Dylan's eyes turned dark and he averted his gaze. “What did I do there?” he repeated as if he was deeply contemplating the question. “I lived. Just like everybody else. I felt happiness and sorrow. Failure and success.”
“And you’re here now.”
“That I am.”
She watched him take a hefty bite out of the chicken. “It was a woman, wasn’t it?” she asked softly.
He half-turned and watched a couple strolling around the lake hand-in-hand. “Must it always be a woman?”
“What else could make you leave a home you’d known all your life?”
“I don’t know,” he said, turning back to look at her again. “Why don’t you tell me?” His voice was soft and almost silky. “What prompted you to come here, to a town where you didn’t know a soul, to work for an old woman you’d met only through the Internet?”
“Touché.”
“No, I’m quite serious. What made you come here?”
“I wanted to start over. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.”
“But you must have some skills.”
“Are you saying I’m a poor fish breeder?”
He laughed. It came from deep inside him; she could picture him in an Irish pub, surrounded by friends, raising a pint high and laughing that same laugh. “Not at all. You make a very good fish breeder.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “You’re an educated woman.”
“Home schooled.”
“Are you, now?”
“And you’re not.”
“No. Typical school. They’re a bit like a prison, they are.”
“You’d prefer to be outdoors.”
“I’m an open book to you, aren’t I? Aye, the outdoors beckon to me. Give me sunshine, fresh air and laughter. And a bit of ale never hurt.”
“So you know why I came here. To start over,” Vicki said. “Why did you come here?”
He paused for such a long time that she was coming to the conclusion that he did not intend to answer when he said, “To start over.”
“And you chose Lumberton because Aunt Laurel is here.”
He nodded. “Same as you, actually. She summoned us both, didn’t she?”
In the fourth book of the Black Swamp Mysteries series, Dylan's Song, Dylan is summoned back to Ireland when his grandmother is dying. It is there that Vicki unravels the mystery behind the real reason Dylan left his homeland and came to America--while harboring a secret of her own.
