The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

no light, only the wisps and shapes the mist chose to make of itself. Shivering, she took one step out and was instantly cloaked in it.
    The sense of solitude was immediate and complete, deeper than any she’d ever known. But it wasn’t frightening or sad, she realized as she held an arm out and watched the mist swallow her hand to the wrist. It was oddly liberating.
    She knew no one. No one knew her. Nothing was expected of her, except what she asked of herself. For tonight, one wonderful night, she was absolutely alone.
    She heard a kind of pulse in the night, a low, drumming beat. Was it the sea? she wondered. Or was it just the mist breathing? Even as she started to laugh at herself, she heard another sound, quiet and bright, a tinkling music.
    Pipes and bells, flutes and whistles? Enchanted by it, she nearly left the back stoop, nearly followed the magic of the sound into the fog like a dreamer walking in sleep.
    Wind chimes, she realized, with another little laugh, a bit nervous around the edges now. It was only wind chimes, like the pretty bells at the front of the house. And she must still be half asleep if she’d considered dancing out of the house at midnight and wandering through the fog to follow the sound of music.
    She made herself step back inside, firmly shut the door. The next sound she heard was the hiss of the soup boiling over.
    “Damn it!” She rushed to the stove and switched off the burner. “What’s wrong with me? A twelve-year-old could heat up a stupid can of soup, for God’s sake.”
    She mopped up the mess, burned the tips of two fingers, then ate the soup standing up in the kitchen while she lectured herself.
    It was time to stop bumbling around, to yank herself back in line. She was a responsible person, a reliable woman, not one who stood dreaming into the mist at midnight. She spooned up the soup and ate it mechanically, a duty to herbody with none of the foolish pleasure a midnight snack allowed.
    It was time to face why she’d come to Ireland in the first place. Time to stop pretending it was an extended holiday during which she would explore her roots and work on papers that would cement the publishing end of her not very stellar university career.
    She’d come because she’d been mortally afraid she was on the verge of some kind of breakdown. Stress had become her constant companion, gleefully inviting her to enjoy a migraine or flirt with an ulcer.
    It had gotten to the point where she wasn’t able to face the daily routine of her job, to the point where she neglected her students, her family. Herself.
    More, worse, she admitted, where she was coming to actively dislike her students, her family. Herself.
    Whatever the cause of it—and she wasn’t quite ready to explore that area—the only solution had been a radical change. A rest. Falling apart wasn’t an option. Falling apart in public was out of the question.
    She wouldn’t humiliate herself, or her family, who’d done nothing to deserve it. So she had run—cowardly, perhaps, but in some odd way the only logical step she’d been able to think of.
    When Old Maude had graciously passed on at the ripe old age of a hundred and one, a door had opened.
    It had been smart to walk through that door. It had been responsible to do so. She needed time alone, time to be quiet, time to reevaluate. And that was exactly what she was going to do.
    She did intend to work. She would never have been able to justify the trip and the time if she hadn’t had some sort of plan. She intended to experiment with a paper that combined her family roots and her profession. If nothing else,documenting local legends and myths and conducting a psychological analysis of their meaning and purpose would keep her mind active and give her less time for brooding.
    She’d been spending entirely too much time brooding. An Irish trait, her mother claimed, and the thought of it made Jude sigh. The Irish were great brooders, so if she felt the need to indulge from time to time, she’d picked the best place in the world for it.
    Feeling better, Jude turned to put her empty bowl in the dishwasher and discovered there wasn’t one.
    She chuckled all the way upstairs to the bedroom.
     
    She unpacked, meticulously putting everything away in the lovely creaky wardrobe, the wonderful old dresser with drawers that stuck. She set out her toiletries, admired the old washbasin, and indulged in a long shower standing in the claw-foot tub with the thin