Colleen stood next to him. “Dad, it’s a great house. And a great home.”

His gaze fell to hers. “It is, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I should come more often. I love it here. The way the doors creak and the metal roof sings in the rain. I love the way the record player still roosts in the kitchen with a pile of LPs. I love the way the attic fan whirs me to sleep. I love . . .”

Her dad smiled, but sadly, as if his mouth wanted to both grin and frown. “You must miss it. I think of that often. How very much you must miss it. If I’d have left—if I’d ever left this world we built from scratch, I think a part of me would have died.”

“But, Dad, you didn’t grow up here. You set off and built your own life. You came here—you and Mother—and started your lives. Bought the pub. Had a family. It didn’t kill you to move from Richmond. It won’t kill me to build a new life also.”

“I had to leave, Colleen. You didn’t.”

“You had to?” Her mind raced in tangles of its own, reaching for something new it didn’t yet understand, something unfamiliar.

“As the Irish say, if there is a way into the wood, there is a way out.”

“Dad.” She said his name on an exhale. “Will you ever stop saying that? Saying, ‘As the Irish say.’”

“I hope not.”

And the hope, so simply stated, was suddenly as important as any wish uttered in that small piney kitchen with the electric stove and the white-painted cabinets and the childhood initials etched with a pocketknife into the wooden table, initials that had earned each of them a time-out in their rooms.

Colleen tamped down the sadness that could quickly turn to grief and opened the old refrigerator—a white Kenmore with magnets of every variety stuck to its door. The anthropology of the family could be charted in those magnets: inspirational quotes from her mother’s collection; Irish shamrocks and leprechauns; names and phone numbers of house services. Then there were the faded photos of their childhood faces in class pictures and on outdoor excursions. Brighter photos of Rose and Sadie. Attached behind the magnets were notices, notes and invitations to parties and weddings that had long since passed. “Dad,” she said, “we could probably take some of these down.”

“They keep me company,” he said with a grin. “I like to see all those names and pictures up there.”

“That’s sweet.” She peered inside, hoping to find enough to assemble a small lunch, and instead found a refrigerator fully stocked. “Dad!” She turned to him. “You said there wasn’t any food.”

“I did?” He glanced inside.

“Yes, you did.”

“Well, looks like Ms. Boone has been here.”