After a quiet evening at the pub, Maura retreated to her cottage with a sense of relief. Back in her own place—alone, with only her thoughts to distract her—she paced around, looking critically at it. It was hers. She could do whatever she wanted with it. But in fact, in the year she’d lived in it, she hadn’t done much of anything to it. She really wasn’t into how things looked, which was okay since she rarely had visitors to impress, and most of them didn’t care. Here she had only herself to please.

She guessed her mother would care. Helen would take one look at this century-old dump and feel sorry for her. She didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her. Besides, she didn’t spend much time here, and rarely by daylight. Who cared if there was dust in the corners and she hadn’t taken the trash to the dump for a while?

Gran would have cared. No matter how little they had, Gran had always taken good care of their place and what was in it and made sure it was neat and clean. She’d always had enough food in the cupboards and refrigerator to feed someone who needed a good meal. She’d made sure Maura had decent clothes to wear to school, even if they weren’t the latest fashion. Gran had had standards. Why had she herself tossed them all out? Maybe she needed to think about that. If this really was her home now, she should stop living like a squatter.

Too late—and too dark—to do anything about it that night. Maura went to bed.

She woke up with the sun and realized she hadn’t talked with Bridget since her heart-to-heart talk with Mick, the one Bridget had insisted on. Who had Bridget been trying to help? Mick, because she knew too well he was stuck, mired in guilt for what he saw as his failure with his family? Or Maura, so she could get involved with Mick with her eyes open or decide now that it wasn’t going to work before anything got started? Did Bridget want her to connect with Mick? For her sake or his?

Out of bed, into the shower. Maura dressed, ate some bread and butter, and marched down to Bridget’s house. She wasn’t angry with Bridget, and what she’d done wasn’t really meddling—it was more like looking out for the people she cared about. So she couldn’t exactly yell at Bridget, but did she want Bridget to back off? She hadn’t decided when Bridget opened the door to her.

“Maidin mhaith! Come in. I wondered if I’d be seein’ yeh.”

“Why?” Maura asked, following her into the room.

“He’s told yeh, hasn’t he?” Bridget turned to face her. “Tea?”

“Please. You want me to make it?”

“No, but yeh can talk to me while I do. Have the two of you settled things?”

A fair question, but she didn’t know what she felt. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t call anything settled, but we’re trying. What he told me, it explains a lot of things I’ve wondered about. But he has issues, and I don’t know if he’s gotten past them, or will. And I’ve got plenty of baggage of my own.” As seeing her mother for the first time had proved.

“We all need other people in our lives,” Bridget said as she poured hot water into her teapot. “Without them, yeh’ll just wither away.”

“Do I need your grandson in my life?” Maura tried to smile but realized that it wasn’t really a joke to her.

“Ah, Maura, he may need yeh more than yeh need him, but he’s a good man. And that’s all I’ll say. Yeh have to live yer own lives, the both of yeh. But yeh needed to hear the whole story to make a fair choice.”

There was a knock on the door, and when Maura opened it, she found Gillian standing outside with young Henry in some kind of sack thing hanging against her chest. “Hey, there,” Maura said. “Everything okay? You’re out early.”

“As good as it gets. Morning, Bridget—sorry for just barging in like this. Harry and I were down looking at the creamery, and I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Ah, it’s always a treat to see yeh, and yer little one, Gillian. What is it that’s botherin’ yeh?”

“It’s not that I mind hard work, as soon as I’m up to it, and I’m handy enough with tools and plastering and the like, but there’s so much that needs doing! And we’ve next to no furniture, and what little money we have is going to this one here.” Gillian dropped a kiss on top of sleeping Henry’s head. “I’m just overwhelmed. I needed to get out and move, so I walked over the hill to see you. Please tell me there’s something going on in the world apart from baby poo?”

“Uh, nobody’s solved John Byrne’s death yet, and my mother’s still around,” Maura told her. “That’s all I’ve got. Is there something specific you need at your new place?”

“Apart from intact walls and ceilings and floors? No, I’m just whinging. We’ve got heat and water and light. Most of what we need is cleaning and prettying up the place. And furniture. It would be nice to sit on something that isn’t the floor.”

“When do you want to tackle the creamery itself, apart from the house?” Maura asked.

“Oh, that’s months away. If I’m lucky, I might be able to handle giving some art lessons or classes in the summer, but no sooner. One thing at a time, Maura.”

“I hear you. Look, I’d better get into Leap. Do you want a ride to your place?”

“That’d be a blessing. Coming up the hill really took it out of me more than I expected. Bridget, do you mind if I hitch a ride with Maura after I’ve only just arrived? I promise I’ll come back again soon.”

“No worries. I’m happy to see yeh any time, even fer a minute or two. Give my best to Mick, will yeh, Maura?” But Bridget wouldn’t let Gillian go until she’d planted a kiss on baby Henry’s head.

“I will. Bye, Bridget.” Maura opened the door and let Gillian plus baby go through, then followed them up the lane to her cottage to retrieve her car.

Gillian settled herself in the front seat, still cradling her baby. “If I’m going to ride with you often, you’ll have to get a child seat.”

“Oh, right, of course. I didn’t think to ask if it was required in Ireland. If you’re worried, you can walk instead.”

“No, I’ll give you a pass this time, but only if you promise to get one fast. Ask around—I’m sure there’ll be secondhand ones available. And remember, you’ll have to drive carefully.”

“I always do.” Maura pointed the car down the lane. “So, your life must be pretty busy these days.”

“It is that, alternating with times when I’m afraid to breathe for fear of waking the baby. There’s so much to learn.”

“So I’ve heard.” Maura turned left at the bottom of the hill, headed for the Drinagh road, and drove at a stately twenty-five miles per hour. Luckily, there were no other cars on the road.

