He rolled his head and shot her a baleful look. ‘Seriously, I kept having nightmares about waking up buried under a mountain of wool.’
‘Cheer up.’ She grinned. ‘Only six more sleeps.’
He groaned as he rolled his head back to stare at the yard. ‘What did we agree to?’
‘Hey, it was your idea to come home together.’ Sweeney also gazed out over the neatly mowed grass. ‘Anyway…’ She sighed. ‘It’s done now. We’re committed.’
‘Yep.’
If Sweeney hadn’t felt so trapped by the predicament they were in, she’d have been insulted by how miserable thatyepsounded. Instead she laughed at his gloominess. ‘It’ll be fine. We’ll just avoid each other as much as possible this week so we don’t have to face any nosy interrogations. You’ll be doing your thing and I’ll be doing mine anyway, so it shouldn’t be hard. I’ll come back here each night to keep up appearances, and before you know it the week will be over and I’ll be gone and things will be much easier.’
Unfortunately, her mother’s look of disappointment from last night when she found out that Sweeney was in Ballyshannon for such a short time chose that moment to rear its ugly head. Worse still had been the way her mother had quickly hidden it behind reassuring words of understanding and acceptance.
That had truly hollowed Sweeney out.
‘Foryou, maybe,’ Fin grumbled, interrupting her thoughts. ‘I’ll still be here facing the nosy interrogations.’
‘Yeah.’ Sweeney forced a grin, banishing the spike of guilt she felt over the scant days she had allotted her mother in her busy schedule. ‘I’m less concerned about that.’
He honked out a laugh. ‘I’ll bet you are.’
‘Look on the bright side. At least your mum won’t be able to do any matchmaking.’
‘Huh.’ Fin’s features brightened as the realisation dawned. He tapped his temple and smiled at her. ‘I like the way youthink.’
‘Every cloud has a silver lining.’
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes as Sweeney finished her apple and Fin drank his tea and the sun crept higher over the yard. She tossed the core into a nearby garden bed just like they’d always done as kids and breathed deeply, wondering what kind of trickery it was that Ballyshannon always seemed to smell the same and yet different to any other small town she’d ever visited on her travels.
‘There’s the parade and the lake, day after tomorrow,’ Fin said finally. ‘For St Patrick’s Day. We’ll have to show our facesthere.’
‘Of course.’
After the last Irish dancer had twirled down the main street to the pipe band, Lake Corrib was the only place to be on StPatrick’s Day. Thankfully most local businesses and employers had historical Irish connections and usually shut for the day so everyone could enjoy the start of the area’s much-vaunted annual Irish festival.
Ballyshannon and the towns nestled into the surrounding hills and valleys—Ballyhale, Ballymoe, Ballyferriter and Ballyduff—had been a haven for the Irish escaping hunger and oppression in the old country in the mid-eighteen hundreds. They were mostly farmers back in the day but then the railway had come to town, opening up broader employment opportunities in the city.
Not everyone was of Irish descent in the area but, on St Pat’s Day, everyonefeltIrish.
‘At least with all your family there, avoiding each other should be easy.’
As a kid, Sweeney had envied Fin his big family. He might have been an only child, as had she, but he’d been surrounded by a veritable village of relatives. Sweeney had grown up with no extended family. Her parents had been implants, moving from Western Australia to Ballyshannon a month after they’d married. Her father had worked on the docks in Geelong and the Ballyshannon area had offered more affordable housing within an easy commute.
She had three cousins, all in Perth. Fin had thirtyfirstcousins—all in Ballyshannon.
‘Doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to avoid questions, though.’
‘True. We might have to talk to the mums so we can get our stories straight.’
She’d been in such a state of shock last night, Sweeney couldn’t remember exactly what had been said about her and Fin’s miraculous relationship, although it had seemed vague.
‘Good plan,’ he agreed.
A thought occurred to Sweeney then. ‘Is there anyone back in Dublin who might be unpleasantly surprised to learn of our engagement?’
They hadn’t talked about their love lives in the car last night, and Fin hadn’t mentioned a girlfriend as a possible stumbling block to their mothers’ harebrained scheme. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t seeing someone who might object to the news that would probably be on every Ballyshannon resident’s Facebook feed by the end of the day—if it wasn’t already.
He didn’t say anything for a long beat before finally saying, ‘No.’
