“Mom, I understand. But there’s still hope. There’s always hope.”

“It’s nothing to do with this,” she said, lifting a hand to encompass the temporary sickroom. “It’s from before, darling, long before. When I went with a friend to visit Ireland and stayed in County Clare.”

“I never knew you’d been to Ireland.” It struck Shannon as odd to think of it. “All the traveling we did, I always wondered why we never went there, with you and Dad both having Irish roots. And I’ve always felt this—connection, this odd sort of pull.”

“Have you?” Amanda said softly.

“It’s hard to explain,” Shannon murmured. Feeling foolish, for she wasn’t a woman to speak of dreams, she smiled. “I’ve always told myself, if I ever took time for a long vacation, that’s where I’d go. But with the promotion and the new account—” She shrugged off the idea of an indulgence. “Anyway, I remember, whenever I brought up going to Ireland, you’d shake your head and say there were so many other places to see.”

“I couldn’t bear to go back, and your father understood.” Amanda pressed her lips together, studying her daughter’s face. “Will you stay here beside me and listen? And oh, please, please, try to understand?”

There was a new and fresh frisson of fear creeping up Shannon’s spine. What could be worse than death? she wondered. And why was she so afraid to hear it?

But she sat, keeping her mother’s hand in hers. “You’re upset,” she began. “You know how important it is for you to keep calm.”

“And use productive imagery,” Amanda said with a hint of smile.

“It can work. Mind over matter. So much of what I’ve been reading—”

“I know.” Even the wisp of a smile was gone now. “When I was a few years older than you, I traveled with a good friend—her name was Kathleen Reilly—to Ireland. It was a grand adventure for us. We were grown women, but we had both come from strict families. So strict, so sure, that I was more than thirty before I had the gumption to make such a move.”

She turned her head so that she could watch Shannon’s face as she spoke. “You wouldn’t understand that. You’ve always been sure of yourself, and brave. But when I was your age, I hadn’t even begun to struggle my way out of cowardice.”

“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.”