“Still no conclusion on the death?” Gillian asked. “It’s near a week now.”

“I know. The gardaí have learned some stuff about John Byrne’s early life. It turns out he actually was born around here up near Dunmanway, but he left when he was in his teens, and it looks like he never came back. His parents are both dead, and he didn’t get along with any of his other relatives before he left. The gardaí are checking if he had any contact with them on this trip.”

“How sad. Was he a bad kid?”

“No, but I gather there were just too many kids in the family to deal with them all.”

“Not an uncommon story back in those days.”

Maura turned left on the Drinagh road, then left again a bit farther on, on the road that led past the creamery and Ballinlough.

“Before you ask,” Maura said, “I still haven’t really talked with my mother. Maybe we’re more alike than I thought—we both seem to be holding back, like we don’t want to intrude on each other’s lives. I appreciate that, kind of, but it feels weird. I guess biology isn’t everything.”

“Luckily not if you’re John Byrne, I’d guess. Orphaned farm boy gets shipped off to the New World and becomes a millionaire. Sad that he had to die when he tried to come back. Do you think it was about his money? Or his family, maybe?”

“I don’t know. Nobody outside of the hotel staff seems to have seen or talked to him last Friday night after dinner, and he wasn’t exactly rubbing anyone’s nose in his money once he’d bought that humongous hotel. As far as we know, nobody knew he was here, except his staff. Although I suppose the hotel people might have said something.” Maura pulled into the graveled area in front of the creamery, but before getting out of the car, she looked at it critically. Sometime in decades past, it had been painted a cheerful shade of turquoise that was now faded and patchy. An old double door facing the road hung slightly askew on ancient iron strap hinges, and someone had painted it an unlikely shade of red. A lot of paint had simply fallen off over the years.

“You going to keep the color scheme?”

“Do you know, I haven’t decided. It kind of grows on you. And if I’m trying to give directions to students, it would be so much easier to say, ‘It’s the big blue building by the lough.’”

“Good point.”

Gillian gathered up the baby and got out of the car. “Thanks for the lift, Maura.” Gillian waved as Maura pulled away and drove toward Leap.

As she drove, Maura reviewed her to-do list. Spend quality time with her friends Bridget and Gillian—check. Then there was Mick. They’d both taken a giant step forward after a nudge from Bridget, but there were still problems to be solved. But that was life, right? She’d never expected anything to be easy.

But this love stuff was confusing. Her grandmother had loved her husband, as far as Maura knew. Her mother had loved her father, or so she said. Maura had no idea how Helen felt about her current husband, but they had had two kids together, and they were still married. Gillian had loved Harry for years but hadn’t ever assumed that anything permanent would come of it. Jimmy and Judith? That sounded more like a practical business arrangement than a grand passion.

Siobhan was a different case. She’d gotten pregnant after an unplanned night, but she’d accepted the responsibility, kept the child, and later married Tim Nolan. And once Tim died and a respectable amount of time had passed, Siobhan had married again. To someone she had known for years and had worked with. Someone who had loved her for a long time.

Maura suddenly pulled over to an open spot by the side of the road and stopped. Both Siobhan and Bernard O’Mahoney had said they’d known each other for years, and Siobhan had added that he’d been sweet on her for a long time. While she was married to Tim? Before? After?

It had taken Bernard a long time to propose after Tim’s death. And Siobhan had accepted, and they’d had a big wedding at the hotel. Now should be the happily-ever-after part. And then John Byrne had dropped in out of the blue. Had Siobhan told Bernard about Ellen’s father? Or had he found out some other way? He was older than Siobhan, and he could have heard it from someone years earlier. Still, he’d married Siobhan and finally gotten what he had wished for. The perfect ending—until John showed up. Siobhan had met with John openly as a staff member. But she had also told Maura that they had met privately in the garden when Siobhan had shared the news about Ellen. Had Bernard seen them together? Had he seen his fragile happiness falling to pieces?

And when did you start thinking like a soap opera writer, Maura?

Okay, this new theory was loaded with a lot of what-ifs, but maybe it was worth talking with Bernard O’Mahoney.

Did she really think Bernard had killed John? Maybe. He was certainly strong enough, even if he was twenty or more years older than John. All that outdoor work—shoveling, chopping, sawing, and such—had to have kept him fit.

But why leave John’s body where it was likely to be found? Bernard knew the property well, and there must be places to stash or bury a body. Maybe he’d wanted to be sure that Siobhan knew John was dead—after all, he was the father of her child. If he had been killed, someone had made some effort to make it look like an accident. Which meant that if that had been Bernard, he would have had to carry the body somehow to the lonely path where it had been dumped. Bernard was strong enough. And how very convenient that he’d found John’s body. Maybe that was the point. Maybe he had tried to divert the gardaí’s attention by getting his story in first. If he had killed John.

She pulled back onto the road and drove the last few miles to Leap. She parked in front of the pub and hurried in. Luckily, Mick was behind the bar, so she walked directly over to him. “Mick, can I ask you a really big favor?”

“Yeh may. Can I ask what it is?”

Maura glanced around. “Not in front of everyone. Come outside. Jimmy, can you cover?” she called out, raising her voice.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “Fer how long?”

“I don’t know. Thanks, Jimmy.” She waited impatiently while Mick came around from behind the bar, and then she all but dragged him out the door.

“So?” Mick asked.

“I want you to come with me while I talk to the groundskeeper at Crann Mor.”

“And why would that be?”

“I think it’s possible that he may have killed John Byrne, but I’m not sure enough to go to the gardaí. If I’m right, he’s a strong man, and he might be angry, and . . .”

“Yeh need me to watch yer back. We’re goin’ now?”

Despite her anxiety, Maura was warmed by his unquestioning response. “Please. And thank you.”