lizabeth was thirteen years old and had settled into her first few weeks of secondary school. This meant she had to travel farther out of town to go to school so she was up and out earlier than everyone else in the morning, and because classes finished later, she returned home in the dark in the evening. She was spending very little time with eleven-month-old Saoirse. Unlike her primary school bus, her new school bus dropped her at the end of the long road that led from the bungalow, leaving her alone on her walk to the front door, where nobody stood to greet her. It was winter and the dark mornings and evenings had taken over, draping black velvet over the country for the next few months. Elizabeth, for the third time that week, had walked down the road in the harsh wind and rain, her school skirt lifting and dancing around her legs while her heavy school bag laden with books stooped her back.

Now she sat by the fire, in her pajamas, trying to warm her body, with one eye on her homework, the other eye on Saoirse, who was crawling along the floor putting everything she could lay her chubby hands on in her drooling mouth. Her father was in the kitchen, heating up his homemade vegetable stew again. It was what they ate every day. Porridge for breakfast, stew for dinner. Occasionally, they would have a thick piece of beef or some fresh fish her father had caught that day. Elizabeth loved those days.

Saoirse gurgled and dribbled to herself, waving her hands around and watching Elizabeth, happy to see her big sister home. Elizabeth smiled at her and made encouraging noises before turning back to her homework. Using the couch as security, Saoirse pulled herself up onto her feet, as she had been doing for the past few weeks. She slowly stepped sideways, going back and forth, back and forth, before turning around to Elizabeth.

"Come on, Saoirse, you can do it." Elizabeth put down her pencil and fixed her attention on her little sister. Every day now, Saoirse had attempted the walk across the room to her sister but had ended on her padded behind. Elizabeth was determined to be there when she finally made that leap. She wanted to make a song and dance about it like her mother would if she was still here.

Saoirse blew air out of her mouth, bubbles forming on her lips, and spoke in her own mysterious language.

"Yes." Elizabeth nodded. "Come to Elizabeth." She held her arms out.

Slowly, Saoirse let go and with a determined look on her face she began to take those steps. Farther and farther she walked, while Elizabeth held her breath, trying not to shout in excitement for fear of throwing her off. Saoirse held Elizabeth's stare all the way. Elizabeth would never forget that look in her baby sister's eyes, such determination. Finally, she reached Elizabeth and she took her in her arms and danced her around, smothering her in kisses while Saoirse giggled and blew more bubbles.

"Dad, Dad!" Elizabeth called out.

"What?" he shouted crankily.

"Come here quick!" Elizabeth called, helping Saoirse applaud herself.

Brendan appeared at the door, concern written across his face.

"Saoirse walked, Dad! Look, do it again Saoirse, walk for Daddy!" She placed her sister on the floor and encouraged her to do it again.

Brendan huffed, "Jaysus, I thought it was something important, I thought there was somethin' wrong with ya, don't be botherin' me like that." He turned his back and returned to the kitchen.

When Saoirse looked up in her second attempt to show her family how clever she was and saw that her daddy was gone, her face fell and so did she, landing on her bum again.

Elizabeth had been at work the day Luke learned to walk; Edith had called her in the middle of a meeting and she couldn't talk so had heard about it when she got home. Thinking about it now, she realized she had reacted very similarly to her dad and, once again, she hated herself for it. As an adult, she could now understand her father's reaction; it wasn't that he wasn't proud or that he didn't care, it was just that he cared too much. First they walk, then they fly away.

The encouraging thought was, if Elizabeth had managed to help her sister to walk once, surely she could help her back on her feet a second time.

Elizabeth awoke with a jump, feeling cold and frozen in fear after her nightmare. Her eyes darted around the room. The moon had finished its shift on her side of the world and had moved on, making way for the sun. The silver-blue light across her bedclothes had been replaced by a yellow trail. It was four thirty-five and Elizabeth immediately felt awake. She propped herself up on her elbows. Her duvet lay half on the floor, the other half caught up in her legs. She'd had a fitful sleep in which dreams began and were unfinished before she jumped into new ones, overlapping into each other to create a bizarre blur of faces, places, and random words. She felt exhausted.

As she looked around the room, irritation seeped into her body. Although she had cleaned the house from top to bottom till it glistened two days ago, she had the urge to do it all over again. Items were out of place and kept catching the corner of her eye. She rubbed her nose, which was beginning to itch out of frustration, and she threw the bedclothes off her.

Immediately she began tidying. She had a total of twelve pillows to display on her bed, six rows of two, consisting of regular pillows, oblong-shaped, and circular at the front. All had different textures, ranging from rabbit fur to suede, and were various shades of cream, beige, and coffee. Once satisfied with the bed, she ensured that her clothes were hanging in the correct order, from dark colors on the left to bright on the right, although she had very little color in her wardrobe. Wearing the slightest bit of color, Elizabeth always felt as though she were walking down the street in flashing neon. She vacuumed the floor, dusted and polished the mirrors, and straightened the three small hand towels in the bathroom, taking a few minutes to perfectly align the stripes. The taps glistened and she kept on scrubbing furiously until she could see her reflection in the tiles. By six-thirty she had completed the living room and kitchen, and feeling less restless, she sat outside in the garden with a cup of coffee while looking over her designs in preparation for that morning's meeting. She had gotten a total of three hours' sleep that night.

