“How do you know?”

“A surfer knows a surfer,” he says, and breaks into the fiddle with a quick flourish of his bow. “And a fiddler knows a fiddler.”

They begin with the “Currach” from “Inishlacken,” a concerto for fiddle and violin by the contemporary Irish composer Bill Whelan. Rose has been learning it in her spare time. A challenging piece blending the traditional and the classical. She has only seen and heard it on YouTube when the Irish National Chamber Orchestra played it in Beijing. Conor has played it before with his mother.

“Really? Did she go to China?” Rose asks.

“Yeah.”

“I want to go!”

“Just play!”

He gets me, she thinks. He really gets me. Fact is, she likes playing with someone else, she likes being in a group surrounded by bodies pulsing and being in the music, together, one breathing, magical sound. While she plays she thinks of Andreas. You’re in the music and the music’s in you.

“Brilliant,” he says. “You know what? My mother will really like you.” Conor pushes back his wooly hat and adds, “You’ll be perfect for the festival this weekend.”

“Festival? What?”

“In Doonbeg. You know? The jazz. I’ve sort of invited myself and they accepted. Play with me?”

Rose is caught by surprise. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not good enough for that piece.” Before Conor can reply she hears voices, she lays down her violin and runs to the sliding glass door. Her mother and Tess are walking up the path but neither sees her standing there. She pulls open the door.

“Mum?”

Iris drops her rattan handbag and runs to Rose, who meets her halfway. The hug they share is deep, silent, and all-encompassing, long and powerful and beyond words. Inside it, they rock side to side. Rose cries.

“No. No. No. Don’t cry, honey. It’s all right. Everything is all right.”

“Tell me. I want to know everything. What did they say?”

“The doctor said your mother has very busy breast tissue!” Tess says.

“What—”

“Seriously.” Tess laughs. “It took a good few go-arounds with the ultrasound, didn’t it, pet?”

Iris smiles. “The doctor was very funny. Afterward she said, ‘You’re fine, but you have a lot going on in there.’”

“You should have told me,” Rose says, halting between tears.

“I should have.”

Relieved, Rose feels like collapsing on the lawn. As they walk toward the house her mother takes her hand. Tess is ahead of them, Cicero behind.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” Iris says, taking Rose’s hand to her face and speaking softly.

“I could have handled it, Mum,” Rose says. “Dad told me to take care of you.”

“I know.”

“How can I take care of you if you don’t tell me what’s going on?”

“I know.”

Rose stops. “And no more secrets.”

Tess goes through the door first. And it startles Iris when she hears her speaking to someone inside. “Hello, Conor,” Tess says in a I-didn’t-know-you-were-here voice.

Rose drops her mother’s hand and rushes into the kitchen, landing beside Conor just before her mother enters. Head tilted down but a smile breaking on her face, she says, “Mum, this is Conor.” She pauses for a moment. “Conor, this is Mum!”

Rose watches her mother’s eyes dart to Tess, then back to Rose and over to Conor, then onto the stringed instruments lying side by side in their open cases. They are waiting for her to say something. Even Cicero has jumped back up onto the counter and looks around expectantly. Something registers on Iris’s face and she walks to the young man she’s seen before and says, “Nice to see you again, Conor.” He has cut his hair. Now it is short and curly. The ponytail is gone but the wooly hat is still there. She turns and plucks the cat off the counter.

“You, too, Mrs. Bowen,” Conor says. He reaches to shake her hand but can’t because she is holding the cat.

“So…” Iris says, “this is your new friend?”

Rose shoots her mother a warning look. The four of them are standing around the counter and for a second Iris looks like she’s the stranger in her own house. Then Tess says, “I think I’d better get going. The boys are hoping I’ll take them to Doonbeg this evening, to set up.”

“For the festival?” asks Conor.

“Yes,” Tess says, raising an eyebrow the way only Tess can.

“Yeah? Cool. Rosie and I are going, too. In fact, tomorrow night we might—”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Rose interrupts him, sharply, and for a moment no one says anything. “I haven’t said yes.”

Iris shakes her head. “I feel as if I’ve been gone a month!”

“That’s what happens when you’re missing in action, Mum,” Rose says, a bit too sharply, and it makes Conor look at her in surprise.

Tess winks at Rose. “You’re all right now, pet,” she says to Iris as she leaves. “See you later.”

“I’m off then, too,” says Conor, looking inquiringly at Rose, but she avoids his gaze. “I can be back later if you want to go to the pub session tonight. Or you, Mrs. Bowen? We could go together.” Iris looks at Rose, but she’s not saying anything. Conor shrugs. “I’m glad you’re all right, Mrs. Bowen.” He closes his fiddle case and crosses in front of Rose to the door. “Maybe I’ll see you later,” he says and he hesitates a moment as if for a kiss.

Rose feels Iris’s eyes on her as she lets Conor pass. She bites her lower lip, she pushes her hair behind her ears. She glances at her mother, and then outside. Conor is on the garden patio, then he’s on the path heading to his van, when finally she calls, “Wait!” and goes after him.

Standing beside the stone cabin, where a climbing clematis is hanging loosely, she says in a low voice, “I haven’t decided about playing. You can’t just expect—”

“I was going to suggest another piece if you thought the Whelan piece too tricky. What about ‘Over the Rainbow’? If Grappelli and Frankie Gavin can, on violin and fiddle, so can we. Right?”

Conor reaches out to her, but she shoulders him away.

“Sorry. I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

Rose turns around. There’s so much he doesn’t understand, she thinks.

“That’s all right, though,” he says. “You think about it and let me know.” He kisses her lightly on the back of her head and says, “Okay, Rose, I had a good time the last couple of days.” He waits for a response. “Rose?”

She forces herself to turn and face him. Except for her father’s, Conor Flynn has the kindest eyes she’s ever seen.

“See you later?” he says.

“Not tonight.”

They stand a moment longer in Iris’s garden. A strong wind picks up and a petal from a blue clematis floats and lands on his shoulder, then slips off. Rose is motionless. For a second her breath stops. She gives Conor one long look, which leaves him looking confused. Then she turns and heads back to her mother’s kitchen.

What Rose hasn’t told Conor is that the piece he wants her to play was one of her father’s favorites. She hasn’t told him of the strange synchronicity and how the moment he’d said it, her heart split. She doesn’t know if she can do it. Luke Bowen had collected nearly every single recording ever made of “Over the Rainbow,” from instrumentalists like Stéphane Grappelli, Nestor Torres, Jeff Beck, and Keith Jarrett, to singers Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Plácido Domingo, Eric Clapton, Eva Cassidy, Willie Nelson, Sarah Vaughan (and, of course, Judy Garland), and his favorite, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.

As she comes back into the kitchen she hasn’t decided if now is the time to tell her mother more about Conor. There is so much to tell now that Iris is back from her crazy trip to Boston. And what the hell? Like, what was her mother thinking? And why Boston?

Then it hits her—her mother is all right! Nothing else matters. Her mum doesn’t have cancer. “Mum!” she says when she sees Iris still standing there in the kitchen like a solid piece in the center of a puzzle. That’s all Rose can manage. “Mum!” She hugs her mother and cries, gulps for air, and Iris rocks her gently back and forth on her shoulder, smoothing her hair.