he’d made, the few that remained unsold that day, the gannets shrieking in triumph as they dove for fish in the sea below, the wind buffeting the car, another change coming. Fair weather could only last so long. But at that moment, there was only him, with his breath on her cheek, his hand on her breast, his brown, brown eyes. Him.