himself. He carried sadness in his eyes that showed when he didn't know you were looking."
Shannon looked down at her hands. They were her mother's hands, narrow, long fingered. And she had Tom Concannon's eyes. What else, she wondered, had they given her?
"Would you do something for me, Murphy?"
"I'd do anything for you."
She knew it, but just then couldn't let herself think of it. "Would you take me to Loop Head?"
He rose, took their plates from the table. "You'll need your jacket, darling. The wind's brisk there."
She wondered how often Tom Concannon had taken this drive, along the narrow, twisting roads that cut through the roll of fields. She saw little stone sheds without roofs, a tethered goat that cropped at wild grass. There was a sign painted on the side of a white building warning her it was the last stop for beer until New York. It nearly made her smile.
When he parked the truck, she saw with relief that there was no one else who had come to see the cliffs and sea that morning. They were alone, with the wailing wind and the jagged rocks and the crash of surf. And the whisper of ghosts.
She walked with him down the ribbon of dirt that cut through the high grass and toward the edge of Ireland.
The wind lashed at her, a powerful thing blown over the dark water and spewing surf. The thunder of it was wonderful. To the north she could see the Cliffs of Mohr and the still misted Aran Islands.
"They met here." She linked her fingers with Murphy's when he took her hand. "My mother told me, the. day she went into the coma, she told me how they'd met here. It was raining and cold and he was alone. She fell in love with him here. She knew he was married, had children. She knew it was wrong. It was wrong, Murphy. I can't make myself feel differently."
"Don't you think they paid for it?"
"Yes, I think they paid. Over and over. But that doesn't-" She broke off, steadied her voice. "It was easier when I didn't really believe he loved her. When I
didn't, couldn't think of him as a good man, as a father who would have loved me if things had been different. I had one who did," she said fiercely. "And I won't ever forget that."
"You don't have to love the one less to open your heart a bit to the other."
"It makes me feel disloyal." She shook her head before he could speak. "It doesn't matter if it's not logical to feel that way. I do. I don't want Tom Concannon's eyes, I don't want his blood, I don't-" She pressed her hand to her mouth and let the tears come. "I lost something, Murphy, the day she told me. I lost the image, the illusion, that smooth quiet mirror that reflected my family. It's shattered, and now there are all these cracks and layers and overlapping edges when it's put back together."
"How do you see yourself in it now?"
"With different pieces scattered over the whole, and connections I can't turn away from. And I'm afraid I'll never get back what I had." Eyes desolate, she turned to him. "She lost her family because of me, faced the shame and fear of being alone. And it was because of me she married a man she didn't love." Shannon brushed at the tears with the back of her hand. "I know she did love him in time. A child knows that about her parents-you can feel it in the air, the same way you can feel an argument that adults think they're hiding from you. But she never forgot Tom Concannon, never closed him out of her heart, or forgot how she felt when she walked to these cliffs in the rain and saw him."
"And you wish she had."
"Yes, I wish she had. And I hate myself for wishing it. Because when I wish it I know I'm not thinking of her, or of my father. I'm thinking of me."
"You're so hard on yourself, Shannon. It hurts me to see it."
"No, I'm not. You have no idea the easy, the close-to-perfect life I had." She looked out to sea again, her hair streaming back from her face. "Parents who indulged me in nearly everything. Who trusted me, respected me every bit as much as they loved me. They wanted me to have the best and saw that I got it. Good homes in good neighborhoods, good schools. I never wanted for anything, emotionally or materially. They gave me a solid foundation and let me make my own choices on how to use it. Now I'm angry because there's a fault under the foundation. And the anger's like turning my back on everything they did for me."
"That's nonsense, and it's time you stopped it." Firm, he took her shoulders. "Was it anger that made you come here to where it began, knowing what it would cost you to face it? You know he died here, yet you came to face that, too, didn't you?"
"Yes. It hurts."
"I know, darling." He gathered her close. "I know it does. The heart has to break a little to make room."
"I want to understand." It was so comforting to rest her head on his shoulder. The tears didn't burn then, and the pang in her heart lessened. "It would be easier to accept when I understand why they all made the choices they made."
"I think you understand more than you know." He turned so that they faced the sea again, the crashing and endless symphony of wave against rock. "It's beautiful here. On the edge of the world." He kissed her hair. "One day you'll bring your paints and draw what you see, what you feel."
"I don't know if I could. So many ghosts."
"You drew the stones. There's no lack of ghosts there, and they're as close to you as these."
If it was a day for courage, she would stand on her own when she asked him. Shannon stepped back. "The man and white horse, the woman in the field. You see them."
"I do. Hazily when I was a boy, then clearer after I found the broach. Clearer yet since you stepped into Brianna's kitchen and looked at me with eyes I already knew."
"Tom Concannon's eyes."
"You know what I mean, Shannon. They were cool then. I'd seen them that way before. And I'd seen them hot, with anger and with lust. I'd seen them weeping and laughing. I'd seen them swimming with visions."
"I think," she said carefully, "that people can be susceptible to a place, an atmosphere. There are a number of studies-" She broke off when his eyes glinted at her. "All right, we'll toss out logic temporarily. I felt-feel- something at the dance. Something strange, and familiar. And I've had dreams-since the first night I came to Ireland."
"It unnerves you. It did me for a time."
"Yes, it unnerves me."
"There's a storm," he prompted, trying not to rush her.
"Sometimes. The lightning's cold, like a spear of ice against the sky, and the ground's hard with frost so you can hear the sound of the horse thundering across it before you see it and the rider."
"And the wind blows her hair while she waits. He sees her and his heart's beating as hard as the horse's hooves beat the ground."
Clutching her arms around her, Shannon turned away. It was easier to look at the sea. "Other times there's a fire in a small dark room. She's bathing his face with a cloth. He's delirious, burning with fever that's spread from his wounds."
"He knows he's dying," Murphy said quietly. "All he has to hold him to life is her hand, and the scent of her, the sound of her voice as she soothes him."
"But he doesn't die." Shannon took a long breath. "I've seen them making love, by the fire, in the dance. It's like watching and being taken at the same time. I'll wake up hot and shaky and aching for you." She turned to him then, and he saw a look he'd seen before in her eyes, the smoldering fury of it. "I don't want this."
"Tell me what I did, to turn your heart against me."