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“We call her Annie,” Mary said.

“And how’s Lillie?” Cathal said, turning to Mac. “Sean said there was a bit of difficulty.”

“She’s good. Fine. Both of them are doing very well.”

“She didn’t mind you coming? With the baby so new?”

Mac paused at that. He’d only been there a few hours and Cathal didn’t mean anything by it. “It was her idea. She has her sister for help. And she’s dying for her parents to meet Mary so we’ll go there for a visit before we leave.”

The chemist himself came out from the back room to find out what was going on and told Coleman to go on home, there were no deliveries anyway, what a surprise that Mac and Barry had come.

Mac walked down to the post office and called Lillie to say they’d arrived safe and sound. Annie had slept through the night, Lillie reported, and when she woke up at five, Bridget kept on sleeping. “So I had a great rest,” she said. “I feel absolutely renewed. If they do it again tonight, I might need you two to stay over there longer.” She had a hundred questions but he couldn’t answer them because there were people listening. Something about lowering his voice and trying to have a private conversation when there were ears everywhere made him feel like he was really back in the Cuan. “Welcome home,” people said as Mac was leaving the post office, and later when they passed him in the road. They blessed him, and shook his hand, and asked what he thought of Ronald Reagan, and how were his brothers, and what a shame about Nuala, God rest her. One old-timer asked about Montana but his wife corrected him, said no that’s the Lee boys you’re thinking of, but the man stuck to his guns and said no, Macdara Joyce was in Montana too. “Were you not?” he asked, entitled to an answer, so Mac cleared it up for them. It was strange to be there, but he couldn’t have described it to Lillie anyway. He left this place, and yet here it was, exactly where it had always been. What could anyone say to that except that it was true? But there was something about it that he couldn’t get past. There was the church, the school, the pitch, all the same number of steps apart. He bought a few things for the cottage that they’d need to have on hand, a box of tea, biscuits for the neighbors who’d inevitably stop in, finding out they were there and had little Yanks in tow.

They returned to the cottage as a group, but Cathal announced he had a quick errand at the funeral home. “I’ll be right back,” Cathal said to them, with a note of worry in his voice like they might disappear in the meantime. That’s your thing, Mac wanted to say. Not mine.

Once Cathal left, Barry and Mac told Coleman to sit, not to worry about anything, they weren’t guests. So Coleman sat and told them who was in romances around the village, who’d died, who was bankrupt. He was only repeating what he’d heard around the chemist’s. He told them he was saving for a television and Mac glanced at Barry. They’d been thinking what they could bring to the house and with that look they decided they’d get one before they left. They’d go up on the roof and mount the antennae themselves.

“Will we walk out to the island later?” Mac asked. “Is it very changed out there?”

Coleman said he’d have to check the tide. He’d have to have a think about whether the rocks were too slippery to walk on. He wasn’t so sure about the children—did they have good boots?—things had gotten so grown over.

“We can always row,” Mac said, seeing his brother was getting agitated.

Mac walked to his mother’s bedroom and looked in. The bedspread was different, the curtain, too, but otherwise it looked more or less the same. Then he climbed up to the loft and discovered five bedrolls, as if it was still 1963. Mary climbed up, too, so he told her that this was his old bedroom, which he’d shared with his brothers. She looked around like she was trying to figure out if he was teasing. Even at age five she could barely stand up in there without bumping her head. He rolled over onto his belly and looked out the small window toward the Lees’ cottage. Part of him expected Martin to walk down the lane.

“That was my friend’s house,” Mac told Mary, pointing. “You met him in New York when you were a baby. He lives in Montana. He might visit us again this year.”

“I thought Sean and Barry were your friends.”

“They’re my brothers. I’m talking about my friend.” One of PJ’s girls had gone to college in New York City so Mac and Lillie met up with him and Jenny a few times when they came to visit her. Lillie thought Jenny was very fancy and didn’t really believe Mac when he said she could work like a man when it came to taking care of cattle.

“Surprised you never came back to Montana,” PJ had said the last time they saw each other. “You took to it straightaway.” He turned to Lillie. “He was getting quite a name for himself. People were starting to think of him as a holy man when it comes to horses.”

“They still do,” Lillie said, proud of him. But when they’d parted ways with the Lees outside the restaurant, she looked at Mac like she had a question she couldn’t quite formulate.

“Would you have gone back if it hadn’t been for me?” she asked once they were in the car. “They make it sound like you loved it there.”

“Loved? I don’t know about ‘loved.’ ” It seemed very American to go around saying he loved things.

“You felt at home there,” she said.

“No,” Mac said. “Not exactly. But I might have, if I’d stayed.”

It had come up, briefly, when money was tight, whether they should move to Montana as a family, but Lillie said she’d made a big move already and that was enough for one lifetime. Mac hadn’t pushed it. He hadn’t even been certain what he wanted her answer to be when he asked. Sometimes, out of absolutely nowhere, he thought of Teaberry’s broad Main Street and how the lights of the businesses reflected against the tarmac after a big rain. There was something lonely about it if you were just driving through, but if you were in one of the pubs, looking out, there was something cozy about it, too, to be in a warm, dry place, snug with someone to talk to in the middle of all that space. One little decision, one single choice, and you end up with a completely different life.

Kevin had died but Honnie was still alive, and all of a sudden, without thinking much about her on the journey, Mac scrambled down the loft stairs, helped Mary down after him, shouted to Frankie to come along, and together they walked up the hill.

“Honnie,” he said, when she opened the door. She was wrinkled, wearing thick glasses that made her eyes tiny. Her long gray hair was loose down her back.

“Who’s that?” she asked in Irish, laughing as she tied back her hair. “I’m not a witch, I only look like one. Don’t be afraid. Who are you?” She bent toward Mary and Frankie, put her face very close to theirs, and then moved to Mac’s. “Is that—”

“Do you know me?”

She stepped forward even more and took a better look at him. “Is that you, Macdara Cathal Pól?”

“It is,” Mac said.

“Well, hello,” Honnie said to Mary and Frankie. She took off her glasses to wipe her eyes. “Look at you.”