“I just felt so helpless. You know what the worst part for me was? It was hearing you stop realizing how wonderful you are,” Sam said.

“What?” Marisa asked, shocked.

Sam blinked hard, her green eyes glittering. “I just watched you giving in so much to him,” she said. “You were such a star in nursing school. Who, in our whole class, would volunteer every spare minute she had, to vaccinate little kids in the worst sections of town? My sister.”

Marisa listened, spellbound.

“Who would practice her fiddle every night, after her labs and homework were done, just so she could put on a fabulously terrific performance Friday and Saturday nights—to make sure the tip jar overflowed, so we could pay the next semester's tuition? My sister.”

“Oh, Sam,” Marisa said.

“You played like an angel, and I'm not talking fallen,” Sam said. “You were never a fallen angel—that was me. I rode my big sister's coattails all through nursing school. I was the one with too many boyfriends, not enough A's.”

“No, Sam,” Marisa said. “You were always wonderful. You have the most compassionate heart I know. That's what makes you such a great nurse . . . and sister, and aunt.”

“Well, I don't think the family compassion has ever been an issue,” Sam said. “You had love to spare with him. You have a solid-gold heart, and he cashed in.”

Marisa chuckled, wiping away tears as she reached for a pen. “That's a great line,” she said. “I think we could sell it in Nashville. . . .”

“‘She had a solid-gold heart,'” Sam sang, making up a tune on the fiddle as she went along.

“‘And he cashed in,'” Marisa harmonized.

“‘He was a solid-gold jerk,'” Sam continued.

“‘With a heart of tin,'” Marisa sang.

Sam cracked up. They improvised the music, playing together as if they'd never stopped. The notes flew out of their fiddles, their rhythm was suddenly in sync, their toes tapped time, and Marisa knew that everything was going to be okay. The sisters had always worked out their lives in music. They had started off more than one show worried about exams, or a patient, or so many other things, and ended the night toasting and hugging and dancing with joy.

It had always been that way, and it was still. They ranged from their brand-new, just-written song straight into “Galway Lasses,” and from there into “Geese in the Bog.” Then for something sweeter, “Maudabawn Chapel.”

“I wrote a new song,” Marisa said eventually.

“Really?”

“Yep. It's called ‘Storm Tossed.'”

“A little autobiographical?” Sam asked, grinning.

“Slightly,” Marisa said, glancing out the door again, looking for Patrick. “It's pretty easy—it's in G.”

“Ooh,” Sam said, after listening to the first few bars. “Pretty. Love that E minor.”

“Heartstrings, right?” Marisa asked.

“Oh yeah.”