“Do you like the shop?”
“I’m…intrigued,” I replied. “I never knew that about Aileen. That she was into all that new age crystal stuff.”
“She spent most of her time in there, that’s for sure.”
“It feels warm in there. Better. If that’s a thing.” I shrugged. “People say crystals have all these energies. Maybe it’s that.”
“Perhaps.” The conversation ebbed out for a moment before he nodded up the hill. “You’ve been up to see the tower house?”
“Yeah.” Glancing over my shoulder, I studied the ruins until my eyes began to water. “It’s such a sad story.”
“The world wasn’t always such a nice place for those who were different,” Boone said, sounding rather philosophical.
“I suppose not.”
We fell into an awkward silence again, and just like last time, he was the one who broke it.
“You’re drawn to the older places,” he said mysteriously. “The tower house, the hawthorn saplin’, the crystals in the shop.”
“I suppose,” I said with a shrug.
“Don’t you think it’s curious?” he asked, wiping his brow with his forearm.
“No. Should it be?” I wasn’t quite sure what he was getting at. Boone had this mysterious thing going on, but he was starting to speak in riddles. I wondered if it was an Irish thing or if it was his own personal quirk.
“Your mam was the same,” he said. “She liked those places.”
“Oh?”
We stood in silence for a moment, neither of us knowing what to say. I was never good at small talk, which was probably why I’d always had small friendship groups. All my friends had been Alex’s first, so when we broke up the other day, I assumed I would never hear from them again. They knew him longer, so that’s how it usually went.
“You and Aileen,” I began.
Boone sprang to life. “Ah, I was homeless, you see, and she offered to help me get back on me feet.”
“Really?” I tilted my head to the side.
“Aye, she offered me a room in her home, and Derrydun offered me as much work as I was able to accept.”
“Okay.”
“When she passed… I moved to a little place of me own a mile down from the village center,” he went on. “It’s a little rough around the edges, but it’s comin’ along. I like it.”
Yeah, I reckon I was right taking back my earlier assumption of him. He seemed genuine, and I felt bad for giving him a taste of my trademark sass.
“It feels so long ago,” I muttered, sitting on the fence.
“What does?”
“The day I found out… It was only last Monday. That means…” I sighed. No wonder my inner bitch was raging. “A month ago, I lost my job. Then my boyfriend dumped me last Sunday night, and Robert turned up on Monday telling me about Aileen. Two days after that, I was on a plane to the other side of the world, and then yesterday, Saturday, I buried the mother I never got to know. For the first time, I’m completely alone. That’s my life in a nutshell.” I glanced at Boone nervously. “I’m sorry, I’ve been mean to you this whole time.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said with a lopsided grin. “I figured it would be a lot for you to take in. No offense taken.”
“Nothing seems to faze you, does it?”
“There’s always worry in life, that’s how it works, but you can't let it stop you from bein’ happy.” He sat beside me and cast his gaze over the field. “Your boyfriend is a fool if you ask me. Lettin’ a pretty thing like you go?” He shook his head. “Cic maith sa tóin atá de dlíth air.”
I narrowed my eyes, trying to ignore the part where he said I was pretty. “What does that mean?”
“It’s Irish for he needs a good kick up the ass.”
I laughed, slapping my hand over my mouth. “In Australia, we would say he needs a good kick up the clacker.”
His smile widened, and he shoved his hand through his wild hair. It was a full-on modelesque pose, and my insides began to quiver. His T-shirt didn’t leave much to the imagination, which didn’t help, either. Realizing I was staring and developing a crush on the poor guy, I turned my attention to the sheep in the field. They were white with black faces and feet, and every single one had a line of brightly colored paint on their backsides. I wondered what it was for.
“Why are the sheep painted all different colors?” I asked.
“Ah, it’s so everyone can tell which one is theirs,” Boone replied. “They put them all into the same field, which is our way of sayin’ we were too lazy to put up a fence.”
I smiled, counting four different colors. There wasn’t much artistic value in their markings, just a line of paint haphazardly slapped on each rump. Blue, red, green, and orange.
“Then there’s Albert,” Boone went on as a ram came into view. Well, I was fairly sure it was a ram since it had horns on its head. “He’s a special sort around here.”
I snorted as Albert’s back end came into view. His backside had been painted in black and white stripes.
“Sligeach,” Boone declared in Irish. “County Sligo Football Club.”
“You painted a sheep’s ass in football colors?” I asked, my mouth dropping open.
“Nay, I didn’t,” he said, trying to hold in his laughter. “Roy did.”
I shook my head, knowing the more I was going to see of Derrydun, the stranger it would become.
“Do you like it here?” I asked, the question coming out of the blue.
Boone shrugged. “It’s as good a place as any. People have accepted me here, I enjoy me work, and I suppose I’ve helped in me own way.”
“Helped?”
“Small places like this, they thrive on community,” he explained.
“I see.” I stared down at the village, wondering what it would feel like to be part of something bigger than myself. I’d floated for so long I wasn’t sure what it would look like.
“Whatever you choose, Skye, you’ll always be welcome here.”
My gaze snapped up and
