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“I don’t want to bother you.”

They’d just reached the door to his office—Mac could see the grand room beyond, the huge paned windows, the bookcases.

“Do you know what?” Vincent said after taking a good look at him. “I’m starving. Do you have time for lunch? Let’s go to the café.”

“Ah, now—”

“We will, Mac. My treat. I’ll tell you about my book and you tell me—how are Elvis and Presley?”

BY MONDAY HE HAD THE money and a slip of paper they’d drawn up together, which Vincent called an IOU. He’d asked a lot of questions: about PJ, if Mac trusted him, about the rest of the Lees. The IOU had no due date, that was Vincent’s stipulation. And also that Mac tell his father where he was going and when, that he not simply disappear.

“I thought you’d try to talk me out of it,” Mac said, holding the envelope in his hand.

“No, Mac. I love the old ways, I’ve made it my life’s study, but what will happen to you if you can’t get work? One way or another the writing is on the wall.” He said he’d like to hear Mac’s impressions of America. He’d never been to Montana himself but said there were Irish there if he knew how to find them.

MAC WALKED UP TO THE Lees’ that same day to let Honnie know he had the money. Patricia answered the door.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She said it kindly but she was curious too.

“I have to speak to your mother.”

“About what?”

“Patricia!” Honnie said. “I asked Mac to come around because I have a chore for him.” Honnie took him by the elbow and led him to the lane, where they could talk in private.

“Something’s going on!” Patricia called after them, and Honnie rolled her eyes.

“Imagine a life without witnesses,” Honnie said.

“I sorted the rest of the money,” Mac said. “But, I wonder, ah, would there be any place for my brother to come with me?”

“Down the road, sure, but for now if they’re content in England I’d say give it a few months until you settle in and—” She stopped midsentence. “Which brother?”

“Rian.”

“Rian.”

“I know he’s young. But you said Peter would go to school, so I thought maybe that’s what Rian could do.”

“Ah, love, that wouldn’t work at all, I’m sorry to say. For a start, Rian is a few years younger than Peter. That’s a lot more schooling. PJ has a place for you but he needs someone who can work. Work is how you’ll pay your room and board, and to be honest it’s Jenny’s father who’s paying the wages. I never even met the man. He’s agreed to Peter staying and going to school because Peter is—”

“Because he’s family.” Mac was embarrassed to have asked, to have put himself in a position to hear that they could do Peter a charity but not Rian. “I’d share my bed,” Mac said.

“Macdara,” Honnie said. “You’re family, too, but it took convincing for this man, Jenny’s father, to give a space to a boy who’ll be going to school instead of a worker. And Peter will only be in school another year or two, if that. Plus he can pitch in on weekends. He’s just as strong as Martin. Rian is an entirely different story. He’s only—what? Nine? It’s a lot more to take on.”

Maybe he should scrap the whole Montana idea. But then what? He’d end up abandoning Rian anyway to go over to England? And in England he’d work all day just to spend his evenings in the pub because the landlady won’t let workingmen into their rooms until a certain time? Or he could stay in the Cuan against his father’s wishes and stand by as Nuala ran down Rian. What good would that do either of them?

“The years fly,” Honnie said. “You work for a while and next thing you’ll be able to send him the fare. That’s the absolute best thing you can do for him. You bring him over as soon as you can stand on your own two feet.”

Mac knew she was right, but it didn’t sit easy.

When he arrived home his father was out. Nuala was sitting on top of the locked trunk of food, looking grim.

Immediately, Mac turned around and walked toward the ocean. Rian followed. Though the sky was clear the chop was rough, and they were soaked with spray before they reached the place where they liked to sit. They sat together and looked at the blinking stars, just starting to show themselves. A storm had recently pushed the whale farther up on shore and turned it just a little, creating a new frenzy for the birds. Its enormous mouth had stayed yawned open since it washed up. It had no teeth but the roof was covered in what looked like a comb. It had become a tradition for the children to stand inside the mouth and make a wish.

“What’ll we do, Mac?” Rian asked.

THE PROFESSOR’S REASONING WAS THE same as Honnie’s and Mac clung to it. He was not leaving his family, because it was only temporary. It would be a short time, really, when added up against the total of his life. He was not abandoning Rian or any of his brothers. In fact, it was the best way to help them. He’d post a letter as often as he could. He’d post clothes and gifts. He’d put his head down and mind his own business and make as much money as he’d need to bring Rian to America, to the place Rian had written in his book. Larkspur. The place like Connemara, except on a hundredfold scale. Eventually all his brothers would join him, even Coleman, who they’d look after between them, and Vincent, who’d be ready to know them by then, and all eleven of them would make their lives there. Instead of being crammed inside one damp cottage they’d each have their own, dry and open to an American cleansing wind.