The woman playing the fiddle was young and lithe, dark curls falling over her left shoulder and the fiddle propped on her right. Her face was half-hidden behind the fall of her hair, behind the curls alive with her every movement. You saw her lips, parted in mourning for the sadness to escape. Her elbow flew up and down as her hand drew the bow across the strings.

You sat in the only free chair in the pub and, in reverence and awe, asked the man next to you, “What is her name?”

“Why you wantin’ to know?” he asked in his Irish brogue, his eyes screwed tight in distrust and grief.

“Her music is so lonesome and beautiful. I wonder who she is.”

“It’s her mum and da that have passed. It was the last of her immediate family.”

You looked at that woman who had lost so much and you wanted to save her from all tragedy and pain. You wanted to take that fiddle from her hands and take her in your arms. You didn’t understand why; you had never seen her before that moment when you absently walked into a pub for a pint of Guinness. But who knows when a life will change? Who knows when a decision alters the course of all other decisions?

When she was finished, you went straight to her and introduced yourself: Gavin Donohue from America.

You believed you would be there for only three more months, in that land of brilliant emerald and lush gold. You believed you’d tour, drink dark beer and research your family’s heritage before returning to the life and the high school sweetheart waiting for you at home. But that’s not what destiny had planned for you.

Within weeks, you canceled your flight home and you settled in County Clare with Colleen O’Shea. Gradually she told you of her homeland’s history, its people, its music and its mythology. She fell in love with you as you fell in love with her, as the bow flitted across the fiddle strings and her voice rang out clear and resonant.

There was the awful pain of explaining this turn of events to Elizabeth, whom you loved and had promised to return to although you weren’t yet engaged. You felt grief for what you left behind; you felt pain for Elizabeth, and yet you understood that you were answering a call to love in a way you never had before.