Perhaps. But that was the future. My present concern was the coffee in the kitchen, the garden coming back to life, and the confirmation letter from the Dublin Hotel on my desk. The money had not changed who I was. I was still Margaret Anne Ellis of Carver Street, Columbus, Ohio, still Roland’s wife, still this house’s keeper, but it had changed certain practical limitations, and I intended to use every scent of it well.
Dublin was everything Roland had told me it would be. Green and rainy and full of people who talked to strangers as if they had always known them. I stood at a low stone wall in County Clare looking at the Atlantic and felt him beside me in the way impossible to explain and unnecessary to explain. Because anyone who has loved someone and lost them already knows exactly what I mean. New Zealand was in March.