Benjamin West rolled his eyes and ground his teeth together in frustration while his boss paced the floor of the on-site cabin and ranted in his thick New York accent.

"You see Benji, I'm just—"

"Benjamin," he interrupted.

"—sick and tired," he continued, not acknowledging him, "of hearing all the same shit from everyone. All these designers are the same. They want contemporary this, minimalist that. Well, Art Deco my balls, Benji!"

"It's—"

"I mean, how many of these companies have we met with over here so far?" He stopped pacing and looked at Benjamin.

Benjamin flicked through his diary. "Em, eight, not including the woman who had to leave early on Friday, Elizabeth—"

"It doesn't matter," he said, cutting him off, "she's the same as the rest." He waved his hand dismissively and spun around to look out the window at the construction site. His thin gray plait swung with his head.

"Well, we have another meeting with her in a half hour," Benjamin said, checking his watch.

"Cancel it. Whatever she has to say, I don't care. She's as straitlaced as they come. How many hotels have you and I worked on together, Benji?"

Benjamin sighed. "It's Benjamin and we've worked together a lot, Vincent."

"A lot." He nodded to himself. "That's what I thought. And how many of them have had a view as good as this?" He held out his hand to display the scenery out the window. Benjamin spun around in his chair, uninterested, and could barely bring himself to look past the noise and mess of the site. They were behind schedule. Sure it was pretty, but he'd prefer to look out that window and see a completed hotel standing there, not rolling hills and lakes. He'd been in Ireland for months now and the hotel was scheduled to be finished by August, three months away. Born in Haxton, Colorado, but living in New York, he thought he'd long escaped the claustrophobic feeling that only a small town could bring. Apparently not. At thirty-eight years old, it had been more than twenty years since he'd been in that place his parents liked to call home. But after spending the past seven months in the small village of Baile na gCroithe, he felt like the stifled sixteen-year-old he thought he'd left well and truly behind in his hometown.

"Well?" Vincent had lit a cigar and was sucking on the end.

"It's a great view," Benjamin said in a bored tone.

"It's a fucking fantastic view and I'm not gonna let some fancy shmancy interior designer come in here and make it look like some city hotel we've done a million times before."

"What have you got in mind, Vincent?" All Benjamin had been hearing for the past two months was what he didn't want.

Dressed in a shiny gray suit, Vincent marched toward his briefcase, took out a folder, and slid it down the table to Benjamin. "Look at those newspaper articles, the place is a goddamn gold mine. I want what they want. People don't want some average hotel, it needs to be romantic, fun, artistic, none of this clinical, modern stuff. If the next person walks in here with the same shitty ideas, I'll design the damn thing myself." He turned to the window with a red face and puffed on his cigar.

Benjamin rolled his eyes at Vincent's dramatics.

"I want a real artist," he continued, "a raving damn lunatic. Someone creative, with a bit of flair. I'm sick of these corporate suits talking about paint colors, who've never picked up a paintbrush in their life. I want the van Gogh of interior design—"

A knock on the door interrupted him.

"Who's that?" Vincent said gruffly, still red in the face from his rant. "It's probably Elizabeth Egan, here for the meeting." "I thought I told you to cancel that."

Benjamin ignored him and walked over to the door to let Elizabeth in.

"Hello," she said, entering the room, followed by a plum-haired Poppy, spattered with paint and weighed down with folders spilling with carpet samples and fabrics.

"Hi, I'm Benjamin West, project manager, we met on Friday." He shook her hand.

"Yes, I'm sorry about having to leave early," she replied crisply, not looking him in the eye. "It's not a regular occurrence, I can assure you." She turned to face the struggling lady behind her. "This is Poppy, my assistant. I hope you don't mind her sitting in with us," she said curtly.

Poppy battled with the folders in order to shake Benjamin's hand, resulting in a few folders crashing to the ground.

"Oh, shit," she said loudly and Elizabeth spun around with a face like thunder.

Benjamin laughed. "That's OK, let me help you."

"Mr. Taylor," Elizabeth said loudly, walking across the room with an extended hand. "Good to meet you again, sorry about the last meeting."

Vincent turned from the window, looked her black suit up and down, and puffed on his cigar. He didn't shake her hand, instead turned to face out the window again.

Benjamin helped Poppy carry the folders to the table and spoke to clear the awkwardness from the room. "Why don't we all take a seat."

Elizabeth, flushed in the face, slowly lowered her hand and turned to face the table. Her voice went up an octave. "Ivan!"

Poppy's face crumpled into a frown and she looked around the room.

"It's OK," Benjamin said to her, "people get my name wrong all the time. The name's Benjamin, Ms. Egan."

"Oh, not you." Elizabeth laughed. "I'm talking about the man in the chair beside you." She walked toward the table. "What are you doing here? I didn't know you were involved in the hotel, I thought you worked with children."

Vincent raised his eyebrows and watched her nodding and smiling politely in the silence. He began to laugh, a hearty guffaw that ended in hacking coughs.

