“Then you figure it out. You do it.” Hallie threw her now empty hands in the air. “I have enough crap to deal with. This is making me crazy.”

“Enough crap?” Shane asked. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing.” Hallie slumped onto a kitchen chair. “I just mean this.” She took in a long breath to sustain whatever it was she wanted to say. “Look at all we must deal with. And I have two kids to take care of. Speaking of, I’m late. They get out at noon today from summer camp. I have to go . . .”

Colleen stared at her sister, who was obviously spent. It might have been years since she’d looked carefully at Hallie, but she knew the signs. They’d shared a bedroom for eighteen years, along with a house and a life and all their secrets. Colleen knew exhaustion when she saw it.

“Hallie.” Colleen said her name gently.

Hallie looked up. “Yes?”

Colleen faltered. What was she supposed to say now? Something kind? Ask her sister what was really wrong? What was really draining the life out of her face and eyes? She couldn’t. What if the answer was, You, Lena. You are doing this to me.

“Nothing.” Colleen turned away. “This is tough for all of us. We’ll get through it.”

As an alarm sounded on Hallie’s cell, she departed to pick up her children and Shane headed downstairs to the pub. Colleen stood in front of Hallie’s lopsided timeline. She had never once thought of her dad’s life as a straight arrow from birth until now, as a bullet point list of when and how each event occurred. Instead, she’d thought of how he’d lived his life, the relationships he’d formed and all that he’d given. But now she focused on the notes, and on the dates.

In 1979 Gavin Donohue graduated from college and went to Ireland to travel for several months. He fell in love with a pub called O’Shea’s and decided he wanted to own one like it at home. After working in O’Shea’s he traveled briefly around the country and returned to South Carolina with myths and stories and a grand love of the Emerald Isle, along with a song he’d never let go of—“The Lark in the Clear Air.”

In 1980, right after he returned from Ireland, he’d married Elizabeth in Richmond, Virginia, on May fifth—in a civil ceremony at the courthouse instead of in a fancy church wedding, so that they could use their money for down payments on a house on the May River and a pub that would be their livelihood. They moved to Watersend and began their life together.

In March 1981 Colleen was born in Watersend, which meant her parents had been married for ten months. All perfectly respectable.

And all so simple, until it wasn’t.