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to these ghostly visitations. It was enough that she had managed to cling to her sanity and, at the same time, accept their reality and accommodate their presence. But to have demands made again not only upon her brain but also upon her heart was more than she was willing to accept.
    If Declan Tovey, by the exercise of some shenanigans of unknowable origin, had been allowed to tread again upon Ireland’s holy ground, let him limit his hauntings to the place of his burial, the cliff side and the beach where her house had stood, where his grave had been. Or, were that not acceptable, let him return to the burial plot prepared for him, now become sediment at the bottom of the sea. Even Kerry hospitality had its limits—limits, as everyone knew, that already reached beyond the boundaries of infinity.
    But Declan, having been consigned to realms not within the known world, could no longer make legitimate claim to its welcome. Kitty already had two ghosts—three if she counted the slain pig, the very pig that with its undisciplined snout had dug up Declan’s buried remains. Her affliction caused by the handsome Taddy should have granted her immunity from a repeat contagion. She became impatient. She’d had enough; she’d accept no more. “Go if you want,” she said. “Go to where the house was. And where the garden grew. Go down to the water’s edge at the foot of the cliffs and see for yourself what might be there. The sea has ways of its own. What it might yield today or tomorrow no one knows. But that’s the one way you might find out.”
    Kieran, either more brazen or more foolish than his wife, asked outright, “Is there something in particular you’re looking for? Have you lost something that you’ve a need for now?”
    â€œOh, no. No. Nothing. I only came to say I’m sorry it all was lost. I’ve been away. It was a fine place you had, and all the McClouds before. And now it’s gone—and into the sea. Well, it’s an honored Kerry way to go, isn’t it?” He switched his sack from the right hand back to the left, signaling the end of what he had to say. Except he had more: “But … I mean … if ever you do find … No. No. Let it be.”
    With his persisting look of soulful mourning, he had the good grace to lower his eyes so Kitty could not see what she knew would be a deeper, darker depth than she had seen before. Were she allowed speech, she would have begged him to disappear or to go—and quickly, too.
    â€œCan you come in and have a bit of something to eat?” Kieran was saying. “If nettle soup is to your liking, no one makes it better than my wife.”
    Within Kitty rose the impulse to do away with her husband—until she was rescued by a sudden realization: Ghosts don’t eat. Kieran, in his superior wisdom, was putting Declan to the test. If he were to accept, if he were to actually sit down and eat …
    Kitty was spared the completion of her thought. A wan smile had come to Declan’s face. “No. Thank you, no. I’ve got to be going back the way I came. Maude McCloskey up the road, she might want me to replace her roof slate with thatch. To preserve the old ways. Thatch was the original and the slate considered an improvement by her husband long moved away. She’s thinking she might go back to thatch, so he’ll see it if he should ever come home.” He laughed less than half a laugh. “And God save us all.”
    â€œGod and Mary, too,” Kieran mumbled as the man turned and slowly started making his way back along the road, away from the castle, taking onto his once proud shoulders the full burden of his sorrows and his grief.
    A ghost cannot thatch a roof. Untold times Kitty and Kieran had seen Brid at her loom in the tower room, and only once did any cloth appear; then it disappeared. At all other times the moving loom, with Brid’s bare and muddy