“Ma thinks I’m home to stay. I’ve no brothers, as you know, so she’s expecting me to stay and run the farm. But ’tis not the life for me, Nora. You’ve been in America; you understand how it changes you.”

“Aye, that I do.”

I thought for a minute about how hard I’d tried to copy the toffs’ table manners so as to impress everybody in New York, especially Sinclair. I’d even tried to get rid of my accent and speak more politely. And where had it got me? Landed back in Ireland! Well, at least here I didn’t need to pretend I was somebody I wasn’t.

“I’m looking for a man to manage things, then I’ll be away back to New York. But I can’t leave Ma until that’s sorted out.”

I smiled. “Is it a girl you’ve got there?”

He blushed, and I saw a glimpse of the Dom I’d known.

“Ma said you saw Delia in New York,” I said.

We both knew I was fishing for information. Dom knew more than he’d told Ma, I was sure of that. He nodded but said nothing.

“Ma said you met her at a dance, and she looked well. But she wasn’t working at the house she was sent to. The owners wrote to Father McGinty and said she never showed her face. Did she say where she’d gone?”

Dom shook his head. “No.”

I knew he was hiding something, but I decided not to press him. I didn’t want to spoil the moment by getting into an argument. It sounded like he’d be home for a while, so there’d be plenty of time for that conversation, if I ever decided I wanted to know. Besides, what Delia was up to mattered more to Ma than it did to me.

I saw Dom often after that, and even though I knew Ma didn’t think he was good enough for me, she said nothing. Maybe she thought that being with Dom would stop me from going back to New York.

All through spring and well into the summer, we went for long walks, sometimes returning to the cottage by moonlight. I told him everything that had happened to me, except for the part about Sinclair. That was my secret, and it would stay that way. He laughed when I told him Ma thought Mrs. Shaw ran a brothel.

“Aye, sure, your ma would be suspicious of Jesus himself.”

“She had my head astray with all her questions. I’m still waiting for her to bring up Aidan O’Hanlon. You know, the feller I was supposed to work for. Sure, I didn’t even remember his name, let alone his address. She had it in her head that I was to marry him, and I know she’s mad as a wet hen that it never happened.”