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T he carpet runner muffled my boots as I made my way downstairs, circling the L-shaped staircase around a wide pillar that speared through the heart of Naruka. The plush rugs, dull wood floors, and fireplace boasted of a character that couldn’t be bought—could barely be maintained, if my own bill was any proof.

When I reached the bottom, I peeked into the kitchen to tell James about the car outside. But it was empty, oddly silent, and missing the usual tick-tick of clocks that sounded like the hum of insects. Beside one of those clocks—a half-eaten apple with a smiling worm—hung a calendar with June’s new priest. He stood legs apart, wearing only his clerical collar and baring his midsummer night’s dream. A long, very impressive dream that—

“Hey, darlin’.”

I nearly jumped at the voice. At that slow, rangy drawl carrying the same Southern heat it had the day he’d walked into my dad’s shop, asking if I knew how to fix trucks.

When I turned, I got an eyeful of Tye Cannon striding through Naruka’s double doors. A crisp, salty breeze followed, stirring a needlework tapestry of indigo skies before the doors slammed shut behind him.

“Ya keep oglin’ that calendar, a man’s gonna start to get jealous.” A ruinous dimple popped in his left cheek. “Though I can’t say I got much to offer in the way of priesthood,” Tye drawled, slinging his jacket over a sculpture of a one-legged bird.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I heard you got pretty religious when Montana lost.”

“Would’ve made my ma blush.” He chuckled, running a hand through his damp hair before plopping his ball cap back down and squeezing a wave out of those burnt locks. It cast a shadow over his heavy brow, the bump in his nose that some horse might have caused—or maybe it’d been a bar fight. With the plaid shirt and faded blue jeans, he looked like pure warmth, like the sun stroking your back and the grass tickling your knees on a summer’s day.

Just then I realized I was still wearing my damn headlight. I yanked it off, rubbing at the itchy patch it left as I shifted past Tye.

“Friends of yours?” I asked, peering out one of the two church-style windows. Outside, the Mercedes purred into reverse, flattening a new trail through the raspberry bushes—not a guest, then.

“Who?” He glanced over his shoulder, frowned. “Oh. That’s James’s aunt. I ran into her in Capolinn and she gave me a ride. Nice woman.”

I let the curtain fall back into place. “She lives nearby?”

“Visits,” Tye corrected, “from time to time.”

James had never mentioned an aunt, which was odd when he’d given me the postman’s complete family history. “Is she coming for the ceremony?”

“Naw, she’s already gone through it.” Tye reached up to grab an overhead rafter, stretching out his neck as he hung from it. A half-dragon, half-human tattoo flexed around the tanned muscle of his forearm. “Woman used to run this place with James’s mom before she brought me here.” He scratched at the faint stubble on his jaw. “Six years ago now.”

Tye let go of the rafter to swipe a crystal glass off a low-lit bar, followed by a whiskey so expensive it would make James’s eyes water. With a groan, he dropped onto the sofa and stretched out his legs, a sunburned hand kneading his thigh.

“About this ceremony…You knew Bryn, right?”

“Stornoway?” Tye’s brows flew up into his dark hair, pausing there in time with the whiskey at his lips. “Suppose so, though I don’t think many ever really knew him. Why ya askin’?”

I waited until he swallowed another healthy dose, then explained the leftover things in Bryn’s room.

Tye huffed a dark laugh. “Stornoway left in a hurry after James had me kick his ass out. Not that I didn’t give him time to pack, but the man’s a little…” Tye twirled a finger around his ear, whistled. “James felt a little guilty about the whole thing, ya ask me. Might be why he’s askin’ him back now, but we don’t need him. And from what I’m hearin’, James is havin’ some trouble gettin’ hold of the man.”

Then what made James think he’d travel from… “Where is Bryn?”

“Norway, last I heard.”

Travel from Norway , then, to host a ceremony for a man who’d supposedly kicked him out? “Why did James ask him to leave?”

Tye twirled his finger again. “Crazy, like I said.”

Then why invite him back? Why hold on to his things? James was sentimental—he kept all the Irish knickknacks that Kazie gave him, even the ridiculous leprechaun apron. So maybe it wasn’t much of a stretch to keep Bryn’s things too.

