When they had gone I lay staring at the ceiling. Suddenly, Father McGinty’s face appeared. ’Tis lying again, you are! he shouted, wagging his finger at me. You weren’t sick at all. ’Twas jealousy made you run. The Commandments say: “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife . . . or husband.” You wanted Aidan for yourself and that’s the truth.

He disappeared. He was right, of course. Even though Aidan wasn’t Francine’s husband, he was her companion, and I had let jealousy consume me. Why had I run? Why hadn’t I stood my ground?

* * *

On doctor’s orders I was confined to bed for the next week. I drifted in and out of sleep, dazed from the medicine he had given me. The pain eased when I lay still but came roaring back when I tried to move. Mayflower came to my room several times a day. She brought gossip about the barbecue and the women who’d been there.

“You should have seen ’em scatter when the rain came down,” she laughed, “clucking away like angry hens. Some of them have been over here visiting since you’ve been laid up, pretending they’re concerned about you when all they want is gossip. Clara Bines was here with her daughters—plain as pots, them two—seeing what she could find out, and that Bible-thumping ole heifer, Beula Hicks, showed up wanting to pray for your soul. I chased all of ’em out.”

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, even though it made my shoulder pain worse. Mayflower had a grand way of telling stories. She’d have fitted in well in Donegal.

Her tone suddenly changed. “Aidan sat here through the night after he brought you back to the house, and he’s been asking about you every day since.” She paused. “I told Hans, for a man who ordered you out of his sight, Aidan sure is paying you a whole lot of attention.”

I blushed. “I’m sure he would show the same concern for anyone.”

Mayflower raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

Eventually, I was able to get up and move around. I spent most of the time rocking in a chair out on the veranda. In the evenings I watched the sun set in a blaze of red and gold. The sky looked as if it were on fire, and the sinking ball of sun looked close enough to touch. Of all the new sights I’d seen in Texas, the sunsets were the most beautiful.