“I’m sure you did.”
He presses a kiss to my hair, unhurried, easy, in the way he does everything. I close my eyes for a moment and just exist inthe morning with him. The coffee smell and the sleeping babies and the color-coded folder and this man, this specific, unlikely, completely right man.
Morrigan Pearl is making sounds from her crib. I can hear her escalating toward a full complaint with the methodical efficiency of someone who does everything with full commitment.
“That’s you,” I tell Ronan.
“I believe she woke up on your side,” he says, which is not how any of this works, and we both know it.
“Callahan,” I say, because I like saying it, “go get your daughter.”
He goes. I lie in the warm morning for another thirty seconds and listen to him in the next room, talking to her in that low, unhurried voice, the same voice he uses for everything, and Morrigan Pearl’s escalation resolves immediately into the sound she makes when she is satisfied.
He has the same effect on all of us.
I am so glad I got on the plane.
EPILOGUE
RONAN
St. Patrick’s Day
Galway in Marchis exactly as I remembered it and completely different, which is how Galway always is. It changes and doesn’t change simultaneously, the city and the people and the particular quality of the light over the bay all exactly themselves regardless of what has shifted in the life of the man looking at them.
What has shifted, in my case, is considerable.
We arrive on the Thursday before Saint Patrick’s Day, all five of us plus the nanny, Brigid, who is from Cork and has a gift with the babies that I recognized within the first ten minutes of meeting her.
The family house is large enough to accommodate us without difficulty. It has accommodated Callahans for three generations and is accustomed to chaos. Mary has arranged everything with the precision of a woman who has been running the Galway parade for twelve years and treats all logistical challenges as opportunities to demonstrate competence.
She meets us at the door. She looks at Sage, then at the babies, then at me, with the expression of a woman who is filing a great deal of information very quickly. “Ronan.” She hugs me first, the hug of a sibling who is genuinely glad to see you.
Then she turns to Sage and holds out both hands and says, “I’ve heard a great deal about you. All of it good, and the good bits were told to me by a man who doesn’t exaggerate. You must be extraordinary.”
Sage, who has been mildly nervous about this meeting since Cork airport, looks at Mary and says, “He told me you’d be terrifying. He was right.”
Mary laughs a full, delighted laugh and takes her by the arm to bring her inside, and that is that. I stand at the front door with Brigid and the triple stroller and the considerable luggage of three four-month-old babies, and I listen to Mary and Sage talking in the hallway, and I feel something so uncomplicated it takes me a moment to name it.
Pride. I feel proud. Of her, of us, of this life I did not expect.
Liam is here, and his family, and various cousins and their children, and the house fills through the evening with the particular warm chaos of a large Irish family assembling for a celebration. Sage moves through it with the particular quality I have always loved in her. She is present, direct, and interested. She talks to Liam about the labs without knowing he’s impressed that she knows what she’s talking about. She sits on the floor with the cousins’ children and teaches them something involving hand movements that Morrigan Pearl then demonstrates from her spot in the middle of the rug, which earns the kind of laughter that fills a room.
She’s excited by the reaction, and I fear she might become a performer.
Myrna finds me at one point and stands beside me, watching Sage with the evaluating attention of an artist assessing something she wants to paint. “She’s good with people.”
“Yes,” I agree.
Myrna nods once. This is, from Myrna, a complete endorsement. I accept it as such.
Orla appears on my other side. “She already knew about Myrna’s commission that went sideways.”
Myrna pipes up. “So what?”
“You never tell anyone about your commissions that go badly,” Orla points out. “Only the good stuff, like you’re trying to be your own marketing firm.”
A trademark Myrna eye roll. “Whatever. She’s easy to talk to.”