“I got ya somethin’ in town today.”

My thoughts scattered. “I— You did?”

“In the pocket.” Tye pointed at his jacket, the one still clinging to a marble beak. “I was thinkin’ of ya earlier at the racetrack when I was in the parade ring, tryin’ to figure out what horse I was gonna bet on.”

Curious and a little surprised, I moved toward the statue. “And what, one of the horses was called ‘Mediocre Electrician’?” I joked, searching through his jacket that still smelled of beer and cigarette smoke from the pub last night. My hand curled around a small box. “This it?”

“Yup. So I’m standin’ there at the fence…” He rolled back his sleeves as if to demonstrate. “Watchin’ this mare’s rotten teeth grind a bucket of slop, and I thought, ‘Hey, that gruel looks a lot like what Roe tried to feed me after Montana lost.’”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“You kiddin’? It was the worst thing I’d eaten since you dared me to try cat food that night we got piss-faced.”

Laughing now, I peeled back the box’s cardboard lid to find a marshmallow cupcake. “So you thought you’d buy the opposite?” Tenderly, I lifted it from the box, held it in my palm.

Tye leaned forward until his glittering green eyes met mine. “No, hun, I remembered it was your birthday.”

I froze.

Remembered it was your birthday. My birthday. Mine—except it wasn’t.

My chest hollowed as I stared at the perfect sugared marshmallow. It was embarrassing to feel like this, to feel somehow cheated when my sister and I had always celebrated it on the same day anyway.

“I was gonna offer to take ya up the mountain on the horses, but James wanted to wait.”

My fingers tightened around the wrapping. “Thanks Tye, I—” The cupcake tilted in my palm, the weight of the icing dragging it to the left, to the right.

No, no, no!

Like a baby with a gigantic head, it plunged out of my grasp, smacking icing-side down on the hairy rug. Great .

Tye chuckled. “Next time I’ll just get the cheesecake.”

“Sorry, it’s—” I rushed to scoop up my victim. “It’s fine.” I yanked a hair from the icing. “The cake part is fine,” I amended.

Tye sucked in his lips, let them out. “Somethin’ wrong besides the cupcake? Ain’t you turnin’ twenty-seven today?”

“No, I am,” I lied. “I’m just surprised you knew. My sister and I were born minutes apart around midnight, but we always celebrated it on the same day.”

He paused with the whiskey at his lips, frowned. “That so?”

“It doesn’t matter, sorry. Thanks for the offer with the horses, but I’d just fall off.”

Tye lifted the brim of his hat. “If a little horse scares ya, you ain’t gonna last long around here.”

W ith only a week to go before Bryn arrived, and all my plaster used on his ceiling, I took James’s beat up old Ford and drove into Capolinn.

The streets swam with tourists, locals, and those still recovering from last night’s drinks, looking bleary-eyed and half-surprised to see what Ireland mistook for sunshine. The townhouses were cheerful, the streets cobbled, and even the drizzle of rain couldn’t dampen the joy of one very dedicated pipe player. Surprisingly for such a tiny town, Capolinn boasted three churches, fifteen pubs, and one very old—

“When did ye say ye came to Naruka?”

Post office.

I dragged my gaze from the window and glanced at the woman behind an oak desk, currently eyeing me over a cup of steaming tea that left a faint sheen on her weathered cheeks.

“A few months back,” I answered, handing her my hastily scrawled postcard.

She grimaced at my writing, staring at it so long and hard I worried I’d forgotten my own address. “Didn’t take ye for a Yank,” she declared, despite the giant letters spelling ‘ CANADA. ’ “A few months, ye said? And this is the first time yer writing to yer folks?”

I shifted under her stare. “No, I wrote before,” I lied—and poorly by her expression.

She looked so far down her nose that her cat-eye glasses slid an inch to catch on the crooked tip. “I’ve never seen ye in here before,” she decided, setting her milky tea on a doily. “Me own daughter is living in France. Did James tell ye? No? She calls me every Sunday whether I want her to or not. Good girl.” She nodded to herself, needing no prompting to continue.

