Colin looked up, and it was as if Finian hadn’t spoken. “Your family, Fin. What happened?”
He set his glass on the table. “I should have been there. We were sailing up the coast on holiday, but an important business matter came up and I let Sally and the girls go on without me. I would join them the next day. For a long time I believed they’d be alive if I gone with them. More likely, I’d be dead, too.”
“Maybe in the end they were comforted knowing you weren’t with them.”
“Maybe so, but in a way, I was there, Colin, and have been ever since.” Finian looked across the rustic restaurant as the Donovan brothers laughed and joked with one another. “I’m alone in this world, Colin, but you’re not.”
“You’re not alone, either, Fin. You have a brother and sisters and nieces and nephews and friends in Ireland, and you’re a man of faith.”
“My wife and daughters are with God. You know I believe that, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“My call to the priesthood wasn’t a fiction.”
“I know that, too.”
“I’ll miss them every day of my life. Every day, my friend.”
Finian splashed whiskey into a glass and passed it over to Colin, then raised his own glass. “Sláinte.”
Colin raised his glass. “Sláinte.”
CHAPTER 43
MATT YANKOWSKI JOINED EMMA ON HER BACK porch. She was painting another scene of the docks. “I tossed the other one I was working on,” she said. “I couldn’t look at the boat without thinking seagull.”
“Some things you just can’t fix.”
She pointed her paintbrush at her current project. “This is a lobster boat.”
“Uh-huh. Yeah. I knew that. I like lobster boats. They’re classic coastal Maine. I just don’t want to ride in one.” He sat on the balustrade, the docks behind him quiet so late on a cold autumn afternoon. “Is Colin Donovan the sort of man you used to dream about as a nun?”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, hell.” Yank groaned. “You two are serious? I thought he was another of your whims. He’s not a lobsterman, and he doesn’t know anything about art.”
“Neither do you, and we’re friends.”
“We’re not that kind of friends.”
Emma set down her paintbrush. “Everyone else in my life knows art. He’s refreshing.”
Yank frowned as she stood back from her work in progress. “Colin can probably paint at least as well as you.”
She laughed, then looked at him seriously. “Yank, I’m not making a mistake.”
“He’s not going to change. You know that, right?”
“I wouldn’t want him to.”
“That’s easy to say now when he’s kayaking and picking apples with you in Maine. That won’t always be the case. What’ll you do if he disappears for a few months?”
Emma had a feeling they weren’t just talking about her. “I like what I’m doing with the team. I’m looking forward to being closer to Heron’s Cove. I’ll be fine. Sometimes the work has to come first, Yank. I know that.”
“Yeah. So you say.” Yank stood. “Colin’s always gone his own way. So have you. You both need space. I guess you’ll see what happens. He’s not easy, but you know that.” He paused. “Do I smell applesauce?”
“A pie,” she said.
He grinned. “Even better. Did you pick the apples yourself?”
She smiled back at him. “Colin and I did.”
* * *
Emma arrived late at Hurley’s. The Donovan brothers and Father Bracken were in the midst of a friendly, if heated, discussion on the art and science of whiskey distillation and the merits of various types of whiskey. Finian Bracken, of course, knew what he was talking about, but she’d already come to realize that a Donovan didn’t necessarily allow lack of knowledge to get in the way of a good argument. She liked that about them. They weren’t tentative, but they also didn’t mind being wrong—at least about the ins and outs of distilling whiskey. About lobstering, boats, law enforcement work and people—they hated being wrong, and seldom were.
As she approached their table, she noticed Colin’s gaze slide over her and she immediately reacted and was grateful for the dim light in the place. No one could see the heat rushing to her face or the slight wobble in her knees.
“We’ll do a taste test,” Father Bracken said, “and you can decide what you like.”
“I like them all,” Mike Donovan, down from the north of Maine, said.
“In moderation, of course,” Bracken added, as he always did.
Colin was on his feet and slipped an arm around Emma’s waist. He led her outside, down to the docks. She touched a finger to his lips. “Me first,” she said. “Vladimir Bulgov is talking. He’s a major player but not the only one.”
“Emma…”
“You have to go back.”
He didn’t argue with her, and she thought she could see his relief that she understood what he had to do. He nodded toward Hurley’s. They could hear the laughter of the Donovan brothers and Rock Point’s Irish priest. “You won’t be alone.”
“Neither will you,” she said.
He grimaced but there was a spark in his gray eyes. “Yank’s putting me on his team and making himself my contact agent. He’s turning me into one of his ghosts. It’s that or let him stick me at a desk for real.”
“You two,” Emma said with amusement, but she took Colin’s hand and lifted it to her lips, kissing his fingers. Then she held on to him as she raised her mouth to his and kissed him softly. “I can handle loving you, Colin. And I do love you.”
“Emma. Ah, Emma.” His voice was low, hoarse, as he kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be back.”
She walked up to Hurley’s alone. Father Bracken and Mike, Andy and Kevin Donovan were taste-testing Bracken 15 year old and what she suspected was a very expensive single-malt Scotch.
They all insisted she join them. “I don’t even like whiskey all that much,” she said as she sat at their
