“You’ve never been a coward.”

“Oh, but I was,” Amanda said softly. “I was. My parents were lace-curtain Irish, righteous as three popes. Their biggest disappointment—more for reasons of prestige than religion—was that none of their children had the calling.”

“But you were an only child,” Shannon interrupted.

“One of the truths I broke. I told you I had no family, let you believe there was no one. But I had two brothers and a sister, and not a word has there been between us since before you were born.”

“But why—” Shannon caught herself. “I’m sorry. Go on.”

“You were always a good listener. Your father taught you that.” She paused a moment, thinking of Colin, praying that what she was about to do was right for all of them. “We weren’t a close family, Shannon. There was a . . . a stiffness in our house, a rigidness of rules and manners. It was over fierce objections that I left home to travel to Ireland with Kate. But we went, as excited as schoolgirls on a picnic. To Dublin first. Then on, following our maps and our noses. I felt free for the first time in my life.”

It was so easy to bring it all back, Amanda realized. Even after all these years that she’d suppressed those memories, they could swim back now, as clear and pure as water. Kate’s giggling laugh, the cough of the tiny car they’d rented, the wrong turns and the right ones they’d made.

And her first awed look of the sweep of hills, the spear of cliffs of the west. The sense of coming home she’d never expected, and had never felt again.

“We wanted to see all we could see, and when we’d reached the west, we found a charming inn that overlooked the River Shannon. We settled there, decided we could make it a sort of base while we drove here and there on day trips. The Cliffs of Mohr, Galway, the beach at Ballybunnion, and all the little fascinating places you find off the roads where you least expect them.”

She looked at her daughter then, and her eyes were sharp and bright. “Oh, I wish you would go there, see, feel for yourself the magic of the place, the sea spewing like thunder up on the cliffs, the green of the fields, the way the air feels when it’s raining so soft and gentle—or when the wind blows hard from the Atlantic. And the light, it’s like a pearl, just brushed with gold.”

Here was love, Shannon thought, puzzled, and a longing she’d never suspected. “But you never went back.”

“No.” Amanda sighed. “I never went back. Do you ever wonder, darling, how it is that a person can plan things so carefully, all but see how things will be the next day, and the next, then some small something happens, some seemingly insignificant something, and the pattern shifts. It’s never quite the same again.”

It wasn’t a question so much as a statement. So Shannon simply waited, wondering what small something had changed her mother’s pattern.

The pain was trying to creep back, cunningly. Amanda closed her eyes a moment, concentrating on beating it. She would hold it off, she promised herself, until she had finished what she’d begun.

“One morning—it was late summer now and the rain came and went, fitful—Kate was feeling poorly. She decided to stay in, rest in bed for the day, read a bit and pamper herself. I was restless, a feeling in me that there were places I had to go. So I took the car, and I drove. Without planning it, I took myself to Loop Head. I could hear the waves crashing as I got out of the car and walked toward the cliffs. The wind was blowing, humming through the grass. I could smell the ocean, and the rain. There was a power there, drumming in the air even as the surf drummed on the rocks.

“I saw a man,” she continued, slowly now, “standing where the land fell away to the sea. He was looking out over the water, into the rain—west toward America. There was no one else but him, hunched in his wet jacket, a dripping cap low over his eyes. He turned, as if he’d only been waiting for me, and he smiled.”

Suddenly Shannon wanted to stand, to tell her mother it was time to stop, to rest, to do anything but continue. Her hands had curled themselves into fists without her being aware. There was a larger, tighter one lodged in her stomach.

“He wasn’t young,” Amanda said softly. “But he was handsome. There was something so sad, so lost in his eyes. He smiled and said good morning, and what a fine day it was as the rain beat on our head and the wind slapped our faces. I laughed, for somehow it was a fine day. And though I’d grown used to the music of the brogue of western Ireland, his voice was so charming, I knew I could go on listening to it for hours. So we stood there and talked, about my travels, about America. He was a farmer, he said. A bad one, and he was sorry for that as he had two baby daughters to provide for. But there was no sadness in his face when he spoke of them. It lit. His Maggie Mae and Brie, he called them. And about his wife, he said little.

“The sun came out,” Amanda said with a sigh. “It came out slow and lovely as we stood there, sort of slipping through the clouds in little streams of gold. We walked along the narrow paths, talking, as if we’d known each other all our lives. And I fell in love with him on the high, thundering cliffs. It should have frightened me.” She glanced at Shannon, tentatively reached out a hand. “It did shame me, for he was a married man with children. But I thought it was only me who felt it, and how much sin can there be in the soul of an old maid dazzled by a handsome man in one morning?”

It was with relief she felt her daughter’s fingers twine with hers. “But it wasn’t only me who’d felt it. We saw each other again, oh, innocently enough. At a pub, back on the cliffs, and once he took both me and Kate to a little fair outside of Ennis. It couldn’t stay innocent. We weren’t children, either of us, and what we felt for each other was so huge, so important, and you must believe me, so right. Kate knew—anyone who looked at us could have seen it—and she talked to me as a friend would. But I loved him, and I’d never been so happy as when he was with me. Never once did he make promises. Dreams we had, but there were no promises between us. He was bound to his wife who had no love for him, and to the children he adored.”

She moistened her dry lips, took another sip from the straw when Shannon wordlessly offered the glass. Amanda paused again, for it would be harder now.

“I knew what I was doing, Shannon, indeed it was more my doing than his when we became lovers. He was the first man to touch me, and when he did, at last, it was with such gentleness, such care, such love, that we wept together afterward. For we knew we’d found each other too late, and it was hopeless.