Free Rock Point (Sharpe & Donovan) by Carla Neggers Page B

professional and elegant. She was always, Finian thought, lovely. She smiled at him and ignored Sean. “How are you, Fin? Will you be staying with us tonight?”
    “I’m doing well, Kitty. It’s good to see you. I’m staying up at the Murphy farm.”
    She still didn’t look at Sean. “The spring lambs are starting to arrive, I’m sure.”
    “We lost one this morning,” Sean said, casual. “A coyote got it. Bit its little head—”
    Kitty stopped him midsentence with a stony glare, then turned back to Finian. “I love to see the lambs prancing in the fields in the spring.” She looked at Father Callaghan. “Anything else I can get you, Father?”
    “Not right now. I might have a look at your whiskey cabinet a little later.”
    “I recommend the Bracken 15 year old,” Kitty said with a quick smile at Finian.
    “Sean and I will be on our way,” Finian said.
    “All right, then. Good night, Fin. Sean.” She spun into a small backroom behind the bar.
    Father Callaghan raised his eyebrows at Sean. “There’s a story between you two, isn’t there?”
    “It’d take the full bottle of Bracken 15 to tell that tale,” Sean said.
    “I’ve no doubt.” The older priest’s eyes—a pale green—shifted to Finian. “Bracken 15? Father Bracken? A connection?”
    “My brother and I started Bracken Distillers in our early twenties,” Finian said.
    Father Callaghan’s surprise was obvious. “Then you decided to become a priest?”
    Sean spared Finian from having to answer. “Another long story,” he said, easing off his barstool. “Good to meet you, Father Joseph. Enjoy your last few days in Ireland. I hope you get that sabbatical.”
    “Thanks. I enjoyed meeting you both, too. Finian, if you’d like to spend a year in southern Maine, maybe we can work something out with your bishop. You know where to find me.”
    Finian stood, smiling at the American. “Saint Patrick’s Church in Rock Point, Maine.”
    * * *
    “You’re going to see about taking this parish in Maine?” Sean asked as he and Finian turned onto the quiet lane that wound onto Shepherd Head, the village lights twinkling beneath them in the darkness. It was a good walk—much of it uphill—to Murphy farm, but also a decent night for it, windy and chilly but dry.
    Finian continued a few steps before he answered. “I’d be doing the old fellow a favor.”
    “And yourself.”
    “Maybe, maybe not. It would only be a year, while Joseph Callaghan got his fill of Guinness, Irish saints and Irish genealogy.”
    “You don’t think he’ll get his fill of Irish scenery?”
    Finian could hear the Celtic Sea crashing onto the cliffs, and he could see stars and a half-moon in the sky above the black horizon. “One can never get one’s fill of Irish scenery.”
    “You’re only saying that because you’re thinking about being away from it for a year.”
    “You’re a cynical man, Sean Murphy.”
    “You know what ecclesiastic strings to pull to get this parish?”
    “That’s one way of putting it.”
    The village lights disappeared, and the hill became more steep, the cliffs closer—a sharp plummet across a narrow strip of grass and a low stone wall. Sean had grown up here on Shepherd Head. Finian had grown up on a farm in the Kerry hills, if not one as prosperous as the Murphy farm. He and his twin brother Declan were eldest of five. Declan was married with three small children. Two of their three younger sisters were married, also with small children.
    Finian braked his thinking and returned himself to this moment, this quiet walk along the edge of sea cliffs. He could hear sheep now in the dark, distant fields. When he’d arrived late that afternoon, Sean and his uncle, who worked the farm, had just brought several vulnerable pregnant ewes down to the barn and an adjoining field.
    “I suppose I should have been nicer to Kitty,” Sean said.
    “I wouldn’t have mentioned the coyote killing the newborn lamb, I have to say.”
    “As