Prologue

In Ireland

It was the land of their ancestors, and Honor swore she could hear their voices crying in the wind. The storm had been building since morning, silver mist giving way to driving rain, gusts off the sea now blowing the hedges and trees almost horizontal. The stone walls that had seemed so magical when she'd first arrived now seemed dark and menacing.

From the plane yesterday morning, Honor had been awed by the green, by the emerald grass and hedgerows and trees. Her three daughters had gazed down, excited and hoping they could see their father's sculpture from the sky. He had written them letters about Ireland, and about the West Cork farmhouse he had found for them to stay in, and how he'd built his latest work on the very edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. They had fought to open the letters when they came, and be the one to read them out loud, and sleep with them under their pillows.

"There it is!" Regis, fourteen, had cried out, pointing at a crumbling castle.

"No, it's there..." twelve-year-old Agnes had said, crowding her sister to point out the window. Square green fields ran along the coast, each dotted with tiny white farm buildings. Stone towers and ruined castles seemed to crown every high hill.

"They all look like the pictures he sent," Cecilia, just seven, had said. "It doesn't matter which house it is, as long as he's in it. Right, Mom?"

"Right, sweetheart," Honor had said, sounding so much calmer than she'd felt.

"It'll be just like home, Mom," Agnes had said, forehead pressed to the plane's window. "A beach, and stone walls...only now we'll be on the other side of the Atlantic, instead of home in Black Hall. It's like going across a mirror..."

"Look at all that green," Cecilia had said.

"Just like our green fields of home," Agnes had said, unconsciously echoing the lyrics of a song her aunt used to sing to her.

"What's the first thing you're going to do when you see Daddy?" Regis had asked, turning to peer at Honor. There was such a challenge in her daughter's face--almost as if she knew how troubled her mother felt.

"She's going to hug and kiss him," Agnes said. "Right, Mom?"

"That's what I'm going to do, too!" Cece said.

"The first thing I'm going to do," Regis said, "is ask him to show me his sculpture. It's his biggest one yet, and it's right at the edge of the highest cliff, and I want to climb up on top and see if I can see America!"

"You can't see America across the Atlantic Ocean, can you, Mom?" Cece asked.

"I'll be able to see it, I swear I will," Regis said. "Dad said he could see it, so why wouldn't I be able to?"

"Your father was speaking figuratively," Honor said. "He meant he could see it in his mind, or his heart...the dream of America that our ancestors had when they left Ireland."

"And Daddy's still dreaming," Cece said.

Cece had counted the days till this trip. Agnes prayed for his safety. And Regis followed in his footsteps. Although she didn't want to be an artist, she did want to live life on the edge. Over the past year she had been delivered back to the Academy by the police twice--once for diving off the train bridge into Devil's Hole, and once for climbing to the top of the lighthouse to hang the Irish flag.

Instead of being upset, John had gone straight to the lighthouse with his camera to take pictures before the Coast Guard could climb up to take the flag down. He had been touched by his daughter's Irish pride, and by her way of making a statement--regardless of risk.

Almost like his sculptures; he called them "sandcastles,"...

 

"Rice delicately handles heartbreak and redemption."

 

Sandcastles by Luanne Rice
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