She took her time with her own coffee. “I started it before I saw Talamh. Or, before I came back. Before I remembered. I wrote the start before that.”
“Because your heart remembered.”
She looked at him then. “I think it did.”
“The woman you have at the center of it, or it seems to me she’s the center of it. She’s not you.”
“No?” Intrigued, she still left the question in the air as she went to the door. She wanted the morning, the bay, the mists, and the tender beginning of light.
“She’s not, and I thought you might make her so, as why not, after all. But she’s not.”
He followed her outside, where the sun barely winked awake in the east and the mists rose over the water like shadows.
“She’s stronger of will than you were then, at the start of things. And angry with it. She’s younger, I think, still forming. Searching, as you were, but already aware of her powers. Or what she sees of them, feels of them. The one you have teaching her, that’s not Marg, or me for that matter, but an old, cynical one. I like him.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s seen much and learned more. I like that he teaches her not because he wants to but because she pulls at what he was, what he feels he’s lost, and what he may still become.”
She took a slow sip of coffee. “It matters that you understand that, you saw that in them both.”
“I’m not an eejit, after all. It’s right there in the words.”
“I wanted it to be.”
“And sure it is. Stop fretting about it. It’s annoying.”
She had to laugh again. “It’s different. For you, as much weight as you carry, there’s dark and light, right and wrong, what is and what can’t be. What I do, with stories? It’s subjective. And it matters, a lot to me, that you liked what you read.”
He circled his neck on his shoulders. “Sure I’ll be paying for it, as I didn’t get near enough sleep. You’ve a gift, Breen, that’s the truth of it. Embrace it, respect it, as you do the craft.”
She took another slow sip of coffee. “I’m working on it.”
“You’ll go soon, to your Philadelphia and New York.”
“Soon. Unless you tell me I’m needed.”
“I think you’ll go, and you’ll come back. You’ll see your family, as is right. You’ll do the business of your work, which is right, then you’ll come back.”
“I don’t suppose you could go with us.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry for it.”
“No, don’t be. I understand.”
“I am sorry. I liked your Sally, and his place, and the music. They serve good beer. If I could take a day away for that, with you, I would.”
She watched Bollocks come out of the water and shake so drops scattered.
“He liked you.”
“I know Brian would like, very much, to meet Marco’s family—Sally, I mean, and the one he loves.”
“Derrick.”
“Aye.” He looked down at her. “I would give him this if I could, but the time isn’t right.”
“Understood, completely. I’m going to see my mother while I’m there.”