OK, I've harped on this before in reviews for others. At the beginning of "Pack Up Your Troubles," Assumpta returns from Dublin and says she's "free and single" - sounds like she'd got an annulment, though it's tough to say if she was really there long enough to jump all the hoops. Then later, in "The Reckoning," she calls herself "a married woman," and we're left wondering. And then, in "Amongst Friends," Leo keeps calling her his wife, but he makes no claim on her estate.

So, since this is my first attempt to acknowledge the whole canon in a fic, I'm splitting the difference in the only way that makes sense to me. Read on.

Brendan had put Aisling down for a nap, and Peter had left feeling a little bit better. Getting no answer at the Garda house, he tried not to panic. He also tried to turn around without actually facing Fitzgerald's, pivoting his body just a bit faster than his head.

A voice startled him where he ought to have been looking. "She's a terrible one for the soup at the pub. Or you could try to summon her by stepping a foot out of line."

"Michael!" Peter brightened at first to see his old friend; then memory caught up with him, and he dropped his smile and his eyes.

The doctor steeled himself. "You don't owe me the time of day, Father, but I'm told they're all there right now."

Peter lingered on this thought for a moment; it was terribly seductive, the thought of stepping into the pub and seeing his old friends. He imagined the Chinese food still laid out, still piping hot... But it wouldn't be, now, would it? "Not ready," he choked, finally.

Michael swallowed. "I am sorry. I expect no forgiveness."

Peter's eyes filled again. He shook his head. "You know me better than that, Michael. I need some time."

"Course."

Peter allowed himself a glance at the pub now. "And I'm not sure how much time I'll get. So we need to talk."

Doc Ryan nodded. "There were a million things I'd meant to tell you."

Peter was shaking, but he nodded toward Michael's car. "Don't suppose you're on the way to Cilldargan?"

CILLDARGAN

Lightning in the distance. The scent of mildew in the air filter. The reassuring hum of a well-kept engine.

Michael kept his eyes on the road. "I tried to talk her out of it."

Peter felt the pilot light in his heart go on, if only a flicker. "When did she ask?"

"On the phone, the night before the trial. Quite late, actually. I got the feeling something must have happened, but she wouldn't say."

Peter swallowed. He nodded.

"The next morning in the courthouse foyer, she told me to forget it. But then that evening she clearly changed her mind again."

"It doesn't make sense."

"Even after, I tried to ruin her cover. Telling you to get into the ambulance with her, hoping she'd hear you and come to her senses."

"I saw her in the morgue. She wasn't moving."

"Nor was she in a fridge. Her face was uncovered so she could breathe better. The tarp from the medics hid it well enough, but the hospital sheet would have given her away. She later admitted to taking a sedative when she went down to the cellar. I'd advised her against it, but I did warn her to lie down first and then swallow the pill if she had to do it."

"For her own safety," Peter understood. "So that's why she was pointing the wrong way."

"Peter, I am truly sorry."

"I feel like a fool."

"So does everyone involved. Sure that includes her."

They were in the carpark for St. Brigid's now. Michael turned off the ignition but neither man moved.

"She was adamant she had to do it," Michael said. "She wouldn't see reason."

Peter still couldn't look at his old friend. "Michael, I don't believe for a minute this was about my vocation."

"I never bought it either," the doctor conceded. "But she swore it was. I think she imagined a very different outcome. I know I did."

"Different how?"

"Oh," Michael sighed, "you'd stick around, and in a couple weeks she'd come to her senses. Something like that."

Father Mac emerged out a lacquered door now, moving with more difficulty than Peter remembered.

"If you want to scare the hell out of him, now would be your chance."

For the first time since his arrival, Peter gave Michael a grin.

BALLYKISSANGEL

Assumpta quietly led Fionn out of the reception lounge, leaving Niamh and Ambrose to their hushed conversation as a mercifully-knackered Kieran dozed on the couch.

"All right old boy," she murmured, stepping into the wet-earth fragrance of the street, clipping the lead to the collar. "Let's see how much you remember." She knew it was naive; just that morning she wouldn't have risked it.

Something had changed.

Perhaps it was the look on Niamh's face. There sat a woman who could forgive her father and her best friend for their unthinkable acts of abandonment. The news that her imperfect first husband had done the same, though, seemed to hit her like a kidney punch.

Assumpta had been unable to bring herself to ask after Peter. Niamh had carefully avoided the subject as well; Assumpta supposed it was to protect her from the knowledge that whatever he might have felt back then, he was over it now. Then again, maybe things with Ambrose and Sean had caused a falling-out on other fronts.

Assumpta looked at the dog at her side now, the truest ally possible, picking up where they left off as if hours had passed, not years. In a dog's mind, perhaps it was the same. Fionn was the best of everything she'd failed to be all these years: patient, honest, sure of being wanted wherever he went. Forgiving her abandonment and trusting her return. Fionn was innocence. Fionn was unconditional love. He made her want to repent.

Michael was right. Everyone had to know; in this town, they probably would by nightfall anyway. If Hendley's had been open, they'd all know now.

The tug on the lead gave a sense of safety, of rightness as they went up the hill. The bad weather had kept the street mostly empty of foot traffic, at least since Mass got out. She felt the humidity plumping up her hair again, and she surrendered this battle as well.

She approached the red door of the curate's house, not noticing the sign plastered on the window until she reached for the knocker.

Foreclosed. Quigley's. Of course.

"You won't likely find the curate there," said a dry, brittle voice.

Assumpta called back without turning around. "So I see."

"Indeed it seems Father Sheahan keeps as little time on the church grounds as possible," the older woman went on.

Assumpta whipped around at this. "Father Sheahan?"

At the sight of Kathleen Hendley, her heart sank even further.

The shopkeeper's eyes went stony; her teeth clenched and her lips pursed over them. "How like you. After all this time."

Assumpta found herself compelled to explain. Somehow. "Kathleen, I-"

Kathleen put up a forbidding hand. "I know."

This was not quite the dismissal the younger woman had expected. "You knew?" She let this sink in. "Of course. Who let it slip?"

In the weakening daylight, Assumpta saw something almost like pity in Kathleen's eyes.

It wasn't pity; it was the glow of a juicy story she'd been yearning to share for too long. "Sorcha Sherk, from my bridge club in Cilldargan. Her daughter is a solicitor in Dublin. Spoke of writing out a decree nisi with a young couple. The husband was a journalist. The wife was a publican in Ballykea, and did Sorcha happen to know her, and of course Sorcha would have no cause to..." Kathleen paused. Almost guilty.

Almost.

Assumpta tried to steady her breathing.

"After your...incident at the food fair," Kathleen added coldly, "Sorcha mentioned her daughter writing up a decree of nullity for the same pair. Only, the husband kept making these odd jokes. That the wife didn't exist anymore. That she'd martyred herself for a priest."

Assumpta couldn't answer.

"If you're here to fall at the feet of Father Clifford, I'm afraid you're about three years too late. He left town right away."

"Where'd he go?" Assumpta realised she was pleading.

"Heaven knows. I couldn't tell you if he's still in Ireland, if he's still a priest, or if he's still alive."

Assumpta took this in. It went off like a bomb in her heart.

Grateful for your patience; should have another chapter up shortly. The big reunion is coming; I just want to get it right!