Galway is so different from Abbeyglen. Louder, busier, bigger. The Irish love their weekends, so everyone comes out on Friday and Saturday nights. The air crackles with excitement. Anything is possible . . .
—Travel Journal of Will Sinclair, Abbeyglen, Ireland
On Saturday evening, I looked in the bathroom mirror and took the straightener to the same piece of hair for the tenth time. Steam wafted from the flatiron, and I knew if I kept at it, I’d have a bald spot instead of an errant lock of hair.
After a quick blast of hair spray, I slid the shell pink gloss over my lips and surveyed my work. Smoky shadow highlighted my eyes with dramatic eyeliner and heavy lashes. My hair cascaded across my shoulders like I was a starlet in a black-and-white movie. I wore a sequined gray tank covered by a black fitted cardigan, a filmy charcoal skirt, and shimmery flats. The reflection in the mirror was one of a girl totally chic, totally put together.
And through my nerves, all I could see tonight was the extra flab hanging over the waist of my skirt.
My days of eating at the craft services table were over.
I jerked at the knock on the door and quit my inspection. I sucked in my stomach and opened the door.
“Beckett’s downstairs,” Erin said. “He looks . . . divine.”
“That good, huh?” I spritzed some perfume on my neck and wrists.
“I can’t believe you have a date with the hottest guy in the world.”
I checked my teeth. “It’s not a date.”
“Whatever you call it, it’s still totally cool.”
“Do you want to come with us?”
She shook her red head and already I could see her morphing into awkward mode. “No. No, I can’t. I couldn’t. I’m going to Orla’s tonight. We’re going to do facials, then have a decent munch on as much pizza and fairy cakes as we can stand. At least with Orla I can make complete sentences. And after last night at dinner when I dropped the potatoes . . .”
“I don’t think Beckett even noticed.”
“They fell in his lap, Finley.”
Beckett had stopped by at dinnertime again. Even though Erin got a little clumsy with the vegetables, he just laughed it off and spoke to her as if she were an old friend. And not someone who had just tried to scorch his crotch.
It was strange. It was almost as if he liked hanging out with the O’Callaghan family. Surely he had somewhere more thrilling to be on a Friday night. Yet there he’d been, sitting at the dinner table with us, eating roast and potatoes and laughing at all of Liam’s jokes.
I walked down the stairs and into the living room where Beckett sat on the couch across from Nora.
“And then I started coughing and my fang shot out my mouth and . . .” Beckett lifted his head and turned those warm gray eyes on me. A slow smile spread across his face. “Hello, Flossie Sinclair.”
My stomach did a quivery flip. “Hello, Beckett Rush.”
“Here’s your coat.” Nora handed my jacket to Beckett. “Don’t forget curfew.”
“I won’t, ma’am,” he said, never taking his gaze off me. “I’ll be the perfect gentleman.”
Nora giggled. “I don’t doubt that a minute.” The phone rang from the kitchen. “I better get that. You two have fun.” She scurried out of the room, leaving the two of us. Alone.
Beckett walked to me, and I smelled the hint of his cologne. “You look beautiful.”
My skin heated at the intensity in his voice. “You do too. Not nearly as . . . pale.” He looked positively heartbreaking in dark jeans, a button-down shirt, and a tweedy blazer that was mismatched so artfully, it could’ve been picked out by one of his stylists.
“I decided I’d leave all the makeup to you tonight.” He held out my coat, and I turned around, pushing my arms through the sleeves. His fingers brushed across my neck as he lifted my hair out from the collar. “I like what you’ve done with your hair.”
“I just brushed it.” I shrugged one shoulder. “No effort at all.”
An hour and a half later I strolled the streets of Galway with the boy most girls would’ve died a thousand deaths to be near. He wore a fedora slanted over one eye and a pair of glasses, giving him a studious, preppy look. It might not have made someone notice Beckett at first glance. But they would’ve by the second.
“How many more pictures can you take?” He stood across the street in front of a restaurant with lime-green shutters and a door as red as a valentine. In Ireland, I’d seen color combinations that I’d never dreamed would work. And yet, somehow they did. So much more welcoming than the black iron gate that stood in front of my own house back home.
I looked in the shop window and saw hats like those worn to the Kentucky Derby or what royalty donned for fancy events. Magical pieces constructed of ribbon and plumes, lace and sparkle.
I continued my slow perusal, and the next building, painted turquoise and accented with flowers sprouting from every window and pot, stopped me. Peeking in, I found my own slice of heaven when I realized I was looking at a music store, filled with instruments that gleamed and shined, making me want to press my nose against the glass and tell Beckett to come back for me in an hour.
