“Don’t worry,” Clare said, emerging from the kitchen. She wiped her wet hands on a dish towel and flung it over her shoulder. “If it’s meant to happen, she’ll find you.”

Aiden sat leaning against his couch. “What if she doesn’t want to?”

“Well then you’ve learned the lesson you should have learned before you left to Tully Cross,” she said with a raised brow. “You may not remember it, but I distinctly told you not to forget about Lisa, but to learn from her. I get tired of my advice fallin’ on deaf ears.”

Aiden sighed.

“But you don’t need an ‘I told you so,’” she said. “My boy probably needs a good hug. Come on, Soircha, give your uncle Aiden a hug.”

He was enclosed by his mother and niece, as they stood in his living room. Aiden squeezed them against him and gazed over their heads, at the missing parts of his home. He was alone again and it was more painful than he could have ever imagined.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Here goes nothing.

Every grand adventure or humiliating disaster started with those words. Antonia steeled herself against the latter and boldly knocked on Aiden’s front door. While she waited, she took another look at his house number, just to make certain she was at the right place. She also examined his small front yard. The grass was green and the space was bricked off from the neighbors on either side of him. Several small bushes of salmon-hued roses were planted near his front window. It was a cute enough little house that she could see herself living in. But one step at a time. She needed to talk to the man first.

The door opened just as she raised her hand to knock again.

A young girl peered up at her. Soircha. Her glasses were perched on the end of her small pert nose, her eyes widened at the sight of Antonia. “Whoa,” she murmured. “It’s you.”

This wasn’t what Antonia expected. “Hi, Soircha?”

The girl’s freckled face broke into a grin. “You remember me?”

“Of course I do. How could I forget those beautiful curls?”

Soircha blushed deeply and attempted to hide behind the front door. “I don’t like my hair,” she said. “I keep asking my mom to straighten it, but she won’t.”

Antonia’s heart was still pounding, hoping that Aiden was there, but she felt for the girl. She wore a T-shirt that said read: “Fungi the Dolphin” and jean shorts that were cut off at the knees. At twelve, she was already tall and gangly. “You have your whole life to play around with your hair,” Antonia said. “Um, also, is your uncle Aiden home?”

“So you got my Facebook message?” The girl asked with excitement.

Antonia was confused. Facebook? She hadn’t checked it in nearly a week since she broke up with Derek and started writing her novel. She didn’t want the distractions that social media offered. “I don’t—”

“Who’s at the door, Soircha?” an older woman’s voice called from beyond the vestibule.