It was only fitting, Peter thought ironically, as he trudged with heavy heart out of the town he had learned to call home. It was only fitting he leave the same way he came, with a rucksack on his back and a shower to bid him farewell. No sooner had Brendan Kearney returned to Fitzgerald’s Pub and the christening party being held there than the skies decided to pour forth a blinding downpour on his head.

    He didn’t care. He didn’t think he would ever care about anything again, but he couldn’t stop the prick in his heart as he remembered that long ago day when he had entered the small Irish village of Ballykissangel as a lonely priest, without friends, without home, without purpose. He had been walking, he remembered, determined to drink in the beauty of the countryside, and then, as if to rob him of even that small joy, God had called out rain from the heavens and soaked him through.

    Much like now.

    Only then, he had been saved by the intervention of a stranger. A sharp-tongued, antagonistic, beautiful, red-headed stranger.

    “Assumpta.” Peter choked the word out. He had asked her then about her name, had been met with cold cynicism, had determined to break through her shell and discover what it was that made her so cold.

    He had never expected to fall in love with her.

    If he closed his eyes, he could almost picture how she had looked that very first moment, when she poked her head out of the beat-up old blue van. If he listened hard enough, he could almost hear the clipped tones of her voice, as she called out,

    “Can I give you a lift?”

    Peter jumped. He had underestimated the powers of his own imagination. By his side, was that same blue van. That same voice had called to him. His breath caught as he stared into the laughing eyes of the woman he knew he would never see again.

    He wanted to say something but was afraid of breaking the spell. He needed to stare at his self-imposed illusion, using this warm, living, breathing Assumpta to replace the last image he had of her—on a cold, hard slab at the Cilldargen morgue.

    “Oh, come on, Peter. You’ll be soaked through,” she scolded, putting her head back inside the shelter of the van as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened over the last few days.

    Numb, Peter obeyed her. Only it wasn’t her. Assumpta was dead. But he was walking round her van. He was sitting in the passenger seat. He was toweling off his wet hair with the rag she threw him. “I don’t understand,” he finally managed.

    She laughed at him then, the same demeaning, bitter, yet strangely musical laugh she always had. “What’s this? The priest doesn’t believe in miracles?”

“I watched you die,” he croaked, his eyes devouring her while she still drove along the twisty mountain roads of the Irish Highlands.

    “I know.” Her voice softened all at once as she averted her gaze to watch him with pitying, love-filled eyes. Deep brown, softer than they’d ever been before. Eyes he could lose himself in.

    “Then, explain this.” Peter gestured around him with ever-increasing confusion.

    “I can’t explain it, Peter. I know I’m supposed to be the cynic, but I can’t explain it. I’m just here.”

    Peter almost didn’t want to ask the next question swirling in his brain, but it forced itself past his lips anyway. “Are you…dead?”

    Assumpta frowned, biting her lip, as though she herself didn’t know the answer. “I must be. It’s the only explanation, isn’t it?”

    Peter had the simultaneous desire to bury his head in his hands and leave it there until all this went away and to reach out and cling to her so it could never slip away. He restrained himself from doing either, his hands tightening on the dashboard with the effort of staying calm. “So why are you here?”

    “I don’t know that either, Peter. Would you stop asking so many blasted questions?” It was definitely Assumpta Fitzgerald before him, Peter thought. Only Assumpta had perfected that look of supreme annoyance which warned him that if he didn’t watch his tongue, he’d be barred.

    “Just one more,” he pressed on.

    She groaned, as she was want to do when exasperated. It was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. “What now?”

    “Can I touch you?” he asked so quietly he doubted her ability to hear.

    A moment later, he knew she had when she pulled the van to a stop at a rare wide spot in the road and turned to give him her full attention. “It’s worth a try,” she murmured.

    Slowly, gently, afraid of making the mirage fall apart, Peter reached out a trembling hand to touch her face. He almost gasped when he felt the smooth, silky surface of her cheek, as he saw her eyes close with the same rapturous disbelief he was feeling.

    “You’re real.” His hand still rested on her face. Otherwise, he had not moved. He was afraid of losing her at the slightest movement.

    Assumpta’s eyes opened, her mouth falling open to make one of her usual scathing retorts, but it died on her lips as she saw the look on his face. “Oh, Peter,” she whispered, in the tone of voice reserved only for him. Her own hands, soft as silk, white as alabaster, reached up to cover his, and then she turned her face to a press a gentle kiss to his palm.

    “Assumpta.” Her name made its way to his lips without his conscious permission, yet it carried it all the anguished months of repressed longing, all the desire of a newly-admitted love, all the grief of his inexpressible sorrow.

    And then, with no worries about clerical collars, with no Father Mac staring over them disapprovingly, with no Niamh to interfere, or Leo to separate them, they found their way to each other and gave into the need which had been building in them since the moment they laid eyes on each other.

    Peter felt the smooth pressure of her lips against his, felt her chest heaving against his as he enfolded her in his arms. He could feel each beat of her heart. Her heart. Beating, just as strong and sure as if it had never stopped. It was impossible, a miracle beyond imagining. But she was warm, and real, and here, and his.

    They both pulled away, deeply shaken, breathing heavily. “This doesn’t feel like a dream,” Assumpta murmured, echoing Peter’s thoughts exactly.

    “What else could it be then?” Peter asked, even while he put his arm around her shoulders and felt her head nestle against him. A perfect fit.

    “I don’t know.” She looked up at him, her eyes startling with their unabashed honesty. “I don’t care. Do you?”

    Peter shook his head. Be he fool or madman, he’d gladly stay this way, if only to be near her—her, who was supposed to be lost to him forever. “I love you,” he repeated the last words he had ever spoken to her.

    She grinned, and he could tell her familiar impishness was back in full force as she began to play with the loose, decidedly non-clerical collar of his shirt. “I can’t believe you gave me last rites.”

    Another time, Peter might have defended himself by claiming he was following Father Mac’s orders, or he thought he was doing right, but he knew she needed no answer from him. He knew it when she looked up in his face and all laughter fading from expression, spoke words he never thought he’d hear from her. “I love you, Peter.”

    He knew it was no illusion. He sought her mouth with his own and felt eternity begin.

    Dr. Michael Ryan felt his heart give way as he reached the bottom of the steep hill on the north side of Ballykissangel and saw the figure lying before him. “What happened here?” he forced out through gritted teeth, relying on all his years of clinical detachment.

    Ambrose Egan looked up at him, not even making an attempt to stop the tears flowing freely down his face. “He…we think, he…he lost his footing in the storm and couldn’t stop himself, and he…”

    Michael didn’t need to hear the rest. He knelt down over the lifeless form prepared to do his duty and come to a conclusion about the time of death. He rolled the corpse over and was surprised to see that Father Peter Clifford seemed to smile even in death.

    “Maybe Assumpta Fitzgerald went to heaven after all,” he speculated and went quietly about his work.