“We’re going to miss it,” Beckett called.
“Wait just a—” I was jerked into motion as he grabbed my hand and speed-walked down the cobblestone road.
He continued at this pace until we reached McPherson’s Pub.
Music surrounded us like air as we stepped inside and squeezed our way to a small table. It was another world.
Beckett pulled out my chair and gestured to the front where five men played. “Guy on the fiddle is Donal Murphy. A fine man. If there’s information to be had about anyone in Abbeyglen, he’s your man. He knew my grandfather. Rumor has it he’s been alive since the beginning of time.”
And he looked it. Wrinkles that stretched and pillowed across his weathered face. Hands made of more bone than skin. Pants that hung from his frame as if there was nothing to cling to. But it was his eyes that caught my attention next. They could belong to a twenty-year-old. So alive. Bright. Almost as if backlit by fire.
“This is his brother’s pub.” Beckett opened a menu. “Donal moved here when his wife died last year. But he still keeps up with what’s what.”
“He’s playing without any music.” Sister Maria would be proud.
Donal Murphy finished his song, held up his fiddle, and bowed to the crowd. They clapped madly, calling out his name, holding up their drinks. Old as dirt, and the man had groupies.
Beckett stood up and waved Mr. Murphy to our table.
“Beckett Rush. Is that you under that hat?” Mr. Murphy slapped him on the back. “Oh, but it’s a fine evening now. What are you doing all the way out here?”
Beckett looked at me. “Research.”
“And who is this lovely lady?”
“Meet Finley Sinclair from America. She needs some information.”
“Bah. I’m an old man who knows nothing and needs to wet his whistle, so.”
“Let me rephrase that. She needs some gossip.”
Mr. Murphy plopped himself into the third chair. “Now that I might possess.” His eyes glimmered with mischief as he planted his bony elbows on the table. “What do you want to know, Finley from America?”
“Sir, do you know Cathleen Sweeney?”
His face pinched in a wince. “Brooding woman. Did the books for a few stores in town. Quiet, sullen thing and always seemed to have a thorn in her saddle.”
“She’s dying,” I said.
Mr. Murphy nodded. “I’d heard as much.” He shook his wispy, white head. “Folks said it’s the cancer, but I know it’s her heart. The woman is eaten up with guilt. She’s carried it around with her for more years than I can count. And it’s finally rottin’ that cantankerous heart.”
I couldn’t help but feel a little defensive of the woman. “She’s not that bad.”
Mr. Murphy hooted with laughter. “She’d scare the bark off a tree, that one. She’s terrible. Everyone knows that. She left Mr. Sweeney only a few years into their marriage. Rumor has it he drank himself to death in his loneliness. You don’t just go leaving your husband.”
“But there had to be a reason,” I said. “Mrs. Sweeney seems to have no family or friends, but she sends letters to someone named Fiona Doyle. There’re years’ worth of them—all returned to sender.”
“Well o’course they’d be sent back unopened. Why would her sister want to talk to one such as Cathleen Sweeney?”
“Her sister? So something happened between them?” I asked.
“Oh, sure it did.” He stood up, done with the conversation.
“Now, I must go. Me fiddle calls.”
“Wait!” I called. “Mr. Murphy!”
He stopped mid-stride and turned back.
“What happened?”
“Don’t you know?”
I shook my head.
“Cathleen stole her own sister’s fiancé.”
And with that, he departed, weaving through the crowd, back to his beloved music.
“So there you have it,” Beckett said. “Except—”
“Yes?”
“If Mrs. Sweeney is the man-stealer, why is she the one who’s so bitter?”
“I don’t know, unless it’s because—” And then I recalled Mrs. Sweeney’s cryptic words.
My fate is like those envelopes—sealed and tossed aside.
“Because she needs her sister’s forgiveness.”
With the crowd buzzing around us, we listened to the band, and I saw all the instruments my brother had described. But nobody played with as much life as Mr. Murphy. As the band picked up the pace, Mr. Murphy dropped his bow and began to dance a jig. The crowd clapped in time, and soon a couple got up and joined him. Then three more.
The music became a living thing in the room, as well as in my heart, where it sent powerful shock waves of . . . something.
“I wish you could see your face right now.” I looked across the table to find Beckett’s eyes on mine.
“I never can describe it. But it’s here. Do you feel it?” I put a hand to my chest. “Do you feel it?”
His smile was a slow lift of his lips. “I feel it indeed.”
“I’ve never heard anything like Mr. Murphy. He plays with everything he’s got.”