Even when she double-dipped her biscuit into the tea, the steady stream of her daughter’s accomplishments, prizes, and feats didn’t cease. By the end of it, I was certain she’d have given my twin some stiff competition. “And yer gettin’ on well, are ye so, at Naruka?”

I shifted my hardware bag to my other arm to nudge the coins for the postcard toward her. “Yeah, James has been great—”

“Good lad,” she said with another brisk nod. “Took over for his mammy, God rest her soul. Not easy running a place like that.”

“Yeah, it needs some work,” I agreed. “Is it two dollars for the post card?” Maybe I’d gotten the change wrong.

“Two quid, aye. Work?” she echoed.

“Naruka’s fine,” I corrected, in case she warned potential guests off. “Just a few things—sockets…” Fire hazards, overloaded circuits, frayed wires, melted insulation. All of which, I recently learned, Bryn had contributed to, which was why artists probably shouldn’t rewire houses. “Nothing too important.”

She made a little cough in the back of her throat as she straightened a stack of envelopes and continued to ignore my change. “Well, I don’t see many people staying at Naruka, but when I do, it seems there’s only two kinds. The first,” she said, leaning forward far enough that her floral perfume drowned out the smell of wood cleaner, “is always in a hurry when they leave.”

My eyes met her clear blue ones. “A hurry?”

“ Sure ,” she said, dragging out the word. “Not a year ago, James had a woman—a guest —staying with him. She was there only two months—much like yerself—before she comes in one morning, mascara running, eyes as red as I’ve ever seen, raving about some vision she’d had. Pure nonsense, so it was! I’ve never heard the like. Gears in the bloody sky.” She waved this away quickly, as if she’d lose my rapt attention. “The girl was on the drink. Then James comes in—good lad,” she added, lifting her thin chin as if daring me to say otherwise.

“He’s great,” I quickly agreed.

“Looking for yer wan, and it wasn’t a week later I find out she’s gone and left one of the local boys high and dry. Seems they were a thing. Not that I mind. I keep me nose where it belongs—on me face.” She pointed a bony finger at the wart on hers. “I had only pity for James, what with her takin’ off like that half mad. Bad for business. And a young woman no less?” This seemed the biggest grievance of all. “ Well ,” she huffed, her gaze roving over my work boots, then my cheap overalls and damp braid.

But the woman— Mary , I saw now—was too much of a goldmine for me to be insulted. “And the second type?” I prompted. “Of guest?”

“Long termers,” she stated. “They’ll stay years at Hotel Naruka. Now, if I had that kind of money, ye wouldn’t see me working here, no ye wouldn’t. Sure, I’d be in France with me daughter.”

I took a shot in the dark. “You wouldn’t have known a man who used to live at Naruka? From Norway?”

What was left of her eyebrows lifted, her face tilted, her cheeks positively glowed. “Bryn?” Her voice took on the high-pitched coo of a mother talking about her favorite son. “Sure, I knew him, so I did. A good lad, a very good lad. Maybe not in the same way as James, if ye know what I mean.”

Even the drunks outside would know what she meant. “I think I’m following.”

She leaned so far over the desk that her breasts smothered both my change and the postcard. “When he arrived at Naruka, I was worried about a few of the girls here. Such silly things.” She wrinkled her nose. “But then he didn’t show much interest. Might have a girl himself. Though if he did, I never saw her.”

And for the second time in five minutes, I realized I shouldn’t have waited months to send a postcard. I’d have gotten the town lore that much earlier and easier.

“Bryn rarely came into Capolinn, but there was always a word or two for folks when he did, like meself. He was a good lad,” she repeated sagely. The highest praise, I was beginning to understand.

“Any reason he’d be coming back for a ceremony?”

“Ceremony?” she said incredulously. “What ceremony? A wedding?”

“No, something that Naruka hosts for guests.”

“Well, if there is, I don’t know anything of it,” she said with the deepest affront, and collected my change. “When ye go back, ye’ll tell James to come in, won’t ye? Might be I’ll ask him about this ceremony.”

Not wanting to give up just yet, I tried a few more angles, hoping to tease out more information, but I ended up leaving with only the hardware store bag.