by Maureen Bordelon

Created on: March 09, 2009   Last Updated: March 16, 2009

"Mary? Mary O'Malley, is that really you?"

"Hold on a second, I can barely hear you," he said, plugging his other ear with his index finger to drown out the ceaseless sound of cattle lowing fifty feet away. Sean stood in the middle of a lush verdant pasture, cell phone to his ear, and briefly wondered how she had located him. He walked to his pickup and placed one foot on the floorboard, but kept an eye on his herd.

"That's because I'm in Dublin, stupid," she said.

"No, it's my cattle, feeding time and all that. Say, Dublin isn't that far from me. By any chance are you coming for a visit?"

Mary laughed in the maniacal way that he remembered. "Uh-uh, that's Dublin, Ireland you goof. You mean there's a Dublin in Texas?"

"Oh," he paused, talking over her as usual, "Why are you in Ireland?"

"A quest of sorts, but I wanted to touch base with you. You were the impetus behind my trip."

To Sean, it felt like ten years had been peeled back in time. Their five year relationship had ended, not really amiable but nor was it harsh and unforgiving. Seemly, their time together was struck, ignited, and had flamed out as if a wooden kitchen match. He still couldn't explain why they had ended, they just did.

Now, hearing her voice and remembering her dancing green eyes when she smiled, Sean felt a bit of the hollow feeling when they had parted. However, his lips formed a grin at the distant memory one of their last dates. Mary, fueled by tequila, had pranced and swung her arms in time to the jukebox on the tabletop in a Mexican cantina. The evening had ended abruptly when she caught her hand in the drooping ceiling fan of the bar. Once he replaced her absent blouse, the trip to the hospital to repair her shredded hand still made him chuckle, even though at the time the incident wasn't mired in hilarity.

Sean could picture Mary as she spoke. One hand on her hip; short muscular legs planted apart, her long auburn hair swept in to a tightly bound pony tail, eyebrows deeply furrowed over her green eyes in concentration of the phone call. The clarity of the picture in his mind brought back a sense of what was missing in his life.

"Why was I the impetus?" he asked. "I never wanted us to end. Remember the night in the cantina?"

Mary sighed. "How could I forget? The scars on my knuckles still looked like they've been raked by a potato peeler. But that's not why I called. After our relationship ended, I went on a binge of sorts."

"Drinking binge?"

"No, an everything on the earth binge. Drinking,

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