As the doctors tested their dad, imaged his brain with the spanking new technology and drew his blood, Colleen and Hallie were left in a private waiting room where old magazines and acidic coffee kept their silence company. Time dragged, trying to pull itself through dread.

Dad had once told Colleen that time was different for the Celtic people—that they didn’t worry about not having enough of it or how to use it or if they wasted it. The quality of the experience, he’d said, determined the sense of time. She wanted to tell him that she understood what he meant now—because here, time stretched and warped. The past was compressed and became an amalgam of everything they’d ever done together; the present stretched past its limit, and the unknown future felt dark.

When Colleen had left Watersend on the afternoon of her wedding day, time had been her friend—she’d known that as the clock ticked forward, her pain would ease. She’d needed time to rush on, to swiftly turn into the future days when she wouldn’t hurt so badly. And it had happened. The last ten years hadn’t so much flown by as moved along in a frenetic need to get somewhere else. She’d gone from angry to ashamed to despondent and all the emotions in between. Where had she landed now? At avoidance? It had taken years for her heart to stop reaching for what she had lost but could not help loving still.

Now, God, now she wanted time to stand still, to stop stealing her dad’s memories, to allow them to be quiet in its paused breath.

But time was not her servant.

Colleen peeked over at the papers Hallie worked on diligently—this time a set list for the band. “I can’t believe we’re going to get away with this—with throwing him a party and he doesn’t know?”

“I think he knows.” Hallie smiled. “More than a few patrons have slipped up and made a vague mention, but he ignores them.”

“Maybe it’s too much. Maybe we should cancel the party and just focus on helping him.”

“Are you kidding?” Hallie pointed at all the papers. “This is going to be the highlight of his year. Of many years. What he does and doesn’t remember and know won’t take away from the party at all. It’s a celebration of his life.”

“Yes.” Colleen nodded, not wanting to argue. “Have you figured out the timeline?” She tried to keep her tone light and breezy.

“No. We’re going to have to ask him. Lena, it concerns the year before you were born, after Ireland. The dates on the photos don’t match the date of your birth or when they bought the pub.”

“So, this is about me?” Colleen’s eyebrows rose with her voice.