Obliging, Brianna put Kayla, carrier and all, atop the bar. “She’s wearing the bonnet your missus brought by, Tim.”

“That’s a sweet one.” He clucked Kayla under the chin with a thick finger. “The image of you she is, Brianna.”

“I had something to do with it,” Gray put in as people began to crowd around the baby.

“Sure and you did,” Tim agreed. “But the good Lord in his wisdom overlooked that and gave the lass her mother’s angel face. Will you have a pint, Gray?”

“I will, of Guinness. What’ll you have, Shannon?”

She looked at the beer Tim O’Malley finished drawing. “Something smaller than that.”

“A pint and a glass,” Gray ordered. “And a soft drink for the new mother.”

“Shannon, this is Tim O’Malley building your Guinness.” Brianna laid a hand on Shannon’s shoulder. “Tim, this is my . . . guest, Shannon Bodine from New York City.”

“New York City.” With his hands moving with the ease and automation of long experience, Tim beamed into Shannon’s face. “I’ve cousins to spare in New York City. You don’t happen to be knowing Francis O’Malley, the butcher.”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Bodine.” A man on the stool beside Shannon took a deep, considering drag from his cigarette, blew out smoke with a thoughtful air. “I knew a Katherine Bodine from Kilkelly some years back. Pretty as fresh milk was she. Kin to you, maybe?”

Shannon gave him an uncertain smile. “Not that I know of.”

“It’s Shannon’s first trip to Ireland,” Brianna explained. There were nods of understanding all around.

“I knew Bodines from Dublin City.” A man at the end of the bar spoke in a voice cracked with age. “Four brothers who’d sooner fight than spit. The Mad Bodines we called them, and every man son of them ran off and joined the IRA. That’d be back in . . . thirty-seven.”

“Thirty-five,” the woman beside him corrected and winked at Shannon out of a face seamed with lines. “I went out walking a time or two with Paddy Bodine, and Johnny split his lip over it.”

“A man’s got to protect what’s his.” Old John Conroy took his wife’s hand and gave it a bony squeeze. “There was no prettier lass in Dublin than Nell O’Brian. And now she’s mine.”

Shannon smiled into the beer Gray handed her. The couple were ninety if they were a day, she was sure, and they were holding hands and flirting with each other as if they were newlyweds.

“Let me have that baby.” A woman came out of the room behind the bar, wiping her hands on her apron. “Go, get yourself a table,” she said, gesturing Brianna aside. “I’m taking her back with me so I can spoil her for an hour.”

Knowing any protest was useless, Brianna introduced Shannon to Tim’s wife and watched the woman bundle Kayla off. “We might as well sit then. She won’t let me have the baby back until we leave.”