Aoife O'Driscoll

Aoife O’Driscoll had the sort of face people painted onto postcards of Ireland—freckles scattered across her nose, bright green eyes, and a tumble of wavy red hair that refused to stay tied back no matter how hard she tried. She was short enough that the taller lads at the veterinary college teased her for disappearing behind calves during farm practice, but she gave back twice as good as she got. She’d grown up on her family’s farm in County Cork, bottle-feeding lambs before school and reading romance novels by flashlight after midnight. Aoife could spend an afternoon elbow-deep helping a cow through labor, then return to her dorm wrapped in soft sweaters with her nose buried in a battered book. She was equally at home in muddy boots and ribboned dresses, depending entirely on the day. At the start of the autumn term, the rain came sideways across campus. Aoife was carrying two crates of veterinary supplies toward the dormitory when the bottom one split open dramatically across the pavement.