“But,” she said to the one sister, Maury, her hair feathered with gray and piled high in a bun that was springing loose from its bounds. “But there would have been no great love and there would have been no me.”

“Well,” said the second sister, Elana, younger but wearing the same hairstyle, her lipstick too orange and too thick, “that very well might be true, but we’d have our best friend and we’d have never known about you at all.”

Colleen gripped the edges of the bar and nodded at the sisters, feeling the sink of despair, of the irreversible despair, of death. “My dad is gone now, too,” she said. “And I’m so sorry you lost your best friend, my mom.”

They seemed to soften but not enough to answer. They turned in unison and bowed their heads close together as if discussing a plan of action. Colleen turned away and took the few steps toward the left side of the L-shaped bar, where she could see the sisters’ faces as they looked at only each other. Loss and time dug long trenches in every life, and memories, regrets and pain filled in the deep furrows. The sisters had filled their troughs with bitterness, and Colleen felt, quickly, out of the corner of her heart, that she had a choice, that they all had a choice of how to fill those long empty places—with forgiveness, with bitterness, with rage or with, above all, love. She’d made some wrong choices and some right, if there was any right or wrong about it all. She would choose differently if she had the chance to rewind, but she was here now, in a land across the sea where she could begin again. Choose again.

The pub was overflowing with life, and every life its own universe of joy and pain, of love and loss. This was a mirror to South Carolina. This was the same and it was different and it was her dad and mom’s pub, and it was where she began.

Soon, Colleen showed off her prowess at the Guinness tap and bowed at the applause. When the owner, a second cousin named Millie Walsh, closed the bar hours later, Colleen was met at the front door by Sully, who offered to walk with her to her rented room.

As they ambled side by side in the darkness, a sliver of moon blurry beneath the cloud cover, he asked, “Was that to your liking?”

“If it wasn’t, there would be something wrong with me, I believe.” Colleen laughed. Jet lag, whiskey and beer made her feel as though she were half floating above the sidewalk.

He, too, laughed and then stopped so that Colleen did also, turning to face him a block from her cottage. The streetlight lit his face, the furrows of his wrinkles casting shadows across his smile. “May I tell you a story about your mum?”