“I’d like that.” Colleen’s heart raced and she took a step closer.

“When your mum was a little girl, she wanted to travel the world. She kept a globe in her bedroom and when I’d come to see her da, my uncle, she would bring it out to me. She would spin it and spin it, pointing to the places she meant to one day visit. When her parents died together in that accident, she knew that those plans were to be put aside, that she must run the pub, possibly for a long while. And then she met your da. We here in town weren’t so happy at first, thinking she’d run off to the States with this American. But she didn’t. Your da, he became one of us quick as a wink. He did his best to learn some Gaelic and most of all he honored and loved your mum. When she discovered she was to have you, she told me, ‘This is the one who will see the world.’”

Colleen’s breath caught in her chest and her hands flew to cover her mouth as a cry threatened to erupt. Light rain began again, misting them both.

“Did I go making you upset? I didn’t mean to now.” Sully took her good hand in his and kissed her cheek. “That story was meant to make you happy.”

“Sometimes I cry when I’m happy,” Colleen said and squeezed his hand.

Sully nodded. “Aye, I think the Irish know a thing or two about that.”

Colleen allowed the misty rain to settle on her face, on her hair and hands. “She never left here, though. This was her home. It was where she was born, and where she died.”

“It was.” Sully nodded. “Which means that in many ways it is also your home. Although you must find your own place to settle and live because we all know that home must be a place that shelters your life.”

“A place that shelters your life.” Colleen repeated the words and stared at the man for a long while with the bay behind him, the soft rain and the whitewashed thatch-roof cottages surrounding them.

“I will see you tomorrow, then?” Colleen asked. “I think I’d like to stay awhile in this place and hear some more stories about my mom.”

“Indeed.” Sully bowed and began to amble along the sidewalk for the last block to Colleen’s cottage.

The clouds above Galway Bay puckered, tumbling toward each other and away. The whip and whistle of the wind gathered at the edges of the night and blew Colleen’s hair around her face, into her eyes and the corner of her lips, carrying the past and the future all together.

Epilogue

The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.

Meghan O’Rourke, The Long Goodbye