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“D’you want to go back?” Niall asked.

“What for?” she said. “It’s just a bit of rain.” She took one more picture, then tucked her camera away inside her jacket.

A swooping sensation looped around his ribs. He rubbed his chest and remembered the iron spring that used to live there, winding tighter and tighter until he could hardly breathe. When had it disappeared? He couldn’t quite recall.

But as he climbed over the rocks, bantering with Cordelia and tossing stones out into the ocean, he found he wasn’t missing it one bit. He kept himself together now.

Healing, Cordelia had called this place.

Well, he thought as he watched her pick up a stone and throw it out into the sea, maybe she was on to something there.

Niall noticed Cordelia coming into O’Connor’s more and more over the following week.

“Cordelia seems to have finally acknowledged O’Connor’s is the best pub on the island,” Colin said one night. She was hunched over her book, but glanced up, her fork suspended over a plate of spaghetti and clams.

“Yep,” Niall said, wiping down pint glasses with a clean cloth.

“She’s looking at us now.”

“Stop staring at her,” Niall said, elbowing him.

“She’s not looking at me, that’s for sure,” Colin said. “Howya, Cordelia! Whatcha reading?”

She held up her book. Colin squinted at the title.

“The Lazarus Files,” he read. “What’s that about?”

“It’s fascinating, it’s about this cold case from the eighties – a woman was murdered in her own home and it took them thirty years to solve it. Turns out it was her husband’s ex-girlfriend, who was a cop.” She beamed.

“Grand,” Colin called back. “Bloody Christ, that’s a bit dark isn’t it?” he muttered to Niall. “Thought Americans were meant to be cheery.”

But Niall only smiled as he poured a pint. “She likes dark stories.”

“Niall!” his father bellowed from the kitchen.

“Coming, Dad,” he called and set the pint in front of Darragh before heading into the kitchen. He found his father with a small notepad and pen in hand.

“I’m putting the orders in for Pátrún,” he said.

“Oh.” Shit. “I’ll have my list for you Sunday. By dinner.”

Eoin’s bushy eyebrows knit together. “Can’t be any later than that. And I’ll need to taste this dish first.”

“Right,” Niall said. “No problem. I’ll cook it for you Sunday too. Give Mam a break.” He grabbed a plate of mussels on his way out and set them down in front of a waiting patron at the bar. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered as he walked away.

“Everything all right?” Cordelia was looking up at him from over the top of her book.

“Dad needs to make the order for Pátrún,” Niall explained.

“And you still don’t know what you’re cooking.”

He shook his head. She closed her book and rested her chin in her hand. Her hair glowed like molten gold in the light of the overhead lamps.

“You’re reminding me of me,” she said.

Niall raised an eyebrow. “Have you discovered some latent ability to cook since Monday?”

She grinned. “Not even a little. More like, you’re reminding me of how tight I was holding on to my photography and how it actually made me a worse photographer. The more pressure I put on myself, the more I failed to live up to this crazy standard I’d set in my head.” She tapped on the camera sitting beside her plate of spaghetti. Niall had never seen her go anywhere without it. “This was such a gift, you know. I’m glad I bumped into you on those docks. I mean, thank god my dad’s camera can be fixed. But having a new one, it’s like . . . pressure’s off. I can see clearly again. You should try that.”