Iris’s heart beat double time. She thought she might choke. The room was cold, and the armchairs were older than Iris, and the floor was so polished that her shoes squeaked when she shifted position in an effort to ease her panic. “When was that?”

“About sixteen or seventeen years ago,” Sonia said, her voice low, nearly a whisper.

Iris wished it all was easier. The whole thing. Just as she was working her way through the grief of having lost Luke, now this. She’d anticipated she wouldn’t be given all the information she needed, but she had not prepared herself for this. A dead end. Full stop. She sat back, covering her eyes, then looked up and spoke quickly, her voice now straining.

“Where does that leave me? I mean, is that all there is?”

“What more do you want?” Sonia asked, somewhat puzzled. “I don’t understand, what more could there possibly be?”

“I’d expect more … more information,” Iris said now, edging forward on her chair. Wasn’t she entitled to something more definitive? What was Sonia not getting? “This can’t be the end of the line. It just can’t.”

“I’m so sorry…” Sonia said reaching out to touch Iris’s arm.

“No, no, no.” Iris pulled away. “I have to have more information. What about the parents … I mean Hilary’s parents. Can’t I, or you, or the agency, contact them and find out where their daughter is?”

“Okay, Iris, calm down…”

“Addresses. Birth certificates. Something. Don’t you know anything? Is that legal? Birth mother just drops off the face of the earth and that’s all right with you? Well, it’s not all right with me! I’m sure Luke … you know, my husband was a solicitor … I’m sure he wouldn’t agree with this. What if something happens to me? What don’t you understand? I could die! Who’s going to look after Rose? You?”

Sonia froze. And for a long moment fingered the cuff of her cardigan. Iris stared at her. “And what about the birth father?”

“We don’t request details about birth grandparents,” Sonia replied, then shifted her gaze out the window and went on. “There’s no mention of a birth father in the file, I’m sorry. Nor does his name appear on the original birth certificate. I’m afraid he’s not in the picture.”

“You can’t do anything to help me? Is that what you’re saying!” Iris heaved herself back against the armchair.

“I’m sorry, Iris. I really am.” She reached forward and laid a hand on Iris’s knee.

Iris didn’t move. She was free-falling into a black empty space and it hurt. Was this it? The end. What about my promise, she wanted to shout.

After a few moments, when the only sound came from a bird across the road, Iris looked up because she heard Sonia lift the box of tissues from the side table and rise. With a hand on Iris’s shoulder she said, “I’m going to make us a cup of tea. Okay? I’ll be right back. A few minutes. I’ll only be a few minutes.” She placed the tissues on Iris’s lap and closed the door behind her.

Breathe, Iris, just breathe. Slowly in, and slowly out. White in, gray out. Count to ten and breathe again. She couldn’t do it. Her heart raced away on its own, beating hard. She gathered her hair in one hand and twisted it around with the other, making a rope that tightened with each twist until the nape of her neck hurt. She stood up and as she did the tissue box fell with a soft thump. Crossing her arms against her breasts she looked out at the gray wall outside the window. Where was that bird? She could still hear him. Her shoulders stiffened. She held her breath, then paced the room. When she came back around, it was then that she noticed the file.

How long does it take to make a cup of tea?

Iris quickly crossed to the table and picked up the folder that Sonia had left on her chair.

I’ll be right back. A few minutes.

She stood with her back to the door and leaned against it, her shoes anchored on the floor. I’ll only be a few minutes.

She opened the folder.

Inside, was the consent form to adopt, application order, and the notice of legal order from the Adoption Board. Nothing there she didn’t already know. Stapled to the inside-front cover was a photocopy of the legal birth certificate for adoptive children naming Iris and Luke as Rose’s parents. But there was also a copy of the original birth certificate, stapled underneath. She held her breath. Here it was. It named a Hilary Barrett as the mother. Barrett! Was there more? She flipped from the front of the file to the end. Paper-clipped to the back-inside cover of the folder, as if in afterthought, was a handwritten-addressed envelope. It said: Adoption Board, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland.

“Iris?”

Iris froze.

“Would you get the door, please?”

Iris quickly returned the folder. The paper clip fell to the ground and she brushed it away with her foot and went to get the door.

Sonia carried in a small tray with two mugs and settled the tray on the side table. She looked at Iris, her eyes pausing on the chair a moment before picking up the folder and sitting down with it securely in her lap.

“I hope you’ve had a few minutes to recognize, Mrs. Bowen that the Adoption Board can do nothing more for you as the adoptive mother.” She passed Iris a tea mug. “I am so sorry. It’s just the way it is. And has been for many years. And until the laws change—”

“I understand.” Iris paused a few moments and, still standing, took a single sip of the tea and then said, “Actually, I have to go. I have to catch the five-twenty train back to Limerick.” She put her mug down. “I have a long way to go from here.” She waited for Sonia to say something but Sonia only looked at her own mug. Then she, too, stood and the two women faced each other.

An instant of silent understanding passed. Nothing was explained nor questioned. But there was a moment—definitely, and a powerful connection—and for that fleeting moment Iris and Sonia were co-conspirators against the chaotic universe.

A moment that could possibly change a life forever.

“Thank you for your help,” Iris said.

Sonia smiled weakly and weariness showed in the circles under her eyes, as if each day she prepared to face the world but it was wearing her out. She walked Iris down the wide Georgian hallway to the front door. A partial ellipse of light shone from the fanlight above the door onto the marble floor.

“Good-bye then, Iris,” Sonia said, and she held Iris’s hand very firmly. “Good luck … with everything.”

Stepping across the street and onto the footpath, Iris reached out to hold on to the black railing enclosing the small park. She turned back to see the blue door of the Adoption Board close, the city street now a blur of noise and traffic passing. She took from her pocket the envelope she had torn from the folder. She had folded it small, but now gently opened and pressed it flat. She’d got what she’d come for. In the top, left-hand corner, inked in faded blue writing, was an address.

“Luke,” Iris whispered. “Hilary … Hilary Barrett. 99 St. Botolph Street. Boston, Massachusetts.”

Five

There is no difference between the fiddle and the violin—Rose had learned that by heart and said it in response to neighbors and friends in Clare who often asked why she played the violin instead of the fiddle. The fiddle was traditional, it was what a child was expected to learn in the west. “Sure it’s who we are,” Tommy Ryan had said one day hearing her play. But Rose was a girl who wanted to form her own identity. They’re not really different, she would say, just played differently. When she played a jig she’d say she was playing the fiddle, but when she played a sonata or a concerto she was playing the violin. “Same instrument. Just played differently. Traditional and classical. I’m both.”

When, as an eight-year-old, she’d showed an interest in learning an instrument Luke and Iris took her to a music school in Ennis, where she sat in on several classes, including fiddle. It was Andreas the violin teacher, an Austrian from Salzburg who’d moved to Ireland, who’d captured her imagination. A stocky man with a head of thick, gray hair. On her first lesson, he’d said, “Mein Roslein, the music’s in you and you’re in the music. Keep practicing and one day you’ll find each other, and then you’ll be famous. I know this.” And with his help, year by year, she’d come though the exams and then won a gold medal for her performance of Beethoven’s Spring sonata. She was accepted to the Royal Academy of Music in London in the summer of ’08.