For the second photo, of Gavin standing in front of a schoolroom blackboard with high school history teacher Mr. Tuttle, she’d been able to find and speak to the man who’d instilled in Gavin his love of Ireland’s past and its poetry. Writing the mini stories came quickly and easily to Colleen, and with each phone call she’d felt she knew her dad a bit better, loved him a lot more. Why did children find it so hard to accept that their parents’ lives began well before their children were born? Now, discovering Dad before he was Dad felt both jolting and exciting, as if she were learning even more about her own life.

This would be Colleen’s third night at home, and she was well into accomplishing her tasks for Shane. Somehow she’d managed to avoid Hallie and the girls for a full twenty-four hours, but that wasn’t going to last but a few more minutes.

The aroma of peach cobbler filled the house. This was the one dish Colleen knew how to make and each time she baked it, she felt calm and right with the world. Sometimes she baked it and never ate a bite, giving it to a neighbor or friend. Everything else in the kitchen was a mystery, her every attempt to follow the simplest recipe, with only four ingredients, becoming an inevitable failure. She was reminded of chemistry class when she blew up the Bunsen burner and was sent to the principal’s office for “not following directions.”

Her dad had picked her up from high school that afternoon and told the principal, “Yes, that might be the theme of her life: not following directions.”

When she’d slid into the car, the edges of her hair singed and smelling like they did the morning after a campfire, she’d started to cry. “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Little lark, why would I want a daughter who always follows directions? As the Irish say, bless your little Irish heart and every other Irish part.”

“Dad!”

“That includes your clumsy need to forge your own path.”

Colleen had known that if it had been any of her other friends, they would have been in deep trouble with their dads. But not hers; he turned the worst of her into a positive, into another small aspect of his daughter to be celebrated and honored.