“Sounds like him. Where is he?”

“Oh, he and my husband are off in the back looking over some piece of machinery. My Colin loves pretending he knows something about farming and machinery, and Murphy loves letting him.”

Shannon smiled a little. “My father’s name was Colin.”

“Was it? You lost him recently.”

“Last year. Last summer.”

“And your mother this spring.” Instinctively Alice reached out to squeeze Shannon’s hand. “It’s a burden that nothing but living lightens.”

She began to rock again, and so did Shannon, so that the silence was broken only by the creak of the chairs and the chatter of birds.

“You enjoyed the ceili?”

This time the question had a flush heating Shannon’s cheeks. “Yes. I’ve never been to a party quite like it.”

“I miss having them since we’re in Cork. The city’s no place for a ceili, a real one.”

“Your husband’s a doctor there.”

“He is, yes. A fine doctor. And I’ll tell you true, when I moved there with him I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. No more rising at dawn to see to cows, no worrying if the crops would grow, or the tractor run.” She smiled, looking over the garden to the valley in the distance. “But parts of me miss it still. Even miss the worrying.”

“Maybe you’ll move back when he retires.”

“No, he’s a city man my Colin. You’d understand the lure of the city, living in New York.”

“Yes.” But she, too, was looking out over the valley, the shimmer of green hills, the living rise of them. “I like the crowds, and the rush. The noise. It took me days to get used to the quiet here, and the space.”

“Murphy’s a man for space, and for the feel of his own land under his feet.”

Shannon glanced back to see Alice studying her. “I know. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as . . . rooted.”

“And are you rooted, Shannon?”

“I’m comfortable in New York,” she said carefully. “We moved around a great deal when I was a child, so I don’t have the same kind of roots you mean.”

Alice nodded. “A mother worries about her children, no matter how tall they grow. I see Murphy’s in love with you.”

“Mrs. Brennan.” Shannon lifted her hands, let them fall. What could she say?

“You’re thinking what does this woman want me to do? How does she expect me to answer what wasn’t even a question?” A hint of a smile played around Alice’s mouth. “You don’t know me anymore than I know you, so I can’t tell by looking into your eyes what your feelings are for my son, or what you’ll do about them. Feelings there are, that’s plain. But I know Murphy. You’re not the woman I would have chosen for him, but a man chooses for himself.”

She glanced at Shannon and laughed. “Now I’ve insulted you.”

“No,” Shannon said stiffly, insulted. “You have a perfect right to speak your mind.”