The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

scramble up to be held. “I can’t help but worry about you,” she murmured against her sister’s hair. “I know you’re grown up, but it’s not easy to think of you that way. With Maureen and Patty it’s not so hard. Maureen’s barely ten months younger than me, and Patty came just a year after that. But with you two . . .” She opened her arms so Alice Mae could slip in as well. “I remember when each of you came along, so it’s different somehow.”
    “But I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
    “I know.” Brenna closed her eyes. “You’re so pretty, Katie. And I suppose you have to test your skills. I just wish you’d test them on boys your own age.”
    “I have.” With a watery laugh, Mary Kate lifted her head from Brenna’s shoulder and grinned. “I’m thinking I’m ready to move up a level.”
    “Oh, Mother Mary.” Brenna closed her eyes. “Just answer me this. Do you fancy yourself in love with Shawn?”
    “I don’t know.” She moved her shoulders restlessly. “I might be. It’s just that he’s so handsome, like a knight on a white charger. And he’s like a poet, so romantic and deep somehow. He looks at you, right in the eye. A lot of boys aim their eyes a bit lower, so you know they’re not thinking about you, but about the possibility of getting you out of your blouse. Have you ever noticed his hands, Brenna?”
    “His hands?” Long, narrow, clever. Gorgeous.
    “They’re an artist’s hands, and you just know, looking at them, how they might feel if he touched you.”
    “Aye,” she said on a long breath, then caught herself. “What I mean to say is I can understand how he’d stir certain, well, juices, being as he’s pretty. I just want you to have a care, that’s all.”
    “I will.”
    “There, now, you’re all made up.” Alice Mae got up, kissed both of them. “Now will you go away, Brenna, so we can all get some sleep?”
     
     
    Brenna didn’t sleep much, and when she did, there were dreams. Odd and jumbled dreams with moments of clarity that almost hurt the brain. A white-winged horse carrying a rider dressed in silver, with his long black hair flying away from a finely sculpted handsome face.
    He flew through the night, with stars burning around him, higher and higher, toward the glowing white ball of a full moon. A moon that dripped light like tears, tears he gathered like pearls in his bag of shining silver. Pearls that he poured onto the ground at the feet of Lady Gwen as they stood outside the cottage on the faerie hill.
    “These are the tears of the moon. They are my longing for you. Take them, and me.”
    But she shed her own tears as she turned away from him, denied him, refused him. And the pearls glowed in the grass and the glowing became moonflowers.
    And it was Brenna who picked them, by night, when their delicate white petals were open. She laid them on the little stoop by the cottage door, leaving them there for Shawn because she lacked the courage to take them inside. And to offer.
     
     
    The lack of sleep and surplus of dreams left her holloweyed and broody the next day. After Mass she piddled around, taking apart the engine of the old lawn mower, changing the points and plugs on her truck, tuning it though it didn’t need tuning.
    She was under her mother’s old car, changing the oil, when she saw her father’s boots.
    “Your ma said I should come out here and see what’s weighing on your brain before you take it into your head to strip the engine out of this old tank.”
    “I’m just seeing to some things need seeing to.”
    “I see that.” He crouched down, then with a wheezy sigh, scooted under the car with her. “So you’ve nothing on your mind.”
    “Maybe I do.” She worked a few moments in silence, knowing he would let her gather her thoughts. “Could I ask you something?”
    “You know you can.”
    “What is it a man wants?”
    Mick pursed his lips, pleased to see how quick and competent his daughter’s hands were with a wrench. “Well, a good woman, steady work, a hot meal, and a pint at the end of day satisfies most.”
    “It’s the first part I’m trying to figure here. What is it a man wants from a woman?”
    “Oh. Well, now.” Flustered, and not a little panicked, he started to scoot out again. “I’ll get your mother.”
    “You’re a man, she’s not.” Brenna caught his leg before he could escape. He was wiry, but she had a good grip. “I want, from a man’s own mind, what it is he’s