Shane raised his mug in a toast to her. “Okay, I’m going to jump in the shower. If Hallie gets here before I’m out, be nice.” He winked at her before shutting the bathroom door.

When Colleen had awoken that morning, listening to the sounds of her dad in the kitchen preparing his one poached egg and two pieces of bacon, she’d promised herself she would not react to Hallie, not get caught up in the maelstrom of the past. But promising and doing were, of course, not the same damn thing. Then she’d entered the family kitchen to greet her dad, sit with him while he ate and waited for the sheriff, Bob Macken, to come pick him up to go fishing. Shane had worked out a complicated but crafty system of friends who stopped by every day to check on Gavin, eat lunch with him or take him out until it was time to go to the pub.

As the waterfall sound of the shower came muffled through the bathroom door, Colleen poked around her brother’s apartment. This had once been a room for rent—a cheap bed and bath with a storage room attached. But Shane had fashioned the space into a home. He’d salvaged old hardwood floors from a demolished bank—thick pine with knots as wide as fists. The kitchen cabinets, which he’d found in a dumpster, had been pulled from a remodeled house. She remembered the Christmas when he was covered in sawdust from stripping the paint to expose the beautiful pine underneath.

The place was small—an L-shaped kitchen and an oval wooden breakfast table open to a square area with one large denim-slipcovered couch, a pine trunk as a coffee table and two easy chairs. A TV hung on the far wall between two windows whose glass panes were divided by white-painted mullions.

On the east-facing side wall an old stained glass panel, left from when the pub was called McNally’s, hung from a chain over another window. Sunlight slanted through the McNally family crest, creating puddles of red and green and yellow on Shane’s hardwood floors and up the far wall.

She wandered back to the kitchen table and sat to leaf through the photos. From a glassine envelope she took out two images: Dad as a child standing with an unknown man in a military uniform; then Dad as a young man in a dark suit, sitting on a stone wall alone. Behind was a field of green and undulating hills—his time in Ireland after college, she surmised. Why had Shane gathered all of these photos? For a collage to be displayed at the party?

Shane emerged from the bathroom wearing worn khakis and a white T-shirt, his wet hair making dark marks on each shoulder. “You approve of the new place?” he asked and spread his hands wide.

“You’ve done an amazing job with this apartment, little brother.”