"Are you OK, Mr. Taylor?" Elizabeth asked with concern.

"Yes, Ms. Egan, I'm fine. Absolutely fine, it's a pleasure to meet you." He held out his hand.

While Poppy and Elizabeth went about arranging their files, Vincent spoke under his breath to Benjamin. "This one might just be the type to cut her ear off after all."

The door to the cabin opened and in walked the receptionist with a tray of coffee cups.

"Well, it was lovely to meet you again; 'bye, Ivan," Elizabeth called out as the door closed behind the woman.

"Gone now, is he?" Poppy asked drily.

"Don't worry." Benjamin laughed, under his breath, to Poppy while watching Elizabeth in admiration. "She's fitting the profile perfectly. You guys were listening outside the door, right?" He smiled at Poppy.

Poppy looked at him, confused.

"Don't worry, you're not gonna get into trouble or anything." He laughed. "But you heard us talking, right?"

Poppy thought for a while, then nodded her head slowly up and down, still looking rather confused.

Benjamin chuckled and looked away. "I knew it. Clever woman," he thought aloud, watching Elizabeth engrossed in conversation with Vincent.

They both tuned in to the conversation.

"I like you, Elizabeth, I really do," Vincent was saying genuinely. "I like your eccentricity." Elizabeth frowned.

"You know, your quirkiness. That's when you know someone's a genius, and I like geniuses on my team."

Elizabeth nodded slowly, utterly bewildered at what he was going on about.

"But," Vincent continued, "I'm not too convinced on your ideas, in fact I'm not convinced at all. I don't like 'em." There was silence.

Elizabeth moved uncomfortably in her seat. "OK." She tried to remain businesslike. "What is it exactly that you have in mind?"

"Love."

"Love," Elizabeth repeated dully.

"Yes. Love." He leaned back in the chair, fingers interlocked across his stomach.

"You have love in mind," Elizabeth said stonily, looking at Benjamin for assurance.

Benjamin rolled his eyes and shrugged.

"Hey, I don't give a shit about love," Vincent said as a way of explanation. "I've been married twenty-five years. It's the Irish public that wants it. Where is that thing?" He looked around the table, then slid the folder of newspaper articles toward Elizabeth.

After a moment of flicking through the pages, Elizabeth spoke. In her voice Benjamin sensed disappointment. "Ah, I see. You want a themed hotel."

"You make it sound tacky when you say that." He waved his hand dismissively.

"I believe themed hotels are tacky," Elizabeth said firmly. She couldn't forsake her principles, even for a plum job like this.

Benjamin and Poppy looked to Vincent for his response. It was like watching a tennis match.

"Elizabeth," Vincent said with a smile twitching at the corners of his lips. "You're a beautiful young woman, surely you should know this. Love is not a theme. It's an atmosphere, a mood."

"I see," Elizabeth said, sounding and looking as though she didn't see at all. "You want to create a feeling of love in a hotel."

"Exactly!" Vincent said, looking pleased. "But it's not what I want, it's what they want." He stabbed the newspaper with his finger.

Elizabeth cleared her throat and spoke as if addressing a child. "Mr. Taylor, it's June, what people here refer to as silly season, when there's nothing else to write about. The media simply represents a distorted image of the public's opinion—it's not accurate, you know, it doesn't represent the hopes and wishes of the Irish people. To strive for something to meet the needs of the media would be to make a huge mistake."

Vincent looked unimpressed.

Elizabeth continued, "Look, the hotel is in a wonderful location with stunning views, bordering a beautiful town with an endless amount of outdoor amenities available. My designs are about bringing the outside in, making the landscapes part of the interior. With the use of natural earthy tones like dark greens and browns and with the use of stone we can—"

"I've heard all this before," Vincent puffed. "I don't want the hotel to blend in with the mountains, I want it to stand out. I don't want the guests to feel like damn hobbits sleeping in a mound of grass and mud." He stabbed his cigar out angrily in the ashtray.

She'd lost him, Benjamin thought. Too bad, this one really tried. He watched her face melt as the job slipped away from her.

"Mr. Taylor," she said quickly, "you haven't heard all my ideas yet."

She was grasping at straws.

Vincent grunted and looked at his diamond-studded Rolex. "You've got thirty seconds."

She froze for twenty of them and eventually her face fell and she looked to be in a great deal of pain as she spoke her next few words. "Poppy." She sighed. "Tell him your ideas."

"Yes!" Poppy jumped up in excitement and danced around the other side of the table to Vincent. "OK, so I'm thinking water beds in the shape of a heart, hot tubs, champagne flutes that rise from the bedside lockers. I'm thinking the Romantic era meets Art Deco. An explosion"—she made explosion signs with her hands—"of rich reds, burgundy, and wine that make you feel like you're being embraced in a velvet-lined womb. Candles everywhere. French boudoir meets—"

As Poppy rambled on and Vincent nodded his head animatedly while hanging on her every word, Benjamin turned to look at Elizabeth, who in turn had her head in her hand, wincing at every one of Poppy's ideas. Their eyes met and they both shared an exasperated look over their respective colleagues.

Then they shared a smile.