I am so grateful for all the favourites, follows, and feedback (and any more to come). Thank you all once again.
This is it (finally!) for this story - though if anyone wants to continue it from here or write an "alternate storyline" from any other point within it, I invite you to do so. So many of you are inspirations to me, and as fanfiction writers I think we especially can offer that sort of invitation to one another.
I have had such fun writing this, and I hope you've enjoyed reading it.
Behind the counter, Kathleen fought the doting instinct with every fibre of her being. She stuffed a toffee in her mouth, pinched the back of her hand. She reminded herself that her least-favourite priest in history, with his grating accent and his radical views, had fallen from grace. He was now not only having an affair with the publican, but also in a line of work totally unbecoming of a man.
She couldn't do it.
She could not scowl at the Egan baby, gangly male nanny notwithstanding. She could not fume when the shakeup had brought to town a wonderfully traditionalist interim priest, one with a pleasant brogue and a little white hair. She felt unable to control her smile, possessed even, as she cheerfully handed Peter the small Aran gansey she had finally finished, having told herself all the while she didn't know who it was for.
"Too big for him yet, but he'll grow into it by autumn," she heard herself say.
"It's beautiful," Peter said. "My mum's always said the Irish were the best knitters."
Kathleen beamed in spite of herself.
Assumpta re-counted the night's takings as Niamh wiped down the tables.
"This can't be right," the landlady muttered.
Niamh grinned. "No?"
"We never make this much on a Wednesday night."
The barback cleared her throat.
Assumpta looked up. "Oh, don't tell me..."
"Well drink specials? Decanted wine? Prompt and friendly service, even for those brutish tourists? 'Niamh, what brilliant ideas you had.' I know, I'm the greatest."
"Can't have made that much difference!"
Niamh smiled sweetly. "You're very welcome. Soon you can afford some of those repairs you keep moaning about. Maybe even a second changing table. Not everyone with a baby goes to the gents', you know."
Assumpta rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah."
As sometimes happens, the different kinds of grist in the rumour mill began interfering with one another. Within the space of a week or so, assorted people confronted Assumpta about an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, Peter about having an affair with Brendan, and finally Siobhan about abandoning her promising career to raise the Egan boy.
As the lines of whispered communication became more entangled, it seemed to the best village gossips that the real stories were entirely too tame by comparison. Like opposing fires bound for a common fuel source, the competing tales ultimately burned one another out.
Peter would come to call it the Season of Not Sleeping Alone.
His first three months at the Egans' had him keeping odd hours to match the parents' needs: light kips in the sitting room when they were out, cradling Kieran in a rocking chair, bottle at the ready; and heavy sleep alongside a purring Joey in the guest bedroom, monitor on the table, when Ambrose and Niamh were home.
Charmed as he was by these two tiny gentlemen, his favourite bedfellow was the one with whom he spent his carefully-inconspicuous night off, usually Monday. Truly staying overnight wasn't always practical; what hours he did spend felt like the most natural, logical thing in the world.
Despite the irregularities, he was finally sleeping well.
He did sometimes mourn the vocation that couldn't hold him. It helped to know that others held him nonetheless: his mum, reassuring on the phone; Joey, kneading his stomach; his young new bosses, grateful for a date night; Assumpta, calling him her own.
One evening he lay curled behind her in the bed of his dreams, breathing in her essence from the back of her neck.
"It's like when you taught me to drive," he panted. "You make me feel so...teenage and grown up, at the same time."
She shivered against him, a laugh escaping with it. "Oh, I didn't teach you that just now. That was new."
He put a hand on her shoulder - turn over. Look at me. She understood it, rolling inward to face him. Her eyes flashed as she stroked his upper arm.
"Kieran's getting heavy," he explained.
"Keeps you fit."
"Glad you like it."
"Mmhmm."
"Some things are about to happen, I think you should know," he whispered cautiously.
Her eyes widened. "Okay?"
"First thing, I'm expecting some post very soon. Notification that I've been officially released from the vow of chastity."
She smirked. "Ooh, will you come to bed with me then?"
He exacted a little playful revenge, taking away the blanket. Delighting in her shriek at the cold, he replaced it and pulled her close beneath. "That's a warning; may I finish?"
She gave him a pious nod, mismatched by a playful slap.
"All right. When that letter comes, my family gets a green light to come visit. They want to stay here, they want to meet you."
Assumpta gasped; he felt her waist pull even narrower in his embrace.
"Shh, relax. Third thing, I'll be moving out of the Garda house. I'll still babysit when they need me, but I won't be living there; I'll need to find a place."
Now she was perfectly still.
"I thought it might be a good time to beg you to let me work for my keep here..." he stammered.
She nodded.
"And to marry me."
For a moment she was quiet, a grin blooming slow on her mouth. "You did get the king cake baby. I suppose you still owe everyone a party."
"With more cake and different figurines?"
"Bride and a groom, dog and a cat?"
"Sounds perfect." Something dawned on him. "You haven't asked if it'll be in the church," he said, hushed.
Assumpta looked thoughtful. "It's a strange thing, Peter..." she trailed her fingers down the length of his arm, clasping his hand under the covers. "But if you can find someone good - if there still is someone out there half as good as you were... You gave up a lifetime at the altar for me; I can give up a few hours' worth of boycotting it for you."
Feeling remarkably close to laughing through tears, he pulled her against him now, let her settle her head over his heart.
"Love isn't only sacrifice, you know," he said.
THE END