The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

you write one, I’ll lift a glass to you as well.”
    They sneered companionably at each other.
    “What are you doing here? There’s nothing broken that I know of.”
    “Do you see my toolbox in my hand?” Would he never just look at her? she wondered. The bloody bat-blind moron. “I’m going to Dublin with Jude and Darcy.” Brenna lifted a shoulder. “I got weary of Darcy badgering me about it, so I’ve surrendered.” She turned and shouted up the stairs, “Darcy, for sweet Jesus’ sake, what’s taking you so bloody long? I’ve been waiting an hour.”
    “Now you’ll have to confess that lie to Father Clooney,” Shawn told her, “as you just walked in the house.”
    “It’s only venial, and it may get her down here before next week.” She dropped into a chair. “Why aren’t you down to the pub helping Aidan? It’s delivery day.”
    “Because, Mother, he asked me to stay and see to Jude until Darcy made her entrance. But since you’re here, I’ll be off. You’ll come back and play again, Jude Frances.” He smiled as he rose. “It’s a pleasure to hear my tunes played by someone who appreciates music.”
    He started out, pausing by Brenna’s chair long enough to tug the bill of her cap over her eyes. She yanked it back up as the front door slammed behind him.
    “He acts as if I were still ten and kicking his ass at football.” Then she gave a twinkling grin. “It’s a fine ass, too, isn’t it?”
    Jude laughed and rose to straighten the sheet music. “The rest of him isn’t bad, either. And he writes wonderful music.”
    “Aye, he’s a rare talent in him.”
    Jude turned, lifted her eyebrows. “You didn’t seem to think so a minute ago.”
    “Well, if I told him, he’d just get all puffed up about it and be more unbearable than usual.”
    “I suppose you’ve known him forever.”
    “Forever and a day, it seems,” Brenna agreed. “There’s four years between us, and he came along first.”
    “And you’ve been in this house too many times to count. You can walk into it as though it’s your own, because that’s the kind of house it is.”
    Jude rose to wander, to look at family photographs scattered here and there in frames that didn’t match, an old pitcher with a chipped lip that held a brilliant array of spring flowers. The wallpaper was faded, the rug worn.
    “I suppose I’ve run as tame here as Darcy and her brothers have in my own house,” Brenna told her. “Sure, Mrs. Gallagher’s laid the flat of her hand across my bottom with as much enthusiasm as she did her own children.”
    Jude marveled a little at that. No one had ever laid the flat of their hand across her bottom. Reason was always employed in discipline, and passive-aggressive guilt laid. “It would have been wonderful, don’t you think, to grow up here, surrounded by music.”
    She circled the room, noting the comfortably fadedcushions and old wood, the clutter and the patterns of light through the windows. It could use some sprucing, without a doubt, she mused. But it was all here. Home, family, continuity.
    Yes, this was the place for family, for children, the way her cottage was the place for solitude and contemplation.
    She imagined the walls in this house held the echos of too many voices raised in temper, in joy, to ever be truly quiet.
    The clatter on the stairs had her turning to see Darcy race down them, her hair billowing out. “Are you just going to laze around all day?” Darcy demanded. “Or are we off to Dublin?”
     
    It was a much different trip to Dublin than it had been from. The car was full of chatter, leaving Jude barely any room for nerves. Darcy was full of village gossip. It seemed young Douglas O’Brian had gotten Maggie Brennan in trouble and there was to be a wedding the minute the banns were called. And James Brennan had been so outraged by the idea of his daughter sneaking out to wrestle with Douglas, he’d gotten drunk as three princes and spent the night sleeping in the dooryard, as his wife locked him out of the house.
    “I heard that Mr. Brennan went hunting for young Douglas, and the lad hid out in his father’s hayloft—where the smart wagers are the deed was first done—until the crisis passed.” Brenna stretched out like a lazy cat in the backseat, with the bill of her cap over her eyes. “Maggie’s going to have second thoughts soon enough, when she finds her belly swelled and that feckless Douglas with his boots under the bed.”
    “The