“It didn’t—”

“It did.” Maggie cut Brianna off. “All of us knew it. With me gone there was no choice but to lean on you, to depend on you to see to the house, to her, to everything.”

“It was what I wanted, too.”

“He’d have given you the moon if he could.” Maggie laid a hand over Brianna’s. “You were his rose. It was how he spoke of you the day he died.”

“How did he die?” Shannon asked. It was hard to put the picture together, but she was beginning to see a man, flesh and blood, faults and virtues. “Was he ill?”

“He was, but none of us knew.” It was painful for Maggie, would always be to go back to that day. “I went looking for him, in O’Malley’s. I’d just sold my first piece of glass, in Ennis. We celebrated there. It was a huge day for both of us. It was cold, threatening rain, but he asked me to drive with him. We went out to Loop Head, as he often did.”

“Loop Head.” Shannon’s heart stuttered, clutched.

“It was his favorite of all places,” Maggie told her. “He liked to stand on the edge of Ireland, looking across the sea toward America.”

No, Shannon thought, not toward a place. Toward a person. “My mother told me they met there. They met at Loop Head.”

“Oh.” Brianna folded her hands and looked down at them. “Oh, poor Da. He must have seen her every time he went there.”

“It was her name he said, when he was dying.” Maggie didn’t mind the tears, and let them fall. “It was cold, bitter cold, and windy, with the rain just beginning to blow in. I was asking him why, why he’d stayed all these years in unhappiness. He tried to tell me, to explain that it takes two people to make a marriage good or bad. I didn’t want to hear it. And I wondered if there’d ever been anyone else in his life. And he told me he’d loved someone, and that it was like an arrow in the heart. That he’d had no right to her.”

After a shaky breath, she continued. “He staggered and went gray. The pain took him to his knees, and I was so scared, shouting at him to get up, and trying to pull him. He wanted a priest, but it was just the two of us alone there, in the rain. He was telling me to be strong, not to turn my back on my dreams. I couldn’t keep the rain off him. He said my name. Then he said Amanda. Just Amanda. And he died.”

Abruptly Maggie pushed the chair back and walked out of the room.

“It hurts her,” Brianna murmured. “She had no one to help, had to get Da into the truck by herself, drive him all the way back. I need to go to her.”

“No, let me. Please.” Without waiting for assent, Shannon stood and walked into the front room. Maggie was there, staring out the window.