“Jack blames me for Hilary’s death.”

“So they kept it from you? And…” Pierce paused briefly. “I’m so sorry, Ro. But it’s…” He looked at Rowan. “It’s kind of…” He didn’t say more but surveyed his brother’s face to calculate how he was taking this. Rowan was oddly calm. There was a sense of determination about him that hadn’t surfaced for a long time. He’d spent too many years ignoring the insidious way alcohol had crept, like a slowly growing fungus, into his life. He had fooled himself, but all the time there was a part of him that understood if only he could … if only he could kill the rot, his life would be better.

“I’m going to Ireland.”

*   *   *

The next afternoon, Pierce drove Rowan to JFK for an evening flight to Dublin. Rowan had phoned his office to say he was taking a week’s vacation. It was last minute but he’d be contactable by cell phone.

“I wish I could go with you. Here,” Pierce said. “Mother gave me this to give to you. Put it in your suitcase.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t ask.” Pierce rolled his eyes. “Just scatter them somewhere.”

Rowan registered with a similar rolling-eyed expression. He understood. Burdy’s ashes.

The only tickets left to Dublin that night were in business, but Rowan didn’t want to wait a couple of days for a cheaper fare. When he’d settled in and was offered complimentary champagne, he chose orange juice instead. One day at a time, he thought.

Rowan had never been to Ireland. Burdy had always meant to take him on a golf trip and to show him the statue in St. Stephen’s Green of his great-great-great-grand uncle, the Irish patriot, Robert Emmet. But it never happened. Why was that? Rowan had been too busy. That’s why. It was his own fault. Another lost opportunity. The road to regret is paved with inaction. When he stopped long enough to think about it his regrets were many. After it had ended with Hilary there had been other women but nothing amounted to anything lasting or meaningful. He couldn’t say why, really. He regretted that he hadn’t tried harder. He regretted, too, that he hadn’t spent enough time with his mother. For too long all his regrets had been absolved by alcohol.

Burdy had warned him that it was in his genes, this alcoholic inheritance, and there was only one way to beat it. “I’ll only say this one time because I know you will find your way. You don’t have to hit bottom with this thing. It’s an elevator going down, you can get off any floor you want.”

In his pocket, he fingered the Irish coin with the harp and the hare, the threepenny piece, Burdy’s lucky golf ball marker.

*   *   *

Seven o’clock in the morning, steady rain falling, a Turkish taxi driver dropped him at the Merrion hotel in Dublin’s city center. Emerging from the car, Rowan tilted back his head and let the rain fall on his face. He looked around at the pale gray granite columns and gated entrance of a large, lead-domed building across the wide street. Government buildings, the taxi driver told him. Even though the driver was a foreigner he pointed out all the cultural sights. Croke Park. The Custom House. The Liffey. The Bank of Ireland. Trinity College.

“Good morning, good morning. May I take your luggage, sir?” An elderly porter in top hat and tails said. He’d been standing, waiting at the hotel’s discreet front door.

Rowan wasn’t normally a guest at hotels with porters in top hats but he’d chosen this one because it was around the corner from the offices of the Adoption Board. His credit card would take another hit. “No, I can carry it. Thanks.” He looked up and down the street but didn’t move.

“Will I get you an umbrella, sir?”

“Is Merrion Square that way?” Rowan nodded to the right.

“Yes. Right there, sir. And the National Gallery is just across the street. But it’s not open yet. Are you sure you’re not wanting me to take your bag, sir?”

“No. Thanks. I’ll check in now.” Rowan followed the porter into the front room of the hotel, where a tall, blond receptionist named Sabine checked him in and a few minutes later a young man with a middle-European accent showed him into a garden-view suite. (Thus far the only Irish person he’d actually encountered in Ireland was the old porter, whose brogue was strong, maybe by way of compensation.)

“We have upgraded you sir,” said the young man. “May I show you the room’s amenities?”

By the time he was shown into the marble-floored bathroom, Rowan said, “Thanks. I think I can manage from here,” and handed him a five-euro note.

In a tangled mixture of grief, shock, and a jet-lagged trance then, he looked down at the enclosed garden, the reflecting pool, clipped boxwood hedging, the blooming campanula and white calla lilies and a very old magnolia tree. He wished in a way he’d said yes to his mother’s offer to accompany him. But it was too soon after Burdy. He was grateful Pierce was able to stay and attend to her as well as to Burdy’s estate.

Rowan leaned against the window frame and looked down at the order of the garden, and in his mind he laid out the distorted architecture of what he now knew: Hilary had had a baby, a girl, and placed her for adoption. In Ireland. He was now in the category known as a “natural” parent. He had learned on the Adoption Board’s Web site that he could officially sign up as such, the natural father, with the “National Adoption Contact Preference Register.” In one fell swoop he was a father, if only in the literal sense of the word. He had called the Adoption Board and explained that he was arriving in Dublin from New York the next day and needed an appointment. Urgently.

*   *   *

After a brief nap, mainly to clear his head of jet lag, Rowan accepted an umbrella offered by the gentleman porter and walked out, turning left outside the hotel, into a cloudburst. A few yards farther, he turned right onto Baggot Street. Place names suddenly jumped out at him as he passed along: O’Donaghue’s, Doheny and Nesbitt, Toners. Names on a postcard Hilary had sent him after arriving in Dublin to attend Trinity College. She’d been doing the pub crawl with the other American exchange students, she’d written and invited him to come visit. It panged his heart to think about it now.

Rowan hadn’t told Hilary before she left for Ireland that their relationship was over.

Nor had he told her straight off when she came home for Christmas, even though he had several occasions to. They’d gone out a couple of times. Muscoot’s, the White Horse, once to Nino’s. He hadn’t told her it was over until just before she returned to Ireland after the holiday. He’d met someone else. He was sorry. It was just the way it was. He wasn’t ready to get married. They were parked outside her house, the car running. Snow covered the lawns and white lights decorated the bare tree outside the Barretts’ house, he remembered. She got out of the car without a word. Midway up the path, she turned and came back. She opened the door and dropped the engagement ring on the seat and walked the path to her parents’ house.

Remembering now the look on her face, Rowan felt sick. There was something about the way she reacted. He’d been too indifferent to consider how deeply it might affect her.

Along the north side of St. Stephen’s Green he passed the Shelbourne Hotel, crossed the street, and walked along the outside railings of the great square, which, the porter had told him, was once the oldest urban space in the world. Opposite the top of Grafton Street, Rowan continued along the edge of the green and within a few yards pulled up short. There, posed as if in midspeech, stood the tall, thin statue of Robert Emmet, arms free at his sides, one palm open and turned toward the sky. Rowan was struck by the likeness to his grandfather. It was in the nose.

Rowan walked around the green and back past the hotel. The old porter waved a white-gloved hand as Rowan passed. When he reached the address on Merrion Square just before two in the afternoon the rain had eased. He stared at the blue door, its glass fanlight reflecting a bit of sky and marshmallow cloud and a little green from the trees in the gated park across the street. People passed as he waded in a pool of uncertainty, anxiety, and immense regret. He drew in a long, deep breath, like a swimmer on the starting block. He sucked and held his breath and, in one long whoosh, let it out: Whoosh.