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and held his forearm. Also not what I’d meant to do.

“I was supposed to take care of everyone. I mean . . . it’s not like I don’t worry about you guys.”

Boston Irish: I miss you. I care about you. I love you. You just have to listen.

He said, “It’s just been a lousy . . . twenty years.”

A taxi pulled up and a woman got out. Eddie tossed his bag into the backseat and held the door. He took a deep breath. I thought of that moment at my mother’s wake when I almost reached out for my father but didn’t.

“Anyway,” he said.

I moved before I realized I was going to, wrapped my arms around him, felt him go slack, heard his sobs into my jacket, the painful lump in my throat.

“Fuck,” he mumbled.

I said, “You’re a good man, Eddie Dolan. Don’t forget that.”

He got into the cab and in the moment before it pulled away, he turned and gave me a little head nod, a half smile, the smallest wave. And I waved, too.

I’d put it in a commercial, but no one would believe it.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is my second first novel. The previous first novel was, to my (and I’m confident to your) great good fortune, not published. If this novel is good, it is in no small part due to a handful of people who believed in me.

David Kuhn, my agent, was not looking for a new, unpublished, first-time novelist. But he took a chance and his nimble hands are all over these pages. As are Billy Kingsland’s, David’s right hand at Kuhn Projects. Special thanks to Maree Hamilton and Grant Ginder as well.

Sally Kim, my editor at Touchstone. She bought something imperfect and in need of help. She guided me, pushed me, helped me find the story. I don’t have words to express how I feel about her. But if I did, they would probably be the wrong words and she would then be able to help me find the right ones.

Stacy Creamer, David Falk, Marcia Burch, Wendy Sheanin, Michael Croy, and everyone else at Touchstone. Passionate readers and champions of the unknown writer.

Susan Morrison and David Remnick at The New Yorker have been running my Shouts & Murmurs pieces since 1999.

At The New York Times, Scott Shane, Nora Krug, Michael Newman, Carmel McCoubrey, and David Shipley. At the Los Angeles Times, Nick Goldberg and Susan Brennenman.

Rick Knief, unparalleled friend and godfather to my daughter, read draft after draft. His relentless optimism and honesty buoyed me at many turns.

Deidre Dolan added many insightful comments and encouragement.

Richard Syvanen, screenwriter extraordinaire, dear friend since college, who died at age thirty-five and who, upon reading my first screenplay, urged me to pursue novel writing.

My father, Charles Kenney, and my brothers, Charlie, Michael, Tom, Patrick, and Tim. Good men all. And to the memory of my mother, Anne Barry.

I have no intention of thanking the people at the MacArthur Foundation, as I found their note on my returned application for a genius grant (“HA-HA!”) not very funny.

I wrote half of this book in the main reading room of the New York Public Library. I was surrounded each day by scores of people writing what I can only imagine were books, poems, dissertations, job applications, screenplays, wills, and that one guy who just kept writing swear words over and over. It is an awe-inspiring thing to sit among people trying to create something day after day. It’s a quiet extended family who respects silence and devotion and one another’s belongings during bathroom breaks. So thank you to my fellow writers and to the city of New York and its benefactors for making that space possible.

The other half I wrote at a coffee shop on Sullivan Street in SoHo called Once Upon a Tart. Jerome Audureau, the owner, kindly let me sit all day over one or two coffees, taking up a table, using his electrical outlets. Some of the people who work there—Josie Canseco, Cleo Rivera, Samina Naz, and Anna Marcell—took care of me, fed me, had a smile ready.

My daughter and son, Lulu and Hewitt, who came along and showed me what mattered.

And finally, my wife, Lissa. Our daughter was three months old when I came home one day and said, “I just got laid off. And they’re canceling our health insurance tomorrow. I was thinking I might try novel writing.” Throughout this long, confidence-sapping process, Lissa guided me, believed in me, encouraged me. She listened in the evenings as I