When she was sixteen Andreas had advised it was time for her to get a really good violin. He’d suggested an Irish violin maker called Conor Flynn who’d studied to be a luthier in Cremona, Italy. Andreas explained that Conor’s mother was Italian and a musician herself and now played with the Irish Chamber Orchestra. Conor had learned to play the fiddle when he was young, Andreas said, but when he visited his grandparents’ home in Verona at a young age he got it into his head that he wanted to make his own violin. Andreas laughs when he tells the story. “Imagine, mein Roslein, a five-year-old boy wanting to make a violin instead of an airplane or a tractor of some other wooden toy! And now he is one of the best young violin makers in Ireland.”

*   *   *

Incense burned and two ginger cats were asleep in an open violin case on the window seat of Conor Flynn’s workshop inside an old Irish farmhouse in North Clare on the day Rose and her parents walked in. It was early January. Wood shavings were scattered across the floor. Hanging on the walls were silver molds and templates, and on a blue nylon line hanging, like strange washing, were several unfinished violins. Against the wall was a long, thick table with several ceramic jars holding tools and a docking station with an iPod playing. Rose recognized the end of a Haydn concerto, but the next piece was a surprise. It was “The Lonesome Touch” by Martin Hayes, the Irish fiddler from East Clare.

“It is all about the wood. Baltic spruce and Bosnian maple. The great Cremonese violin makers got their maple from the Acer pseudoplatanus,” the blue-eyed luthier said. He was young, not even thirty. He was wearing a wooly cap with ear flaps, and from him came the scent of the sea and his sandy-colored hair was long and tied back. Rose watched wood dust drift from his fingers when he lifted his hand to point to the samples on the plastered wall. She looked to her mother, expecting a response, her mother knowing about plants and trees and such things, but Iris only nodded, eyes down, smiling faintly.

“The higher up the trees grow, the better; generally, the air is purer,” Conor continued, a little nervous, Rose thought. “Wood is highly absorbent.”

“Is it?” Rose said. She knew it was, but she’d felt Conor’s eyes on her cheek and she needed to say something to break his stare. She turned to look around the studio and then out toward the sea. A dozen white heads of snowdrops bowed in their terra-cotta pots on the windowsill outside.

“Yeah, it is. Things penetrate the wood. Acid rain, things, you know.… Like when it dries out, toxins may remain”—Rose turned back to him—“in the wood, I mean. But it gives it … character.” His eyes held hers. “You know?”

“Yes,” she said.

For a moment it had seemed as if there was only Rose and Conor and the violins in the room until Luke smiled and said, “Character is important.”

Iris straightened the stencils on the worktable.

“Used to be that natural materials used in violin making were unpolluted,” Conor said. “They did stuff like cutting the trees down with the waning moon to make the best tonewood. So”—he waved his hand toward the display—“if you pick the cuts here, then I’ll adjust them (and here he looked at Luke) to the character of whatever wood you choose.” He bowed theatrically to Rose. She couldn’t stop herself smiling. Something inside her stirred.

Iris, who’d watched the exchange unfurling between them, turned to Luke. “Maybe … we should just buy a really good used violin?” Her thoughts might have well been audible: waning moons, blue eyes, blond hair in a ponytail, and he makes violins?

“Up to you.” The violin maker turned back to his worktable. The tune had finished on the player. “It makes a difference, of course, if the wood was grown in sunshine or in shadow.”

*   *   *

Two months later the violin with a bright, rich sound was hand delivered by Conor on a radiant early March morning when Rose was studying. She wasn’t expecting him. He hadn’t let the Bowens know he was finished.

“I read about you in The Banner County News. Congratulations,” he’d said when she’d opened the glass door and he breezed in. “Not many Irish get accepted at the RAM, I mean. That’s really cool. RAM. Good for you.” He was wearing the same yellow wooly cap with the ear flaps.

“I guess.” Rose didn’t know what to say because his arrival as well as his enthusiasm had caught her unawares. “I have to pass my Leaving Cert, though.” She motioned to the French grammar book and practice tests open on the table.

“Sure, of course. But no bother. It’s a couple months away, right?” He opened the violin case as if presenting an offering. “Will you play it, ma chérie?”

She shot him a look. Funny guy. “I don’t know…” She didn’t pick it up, and after a bit he put the open case down on the table beside her books.

He gazed at her one long moment, gauging the possibilities, working out the chances, and when at last it looked like he’d made up his mind, he blurted, “You’re really beautiful.”

Rose glanced away and fingered the open face of the violin, tracing the inside of the f holes ending in a swirl. Then she looked to him and said, “No, I’m not,” and turned away.

Iris and Luke weren’t home, they’d told Rose they had business in Limerick that afternoon. Rose didn’t know if she wanted Conor Flynn to stay around. He was intense, or something. She wasn’t sure what was happening. Her face reddened. He kept looking at her but she’d decided not to play for him. She walked toward the door.

“So, maybe you’d let me know how my violin stands up to the rigors of that academy, once you get there, I mean. Tell them there’s an Irish fiddler by the name of Flynn you can recommend. That is, if you like the sound.” He laughed at himself but continued speaking and followed Rose to the door and stood close beside her. “You’ll be my first true professional customer. I slipped a few of my cards in with a gift for you—some rosin. It’s a secret recipe a guy in Belgium makes.” From him came the scent of the sea and wood dust. He said he hoped maybe she’d invite him around during the summer just so he might hear how the violin sounded, in case it needed any tweaking, but he’d been playing it for a month and was happy.

“All right, so, I’m off. Taking Gerty to Doughmore Beach.”

Rose cast her eyes downward.

“Gerty’s my van,” he said quickly.

“Oh.” She smiled and laughed. “I thought you had—”

“A dog in the van? No, the cats wouldn’t like that.” He paused. “I’m a surfer.” He put his hands in his pockets and waited in case Rose had changed her mind and wanted him to stay, but she only looked away out the window down across the garden.

They’d exchanged numbers and he’d wished her luck on her exams and in doing so placed his hand gently on her back. He moved closer so that his body was against hers. It was just a moment. And as quick as the flick of a downward bow he bent and kissed her.

“For good luck!” he said. Then he was out the door, through the gap in the hedge in her mother’s garden.

Rose followed after a moment but it was a moment too late. She saw the back of an old red van heading toward the sea.

When he’d gone, she looked at his cards: Conor Flynn, Master Violin Maker, Kinvara, Co. Galway. She tucked them back into the small velvet box under the scroll. He’d explained her violin’s sound would deepen, that it would travel through the layers of varnish like air through puff pastry. Rose would eventually think back on this as the thing that had opened the door and left an imprint on her heart. That he’d thought this and said it. It wasn’t what she expected and she liked that. That night after dinner Rose played “O Mio Babbino Caro” on the new violin and her mother cried. (Her parents hadn’t yet told her that Luke had been at the doctor’s office that day.)