We left the next morning.
I told Donal that evening that I would not be coming back. He looked at me from across the bar counter with those steady eyes of his and nodded once like he had been expecting it. He counted out my remaining wages and put them on the counter and then he reached under the bar and put a small wrapped parcel next to the coins.
"Food for the road," he said.
That was all. No questions, no speech, no advice I had not asked for. I picked up the coins and the parcel and said thank you and he was already turned back to his work before I reached the door.
I would miss him, I thought. In the quiet uncomplicated way you miss someone who treated you decently when they had no particular reason to.
Peta was harder.
She was waiting outside the inn when I came back, sitting
