opinion in the world doesn’t change the past.” Eoin sighed.
“I don’t know what story I’m going to tell. I’ll arrive at one opinion only to be swayed by another. I feel hopeless.”
“That is how the people of Ireland felt too. That’s one of the reasons I left.” Eoin’s hand had found the book with the worn leather cover, and he caressed it the way he’d stroked my head when I was a child. For a moment we were silent, lost in our own thoughts.
“Do you miss it? Do you miss Ireland?” I asked. It wasn’t something we’d talked about. My life—our life together—was in America, in a city as alive and vibrant as Eoin’s blue eyes. I knew very little about my grandfather’s life before me, and he’d never been eager to enlighten me.
“I miss her people. I miss her smell and her green fields. I miss the sea and the timelessness. She is . . . timeless. She hasn’t changed much. Don’t write a book about Ireland’s history, Annie. There are plenty of those. Write a love story.”
“I still have to have context, Eoin,” I argued, smiling.
“Yes. You do. But don’t let the history distract you from the people who lived it.” Eoin picked up one of the pictures, his fingers trembling as he brought it close to his face to better study it. “There are some paths that inevitably lead to heartache, some acts that steal men’s souls, leaving them wandering forever after without them, trying to find what they lost,” he murmured, as if quoting something he’d once heard, something that had resonated with him. He gave me the picture in his hand.
“Who is this?” I asked, staring down at the woman who gazed fiercely back at me.
“That is your great-grandmother, Anne Finnegan Gallagher.”
“Your mother?” I asked.
“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