“I wanted to be a musician myself, once,” Rowan said quietly, regaining his composure. “But I was never going to be good enough.”

“Yeah? What do you play?”

“Saxophone. Below par, but available for weddings and funerals,” Rowan said, a self-effacing smile reviving his mood.

“That’s cool.” The guy tapped his fingers against his case. “We musicians are one big happy family, right? It’s just around the bend. The next house.”

Rowan turned his head slightly toward him. “I’d be happy to wait in case she, I mean Rose, isn’t speaking with you.”

“Ha. No. Not to worry. I’ll win her back. Beg … if I have to. And then I’ll convince her to play with me tonight. And she will. I think.” He smiled. “But thanks.”

Rowan pulled the car into a bit of a driveway alongside a stone building with a faded, black-painted door with a hint of crimson showing in peeled places. A blue clematis arched over the top of a low building on the opposite side of the entrance and draped onto an open wooden gate. (He knew that clematis. It was an Alice Fisk.) Names were coming back to him. Several potted agapanthus, lady of the nile, lined the wall. Something about all this seemed impossibly familiar.

As his passenger was getting ready to open the car door, he stopped, then opened his case and, from underneath the bow, took something. “Here’s a ticket,” he said, handing it to Rowan. “You should come tonight. The concert’s in the community center.”

Rowan smiled and took the ticket. “Thanks. I’m not sure. But thanks.”

The fiddler got out of the car, but as he was about to close the door, Rowan wanted to prolong the moment and said, “Nice place your Rose has here.”

The young man looked at it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Her mum’s a gardener.”

As if a great wind had swept through the car taking all the air, Rowan lost his breath.

*   *   *

Seven hours after Hector sat into row 18, seat C, aisle seat, on the Aer Lingus flight from Boston to Shannon, he arrived in Ireland. It was six in the morning and raining. Talk about shock. He was freezing when he came out onto the concourse. He headed straight for the information desk, where a pretty young lady with a line of tiny earrings adorning her left ear looked like she was expecting him.

“Welcome to Ireland,” she said and smiled at his shirt and his general goose bumps. “Not Hawaii out there.” The talons of the eagle tattooed on his arm were showing beneath his short sleeve.

“This is summer, right?”

“Be lovely in a little while,” she said. “How can I help?”

“I need to rent a car. Get a hotel room. Find a place called Ashwood.” He gave her the slip of paper on which Grace had written Iris’s address.

“I see.” She pointed to the car rental desks. “When you’re done there, come back to me and I’ll sort you out with a room and a map.” She smiled again. The girl was sweet.

When he returned with the rental keys she showed him where Ashwood was on the map. “It’s a townland in West Clare,” she said. “Here’s the route. It’s about an hour. But I’m afraid all the B and Bs nearby are booked solid because of the festival this weekend.” She looked at Hector from across the counter. “I can book you a room at a really nice hotel, though.”

“Festival?”

“There’s a jazz festival. It happens every year.”

“What do you know.” And he rembered then Iris had mentioned it.

“Sorry?”

“Jazz … it’s my thing.”

“Oh,” she said. “The Lodge so. You’ll like it. And they’ll take you right away.”

“And the rain?”

“Five more minutes.”

*   *   *

Rain was gone in ten. He could barely keep his eyes open as he drove, but from what he could see it was farming country with cattle and horses and a medley of small green and yellow fields separated by stone walls and some savagely shaped bushes. He’d gone the extra mile and hired a car with SatNav, thank God, because there was barely a street sign to be seen. The SatNav lady spoke with a kind of motherly affect. “At the next crossroads, turn left” and “On the next roundabout, take the second exit.” She was like the Spirit of Grace commanding him not to screw up and to get there. The landscape got country. Real quick. Talk about rural. It was a strange thing, but the nearer Hector got to the part of the world where Iris lived, the more he wanted her.

The Lodge, as the lovely earringed girl had called it, turned out to be a rather grand five-star hotel perched on the edge of a long stretch of sand dunes. Awesome, but to Hector oddly discomforting. From his room, the Atlantic Ocean stretched endlessly, melting into a leaden sky on the horizon. Rain fell in the distance. He thought about the lovely Julia and how all those years ago he’d first heard the phrase “aggressive Stage 3 breast cancer.” Fuck. He hoped to God he would never hear those words again. He hoped to God that wasn’t what Iris was facing. Poor, sweet, gentle Iris. He had to know. He remembered her promise to her husband and now guessed that was why she had wanted to find Hilary. For Rose.

A few hours later, after a nap and some lunch, Hector showed the concierge his map, in case Lady SatNav didn’t know the way, and was told it was only fifteen minutes inland. So, at four in the afternoon, Hector Sherr left the coast behind and set out for Ashwood. There was no rain, but he took the road slowly because it was narrow and windy. Low houses were strewn like a bunch of colored marbles in otherwise green fields. He turned right at the bottom of a curving hill when directed, but that was the end of the line as far as SatNav was concerned. She spoke no more.

Without directions now, he drove up the hill before him. Huge bushes with tiny red flowers closed in on the thin road. Grass was growing in the middle. Wild, he thought. He hoped Spirit of Grace knew where she had taken him because he seemed to be disappearing into the thickest greenness he’d ever seen. Even the air he breathed seemed green, and smelled of hay. When he cleared the top of the hill, two horses, a speckled gray and a chestnut mare, nosed over the stone wall. They faced toward the sliver of ocean that crossed the horizon about ten miles back to the west. He stopped the car and got out. The road evened out ahead but there was no house in sight. The horses came toward him. He saw his reflection in the eye of the mare and he thought she spoke to him. He shrugged and got back in the car, feeling giddy.

Another quarter of a mile farther, at a bend in the road, a driveway appeared, huddled between two stone buildings, one with a black door. A blue flowering vinelike plant spilled over a lower building on the other side of the entrance and fell onto an open wooden gate. Several potted plants were lined up against the wall.

This had to be the place. It said Iris all over.

He parked the car at the gate. His heart felt five sizes too big for his chest. It was thumping a big drum rhythm full of ache and regret and hope, ba-bam ba-bam ba-bam, drying up his throat. She’s in here.

“Come on now, Hector, keep going, man.” He hopped in over the stone stile and followed the line of potted flowers that led through a gap in a high hedge. A jaw-dropping, mind-blowing, breathtaking garden materialized. He stood a few moments as if in a trance. I’ve arrived in Emerald City where the blue Iris lives, he thought.

“Um … hello? Can I help you?”

It was a young woman with long brown hair who came out from the house.

“I’m looking for Iris. Iris Bowen?”

The young woman considered the stranger a moment and got up. “She’s not here.”

“Is she all right?” He spoke with a little too much urgency and a little too quickly and he knew he’d surprised her.

“Yeeesss. She’s fine,” she said cautiously. “Um … does she know you?”

“You must be Rose…” he said then, and walked a little nearer. “I met your mom when she was in Boston last week.”