It wasn’t something Shannon wanted to hear, and certainly nothing she chose to care about. She picked up her cup. “Then why did they stay married?”

“There’s a complicated business,” Brianna mused. “Church, children. Habit even. My mother’s resentment for him was great—and to be fair, she had some reason. He could never hold on to his money, nor had he any skill in the making of it. Money and what it buys was—is—important to her. She had a career in singing, and an ambition when she met him. She never wanted to settle for a house and a little piece of land. But there was a flash you could say between them. The flash became Maggie.”

“I see.” It appeared she and her half sister had more in common than Shannon had realized. “He made a habit of being careless with sex.”

Brianna’s eyes went hot and sharp, a phenomenon that had Shannon staring in fascination. “You have no right to say that. No, even you have no right, for you didn’t know him. He was a man of great kindness, and great heart. For more than twenty years he put his own dreams behind him to raise his children. He loved Maggie as much as any father could love any child. It was my mother who blamed him, and Maggie, for the life she found herself faced with. She lay with him to make me out of duty. Duty to the Church first. I can’t think of a colder bed for a man to come to.”

“You can’t know what was between them before you were born,” Shannon interrupted.

“I know very well. She told me herself. I was her penance for her sin. Her reparation. And after she knew she was carrying me, there was no need to be his wife beyond the bedroom door.”

Shannon shook her head. It had to be as humiliating for Brianna to speak of such matters as it was for her to hear it. Yet Brianna didn’t look humiliated, she noted. Brianna looked coldly furious. “I’m sorry. It’s almost impossible for me to understand why two people would stay together under those conditions.”

“This isn’t America. ’Tis Ireland, and more than twenty years ago in Ireland. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand there was pain in this house. Some of it Da brought on himself, there’s no denying that. But there’s a bitterness in my mother, and something inside her makes her cleave to it. If she had known, even suspected that he’d found happiness and love with another, she’d have driven him into the ground with it. She couldn’t have stopped herself, nor seen a reason to.”

“And now she’ll have to know.”

“Now she’ll have to know,” Brianna agreed. “She’ll see you as a slap. And she’ll try to hurt you.”

“She can’t hurt me. I’m sorry if it seems callous to you, but her feelings and her way of displaying them just don’t matter to me.”

“That may be true.” Brianna took a long breath. “She’s better, more content than she used to be. We’ve set her up in her own house, near to Ennis. It’s more what makes her happy. We found a wonderful woman to live with her. Lottie’s a retired nurse—which comes in handy as Mother sees herself suffering from all manner of illnesses. The grandchildren have mellowed her a bit, too. Though she doesn’t like to show it.”