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“What’s Teaberry?” Mac asked.

“That’s the town,” PJ said.

“Ah. Then what’s Larkspur?”

“That’s the ranch,” Martin said. “You’ll see.”

IT WAS EARLY NOVEMBER. THEY’D left a soft day in Ireland, but when they exited Bozeman’s airport seventeen hours later the nine-degree air felt like a hundred small stabs in the chest. Beside him, Peter gasped, and PJ and Martin laughed, because they knew. They had thick, hooded coats for Mac and Peter, hats and gloves. Mac wondered how much it had all cost and how soon he’d have the money to repay them.

Mac and Peter had eaten everything they’d been given on the flight, but they’d both been hungry for several hours. From the moment they found their seats on the first leg of the journey Mac tried to appear older, more familiar with the world. He studied every person who boarded the plane and guessed if the person was Irish or American or something else. Peter fiddled with the buttons that lowered the back of the seat and the tray that unfolded from the one in front. Mac looked out the window at the fields that surrounded Shannon Airport and considered that the next time the plane touched ground he’d be in a different country, across an entire ocean.

“How does it stay up?” Peter asked as the plane began to move, his face going pale as it gained speed and gently lifted from the tarmac.

“Don’t ask me,” Mac said. How did the gulls stay aloft when they hovered over the surface of the water, not even flapping their wings? Beside him, Peter was praying, his lips shaping the same words over and over. After a while, each boy loosened his grasp on the armrests just a little. When they dared look out the window, Ireland was just a patchwork of green squares, far below.

An hour into the flight, Peter wanted to know how they’d know which way to walk when they had to get off the plane, how they’d know where to meet up with their suitcases. Mac had the window seat, and the blue of the sky above gray clouds was not something he’d imagined before this journey.

“The ones before us figured it out,” Mac said quietly. He didn’t want the man on the far side of Peter to hear. “So will we.”

It was difficult sitting still for so long. He couldn’t sleep, not when he considered he was thirty thousand feet above the ocean. He had no interest in the magazine he bought at the airport. He looked at what other people were doing but they were all reading or dozing or chatting with the person seated next to them. After a few hours went by he started checking for land. There was no sign the first few times, and the flight was starting to feel quite a bit longer than expected, so long that he worried they might have veered off course, but then eventually, yes, Mac spotted the unmistakable green of forest, a blue river ribboning through. We’re here, he thought. We’re here, thank god. He nudged Peter to look. But they were only in Toronto. The plane landed for fuel, and the stewardess told them they could get off and walk around the airport if they wanted, stretch their legs and get a bite to eat as long as they were back at such and such a time, but Mac wasn’t prepared for that. He told Peter they’d better stay put. Mac didn’t know how big or how busy Toronto’s airport was, and what if they got lost? So they sat for ninety minutes, trying to see as much of Canada as they could from the window. The stewardess brought them two packages of biscuits and cups of water. When the plane finally took off again, it kept going for two more hours. Next it landed in Chicago, where they had no choice but to switch planes. Peter stuck to Mac like he was attached. Mac felt sweat on his neck as he studied the board that listed all the destinations and the gates. When they found where they had to be Mac felt six inches taller, like he’d figured out the entire world.

“You found it, Macdara. We’re all right so,” Peter said, and Mac felt a flood of sympathy for this boy. Had Peter wanted to leave home or had they made him? Mac hadn’t even asked.

AS THEY DROVE TO THE ranch from the airport, Mac looked for landmarks, things that would tell him he was going the right direction if he ever needed to find his way back. There were occasional houses set far back from the road, a bit lonely-looking in the dwindling daylight. After well over an hour of the truck’s wheels eating up the wide, empty roads, winding around mountains, they crossed one last stretch of openness and eventually slowed. It was late afternoon in Montana and Mac calculated what time it was in Ireland.

“Is this it?” Mac leaned forward.

“This is it,” PJ said. There was a wrought-iron sign above the gate that said LARKSPUR in letters a foot high. Underneath it said Est. 1874.

Once they climbed down from the truck, Jenny appeared at the door of the house. Next to the house was a large trailer. “Hello, boys!” Jenny called out.

She was as pretty as Mac remembered, with that bright blond hair. They grabbed their suitcases and carried them inside to a room that gleamed with yellow planks of oak on the floors and walls, yellow light cast from small lamps placed here and there. He could smell the newness of it, the fresh timber. “Leave them,” PJ said, nodding at their cases, and some impulse in Mac told him to make his as unnoticeable as possible, so he pushed it into a row of coats hanging from hooks. The house had a wide center hall and when they passed through to the kitchen there was a spread of food on a long table the likes of which Mac had never seen. Jenny told them to sit, relax. There were two little blond girls, PJ and Jenny’s daughters, staring at them. One looked about three. The other one was maybe five.

“I hope you didn’t go to trouble,” Mac said. He wondered if the trailer outside was to be where he slept, if he’d be put with Martin or not.

“No trouble!” Jenny said as she carried a platter of steaks to add to what was already there. Each steak was the size of his hand. There were mashed potatoes and green beans. There were two types of bread, neither familiar to Mac. The butter, too, was different, almost pure white. He and Peter told them about their flights, their walk through Chicago’s airport, and once they were finished eating—Mac thought he might burst—Peter told his brothers he had with him a letter from their mother with instructions to read aloud once he arrived. Not wanting to intrude, Mac got up to help clear plates but there were two enormous side-by-side sinks sunk into a vast countertop and he wasn’t sure what to do.

“I’ll show you where you’re sleeping,” Jenny said.

Darkness had fallen quickly once they entered the house. Jenny led him down a hall, through a door, to another part of the house that had a room with four bunks. She told him which was his, and which was Peter’s. Martin’s bunk was across from his and above Martin slept the only other full-time ranch hand who wasn’t family, a man named Simon. Mac hadn’t met him yet.

“The trailer outside…” Mac began, not even knowing what question he had.

“Oh, that’s where we stayed when the house was being built,” Jenny said. “We kept it for the seasonal workers. It’s pretty comfy actually.”

“I could stay there if you’d rather?” He felt awkward, like everything he said was wrong. What would it matter if he minded or not. He’d go where they put him. His English was good but Jenny spoke quickly, and he was unused to an American accent.

“Oh honey, no. You’d freeze your tush off. You sleep here. You must be beat,” Jenny said. Beat meant tired, he knew, and he was certainly that, but he was keyed up too. Rian could have fit beside him; there was loads of room. Everything was strange from the taste of the food to the size of the windows to the smell of the towel Jenny left folded on his bunk.

Once she left him, Mac walked quietly down the hall to investigate the bathroom they’d passed—water that ran hot and cold, a flushing toilet, soap in an oval dish. Also in the bathroom was a recessed space with a shallow tub that seemed far too small to bathe in. There was a knob at hip height so he turned it, and as he was looking down at the drain, water came rushing out from above him and soaked the back of his head. He gasped and staggered backward, knocking into a shelf. He reached over to the knob and turned it back to the starting position.

“Sorry!” Jenny said from the other side of the bathroom door, startling him. “I should have shown you the shower.”

He blushed and stood very still.

“Um. I have something for you,” she said eventually, so he opened the door like it was the most natural thing in the world to find a pretty woman on the other side.

“I brought you a fresh toothbrush,” she said. “And toothpaste. PJ said you might not have any.”