“Yes,” he breathed.
“I look like her,” I said, delighted. The clothes she wore and the style of her hair made her an exotic, foreign creature, but the face looking up at me from decades past could have been my own.
“Yes. You do. Very much,” Eoin said.
“She’s a little intense,” I observed.
“Smiling wasn’t the thing to do in those days.”
“Ever?”
“No,” he chortled, “not ever. Just not in pictures. We tried very hard to look more dignified than we were. Everyone wanted to be a revolutionary.”
“And is that my great-grandfather?” I pointed at the man standing next to Anne in the next picture.
“Yes. My father, Declan Gallagher.”
Declan Gallagher’s youth and vitality were preserved in the yellowed print. I liked him immediately and felt a surprising pang in my chest. Declan Gallagher was gone, and I would never know him.
Eoin handed me another picture, a photo of his mother, his father, and a man I didn’t recognize.
“Who’s he?” The stranger was dressed like Declan, formally, in a three-piece suit, a fitted vest peeking out from behind his lapels. His hands were in his pockets, and his hair was slicked back in careful waves and was short on the sides and longer on top. Brown or black, I couldn’t tell. His brow was furrowed slightly, as if he wasn’t comfortable having his picture taken.
“That is Dr. Thomas Smith, my father’s best friend. I loved him almost as much as I love you. He was like a father to me.” Eoin’s voice was soft, and his eyes fluttered closed again.
“He was?” My voice rose in surprise. Eoin had never talked about this man. “Why haven’t you shown me these pictures, Eoin? I’ve never seen any of them before.”
“There are more,” Eoin murmured, ignoring my question, as if it required too much energy to explain.
I moved on to the next picture in the pile.
It was a picture of Eoin as a young boy, his eyes wide, his face freckled, and his hair slicked down. He wore short pants and long socks, a vest, and a little suit coat. He had a cap in his hands. A woman stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders, her mouth grim. She might have been handsome, but she looked too suspicious to smile.
“Who’s she?”
“My grandmother, Brigid Gallagher. My father’s mother. I called her Nana.”
“How old were you here?”
“Six. Nana was very unhappy with me that day. I didn’t want to take a picture without the rest of my family. But she insisted on a picture with just the two of us.”
“And this one?” I picked up the next photo. “Tell me about this one. That’s your mother—her hair is longer here—and the doctor, right?” My heart fluttered in my chest as I stared at it. Thomas Smith was looking down at the woman beside him, as if at the last moment he’d been unable to resist. Her gaze was cast down as well, a secret smile on her lips. They weren’t touching, but they were very aware of each other. And there was no one else in the picture with them. The picture was oddly candid for the time period.
“Was Thomas Smith . . . in love with Anne?” I stammered, strangely breathless.
“Yes . . . and no,” Eoin said softly, and I looked up at him with a scowl.
“What kind of answer is that?” I asked.
“A truthful one.”
“But she was married to your father. And didn’t you say he was Declan’s best friend?”
“Yes.” Eoin sighed.
“Oh wow. There’s a story there,” I crowed.
“Yes. There is,” Eoin whispered. He closed his eyes, his mouth quivering. “A wonderful story. I can’t look at you without remembering.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I asked. “Remembering is good.”
“Remembering is good,” he agreed, but the words came out with a grimace, and he clutched at the covers.
“When was the last time you took a pain pill?” I asked, my voice sharp. I dropped the pictures and rushed to the pills stacked on his bathroom counter. I shook one out with anxious hands and filled a glass of water, then lifted Eoin’s head to help him drink it down. I’d wanted him to be in a hospital, surrounded by people who could take care of him. He’d wanted to be home with me. He’d spent his life in hospitals, caring for the sick and dying. When he was diagnosed with cancer six months ago, he’d calmly announced he would not be receiving treatment. His only concession to my tearful ranting and cajoling was that he would manage his pain.
“You need to go back, Annie lass,” he said a while later, the pill making his voice dreamlike and soft.
“Where?” I asked, heavyhearted.
“To Ireland.”
“Go back? Eoin, I’ve never been. Remember?”
“I need to go back too. Will you take me?” he slurred.
“I’ve been wanting to go to Ireland with you all my life,” I whispered. “You know that. When should we go?”
“When I die, you’ll take me back.”
The pain in my chest was a physical thing, biting and twisting, and I bore down to combat it, to extinguish it, but it grew like Medusa’s hair, the writhing tendrils slipping up and out of my eyes in hot, wet rivulets.
“Don’t cry, Annie,” Eoin said, his voice so weak that I did my best to quell the tears, if only to save him from distress. “There is no end to us. When I die, take my ashes back to Ireland and set me loose in the middle of Lough Gill.”