“Wish he danced half as good and—”
“Shh. Wait.” I held up my hand, humming. “I gotta get this.” Grabbing my phone, I pushed a few buttons, activating the voice recorder, and hummed right into it. “I need to change part of Will’s song. I hear it so clear.”
“From the band?”
“No, in my head. Sometimes it’s like God just downloads it.”
“The God who’s not talking to you.”
I smiled. The song would come together. “He sends me occasional love notes, I guess.”
“You should play tonight.”
I looked back at the band. Let the music fill every cut and scrape on my spirit. “I just want to listen.”
Beckett watched me over the salt and pepper shakers. “Then let’s dance.”
“No, thank you.”
He held out his hand. “If you want the full effect, you can’t very well do it from your seat.”
Before I could argue, he pulled me to my feet and out into the crowd. I thought there couldn’t possibly be room for one more person, but Beckett wedged us in and turned his laughing eyes to mine.
“I don’t know how to dance like this,” I said, already feeling the embarrassment creep up my neck.
“You don’t have to know the steps.” He drew me closer, resting his hand at my hip. “Just feel the music.” And with a look of challenge, he put us into motion. Spinning, skipping, clapping, he propelled us around the tiny space. My shoes stomped across the rough-hewn floor, and when I tripped over Beckett’s feet, his firm hold steadied me at once. “I’ve got you.” His face hovered inches from mine. “I won’t let you fall.”
The music swelled and crashed, the instruments playing their own tune, yet still coming together in perfectly mismatched unity.
“You’re trying too hard.” Beckett sang off-key in my ear. “Don’t overthink it.”
I assumed he was talking about the dancing, but it might as well have been the advice for every part of my life. The more I thought, the foggier things became.
So I just let go. My feet skipped to the frantic tempo, and I released my hold on Beckett, clapping my hands as I followed his lead. My hair whipped across my shoulder, in my face. I imagined I looked like a chicken having a fit, but I didn’t even care.
The drum beat in a fierce staccato, and the pounding rumbled in my chest. Donal Murphy’s violin sang the solo, calling out to every lonely, empty heart in the room—come and be happy. And mine longed to answer. The flute intertwined with the guitar, almost like angels orchestrated the notes.
The Lord will send His faithful love by day; His song will be with me in the night.
Are you here for me too, God? Or just there for those so strong in their faith like Will?
Laughing, Beckett took my right hand and spun me round.
And then I was laughing too.
It was the sound made by a girl who hadn’t lost a brother. A girl who wasn’t angry, who hadn’t had her world upended.
The music exploded to a finale, and Beckett twirled me one more time. Completely winded, I clutched his shoulders to steady myself and catch my breath.
And stood straighter. As if a few ounces of the weight had lifted.
“Admit it,” he said. “You had fun.”
“I did.” I tilted my head back and smiled. “You were right.”
“What’s that?” He cupped his ear. “I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
“You were right. And I was . . . wrong.”
With his silver eyes on me, he reached out and pushed a strand of hair from my cheek. His finger stroked the delicate skin of my ear as he tucked the tendril in place. “You’re not too bad, Finley Sinclair.”
I couldn’t have looked away from this boy if the room had caught on fire. “You’re okay yourself. At times.”
“But we can’t get involved.”
“No.” I swallowed. “Definitely not.”
His face lowered a fraction of an inch. “Because I’m infamously bad.”
“And I’m staying away from trouble.”
His voice was rough, husky. “It would never work.”
I took a step closer. “Impossible.”
He traced my cheek with the pad of his thumb. “We don’t even like each other.”
“I pretty much can’t stand you.”
And then his lips crushed to mine. In the middle of McPherson’s Pub, as Mr. Murphy played his fiddle and total strangers danced around us. I curled my arms around Beckett’s neck and pulled him nearer. My eyes closed as music and boy consumed me, his lips sliding over mine once more. It was both too much and not enough.
And it had to stop.
I moved away, bringing shaking fingers to my lips. “What just happened?”
Shutters fell over Beckett’s eyes as he took a step back. “You just kissed me.”
“I didn’t kiss you. You kissed me!”
He cleared his throat, ran a hand over the light stubble on his face. “’Tis a matter of opinion.”
“’Tis not. And what would Taylor think of this? I—”
Beckett placed one finger against my lips, locking his eyes with mine. “The blame lies with Donal Murphy and his magic tunes. We forget it.” He dropped his hand. “We forget it. Agreed?”
Forget the kiss that went straight to my toes? That his hands held on to me like they’d never let me go? That my heart leaped out of my chest and fluttered like a bird?
I nodded my head. “Already forgotten.”