Colleen stared at him then with new eyes. The fine smile, the pale skin and the jaunty pose. “So am I,” she said. “I’m an O’Shea.”

She hadn’t, until that moment, thought this truth in words. She was, though. She was an O’Shea.

“Well, that is grand.” He smiled and slapped his hand on his thigh. “You’ll be finding quite a number of us here. Too many to count. Have you been doing that ancestry tree all the Americans are doing to find your ancestors?”

“No. My mother, well, I thought the family didn’t own the pub anymore. I thought . . .” Although this stranger might be somehow related by blood, Colleen would not yet share her full story with him. Dare she mention her mother’s name? “I thought Colleen O’Shea was the last one of the family to own it and when she passed . . .”

“God rest her beautiful soul.” The man crossed himself and closed his eyes for a moment before gazing again at Colleen. “Aye, you’d be right about that. She was the last direct descendant, but her second cousin Shawn swooped in to save it after she passed on. And God bless him for that.” The man smiled. “My name is Sully.”

“Nice to meet you, Sully.” She held out her hand. “Colleen.”

The man shook her hand and held to it, his fingers entwined in hers. “Well, well, you are Colleen, aren’t you?”

“You mean . . . ?” She clung to his hand and he to hers.

“Well, here you are now. This is the land where stories come alive. And you, Colleen O’Shea, have always been part of a love story.” He released her hand and picked up his guitar case with a smile so wide Colleen wondered if it hurt his cheeks.

“A love story?”

“Well, yes, you are. Welcome home. Tonight shall be grand.” And with that, he was gone, disappearing around the back of the pub.

She gazed toward the water and realized that if she were to put in one of the sailboats moored to the concrete dock a few hundred yards away, and steer it west and slightly south, she could eventually land at her own dock in Watersend. She would find herself again at the water’s edge in her backyard with the tilting tree house and the one-story home where her sister and nieces now lived, where her childhood had unfolded and where a man named Beckett had told her that he just might be falling in love, if he allowed himself, or if she allowed him to do so.

Colleen gripped the suitcase handle and began to walk the few blocks to her rented cottage, the wheels popping on the cobblestones and uneven sidewalk.

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