“Ashes? In the middle of a lake?” I asked, trying to smile. “Don’t you want to be buried near a church?”
“The church just wants my money, but I hope God will take my soul. What’s left of me belongs in Ireland.”
The windows rattled, and I rose to pull the drapes. Rain beat against the panes, a late spring storm that had been threatening the East Coast all week.
“The wind is howling like the hound of Culann,” Eoin murmured.
“I love that story,” I said, sitting back down beside him. His eyes were closed, but he continued to speak, softly musing like he was remembering.
“You told me the story of Cú Chulainn, Annie. I was afraid, and you let me sleep in your bed. Doc kept watch all night long. I could hear the hound in the wind.”
“Eoin, I didn’t tell you the story of Cú Chulainn. You told me. So many times. You told me,” I corrected him, straightening his blankets. He clutched at my hand.
“Yes. I told you. You told me. And you will tell me again. Only the wind knows which truly comes first.”
He drifted off, and I held his hand, listening to the storm, lost in memories of us. I was six years old when Eoin became my anchor and my caretaker. He’d held me while I wept for parents who weren’t coming back. I wished desperately that he could hold me again, that we could start over, if only to have him with me for another lifetime.
“How will I live without you, Eoin?” I mourned aloud.
“You don’t need me anymore. You’re all grown up,” he murmured, surprising me. I’d thought he was fast asleep.
“I’ll always need you,” I cried, and his lips trembled again, acknowledging the devotion that underscored my words.
“We’ll be together again, Annie.” Eoin had never been religious, and his words surprised me. He’d been raised by a devout Catholic grandmother but left the religion behind when he left Ireland at eighteen. He’d insisted I attend a Catholic school in Brooklyn, but that was the extent of my religious upbringing.
“Do you really believe that?” I whispered.
“I know it,” he said, opening his heavy eyelids and regarding me solemnly.
“I don’t. I don’t know it. I love you so much, and I’m not ready to let you go.” I was crying in earnest, already feeling his loss, my loneliness, and the years that stretched before me without him.
“You’re beautiful. Smart. Rich.” He laughed weakly. “And you did it all by yourself. You and your stories. I’m so proud of you, Annie lass. So proud. But you don’t have a life beyond your books. You don’t have love.” His eyes clouded and searched the space beyond my head. “Not yet. Promise me you’ll go back, Annie.”
“I promise.”
After that he slept, but I could not. I stayed by his side, hungry for his presence, for the words he might say, for the comfort I’d always drawn from him. He awoke once more, panting from the pain, and I helped him swallow another pill.
“Please. Please, Annie. You must go back. I need you so badly. We both do.”
“What are you talking about, Eoin? I’m right here. Who needs me?”
He was delirious, floating in pain, beyond sentience, and I could only hold his hand and pretend I understood.
“Sleep now, Eoin. The pain will be easier to bear.”
“Don’t forget to read the book. He loved you. He loved you so much. He’s been waiting, Annie.”
“Who, Eoin?” I couldn’t hold back the tears, and they dripped on our clasped hands.
“I miss him. It’s been so long.” He sighed deeply, his eyes never opening. What he saw was in his memory, in his pain, and I let him ramble until the mumbled words became shallow breaths and restless dreams.
The night ended, and a day dawned, but Eoin didn’t wake again.
2 May 1916
He’s dead. Declan is dead. Dublin is in ruins, Seán Mac Diarmada is in Kilmainham Gaol awaiting the firing squad, and I don’t know what’s become of Anne. Yet here I sit, filling the pages of this book as though it will bring them all back. Every detail is a wound, but they are wounds I feel compelled to reopen, to examine, if only to make sense of it all. And someday, little Eoin will need to know what happened.
I intended to fight. I started Easter Monday with a rifle in my hands that I put down and never picked up again. From the moment we stormed into the General Post Office, I was up to my elbows in blood and chaos in the makeshift first aid post. There was very little organization and a great deal of excitement, and for the first few days, no one knew what to do. But I knew how to bind wounds and staunch blood flow. I knew how to make a splint and dig out a bullet. For five days, under constant shelling, that’s what I did.
I moved through the days in a dream, never resting, so tired I could have slept on my feet, my head bobbing in time with the artillery rounds. Through it all, I couldn’t believe it was happening. Declan was euphoric, and Anne was moved to tears when the gunboat started firing on Sackville Street, as if the use of big weapons solidified our dreams of a rebellion. She was sure the British were finally listening. I teetered between pride and despair, between my boyhood dreams of nationalism and Irish rebellion, and the sheer destruction being meted out. I knew it was futile, but I was compelled through friendship or loyalty to take part, even if my part was only to see that the rebels—the whole ragtag, idealistic, fatalistic lot—had someone looking after their wounded.