“We’ve missed it. That’s all right.”

The Irish winds pushed at the little car and Sadie leaned forward, as though the road itself were a map she couldn’t read—no, not as though. It was.

“How are you doing?” asked Jack.

“I’m fine!” she said in a cheerful voice. The voice of her mother, she realized, who was terrifyingly cheerful when things were dire. From her mother she’d also accepted, unthinkingly, the advice that you should always buy the full car insurance when driving on the wrong side of the road, so she had, thank God, since the car was already scratched down one door and soon would lose its passenger wing mirror.

The tractor slowed them down, but so did Sadie’s sense that in the dark Ireland was making itself up as it went along, Jack giving directions at the last minute, sometimes consulting a map and sometimes an old envelope upon which he’d written notes. Finally they arrived and pulled up the long drive. They could make out the dull shape of the dark house amid the trees and damp.

“It’s a mansion,” said Sadie.

“It’s a Georgian cube,” said Jack.

Outside the car the rain was friendlier than it had been on the car windows, over friendly, wet and insinuating, running its fingers through their hair and down the backs of their collars. They left their luggage and ran for the front door, which had a mammoth Dickensian knocker, ready to morph into somebody’s face, but whose? Jack shouldered the door open. Then they were in a dim foyer illuminated by a night-light: a black-and-white Vermeer floor and five doors. It felt like a puzzle. There was a lion behind one of those doors, Sadie was sure, and a happy future behind another, and a lifetime supply of Rice-A-Roni behind a third.

The Rice-A-Roni door opened to reveal a small woman holding a flashlight, dressed like a stable boy, or what Sadie imagined was a stable boy, corduroy pants tucked into rubber boots, a sweater that looked handed down by a careless person with a lot of money: brown cashmere with unraveling cuffs.

“This way,” she said in a stage whisper. “Hello!”

“Hello!” whispered Jack.

“We’ve put you in the snug, just for tonight,” she whispered. “Hope that’s all right. Tomorrow some family is shifting to the hotel downtown. You can take our room then.”

They followed her to the middle of the house, to a tiny room filled with a bed. “Air mattress, but it’s a good one. The electric blanket’s on. Poor things,” the woman said, “you must be shattered.”

“We are,” said Jack.

“We’ll meet properly in the morning,” the woman said. “Lenny, your hair’s hilarious. It’s quite big, isn’t it.”

He raised his hands and felt his head. “This is Sadie,” he said.