and ran my palm over the surface, saying hello. Anne Finnegan’s name was still engraved beside his; that had not changed. I pulled the weeds around Brigid’s grave. I could not find it in my heart to be angry with her. She’d been tangled in a web of deceit and impossibility, and none of it was her fault. She thought she was protecting Eoin, protecting Thomas. My eyes kept flickering to the stone with Smith written on the base; it was set back from the Gallagher graves, a slim shadow covered in lichen. With a deep breath, trusting that Maeve had not been mistaken when she told me Thomas was not buried here, I approached it and knelt beside it, raising my gaze to the words on the rock.
Anne Smith—April 16, 1922—Beloved wife of Thomas.
The grave was mine.
I didn’t gasp or cry out. I simply sat, barely breathing, looking at the monument he’d erected for me. It was not macabre or frightening. It was a memorial to our life together, to the love we shared. It testified that I was, that I had been, and that I always would be . . . his.
“Oh, Thomas,” I whispered, resting my head against the cold stone. I cried, but the tears were a release, a relief, and I made no attempt to staunch their flow. He was not there in Ballinagar. He was not in the wind or in the grass. But I felt closer to him in that moment than I’d felt in months. The baby fluttered inside me, and my stomach tightened in response, drawing around the new life that bore witness to the old.
I lay down at the base of the stone, talking to Thomas the way I’d felt him talking to me through his journals, telling him about old Maeve and young Kevin and Eoin publishing our stories. I told him how the baby was growing and how I thought it was a little girl. I discussed names and what color to paint the nursery, and when the sun began to set, I said a tearful goodbye, wiped my eyes, and made my way down the hill again.
I began reading the journals in small pieces, opening the books to random pages the way Kevin had done. I read Thomas’s final entry first, dated 3 July 1933, and could not read another for days. I kept going back to it like a moth to a flame; the pain I felt when I read it was almost joy.
Eoin turns eighteen next week. We booked his passage last spring and made all the arrangements for his room and board. He was accepted at the Long Island College of Medicine, though he’s quite a bit younger than most of the other students. I bought myself a ticket as well, intending to go with him. I want to get him settled, to see the streets he will walk and the places he will be, so that when I think about him, I can picture him in his new surroundings. But he is adamant that he go alone. He reminds me of Mick sometimes. An iron will and a soft heart. He promised me he would write, but we both laughed at that. I won’t be getting any letters.
In many ways, I have been given more than a parent could ask for; I have the reassurances Anne gave me. I know the pattern of his days and the path his life will take. I know the kind of man he is and what he will become. The adventures of Eoin Gallagher are just beginning, even as our time together has come to an end.
There were some entries and dates I avoided completely. I couldn’t face 1922. I didn’t want to read about Michael’s death—I’d been unable to save him—or about the continual collapse of the Irish leadership on all sides. I knew from my earlier research that after the death of Arthur Griffith and the assassination of Michael Collins, the scales tipped violently, the way they always do, and the provisional government granted special powers to the Free State Army. Under these special powers, well-known republicans were arrested and executed, without appeal, by firing squad. Erskine Childers was the first to be executed, but he was not the last. In a period of seven months, seventy-seven republicans were arrested and executed by the Free State Army. In return, the IRA began to kill prominent Free State figures. Back and forth the pendulum swung, leaving