me to continue, and I tried to explain the glorious tumult in my chest.
“Lying here next to him. His sweetness. His arms around my neck. I realized how . . . happy . . . I am.” The truth was odd, making it seem false. I missed my grandfather. I missed my life. I was afraid. Terrified. Yet a part of me was overcome with gratitude for the little boy beside me and the man who stood guard at my bedroom window.
“You’re happy, so you cry?” Thomas questioned.
“I’ve cried a great deal lately. But this time, they were tears of joy.”
“There is little reason for happiness in Ireland these days.”
“Eoin is reason enough for me,” I answered, and marveled again that it was true.
Thomas was quiet for so long my eyes grew heavy, and sleep crept up on me.
“You are so different, Anne. I hardly know you,” Thomas murmured. Sleep fled, frightened off by my pounding heart and the sound of his voice. Sleep didn’t return, and Thomas didn’t leave. He kept vigil, eyes on the dark trees and the empty lane, watching for a threat that never came.
When dawn peeped through the trees, Thomas lifted the sleepy child, limp and loose, from my arms. I watched them go, Eoin’s vivid head on Thomas’s shoulder, his little arms dangling over his back.
“I’ll put him back in his bed before Brigid wakes. She need never know. Try to sleep now, Anne,” Thomas said wearily. “I think we’re safe from the Tans for the time being.”
I dreamed of pages that whirled around my head. I would capture one and hold it against my chest, only to lose it again when I tried to read it. I chased the fluttering bits of white out into the lake, knowing the water would blur the words I hadn’t read. I watched the pages come closer with the waves, taunting me for a moment with the possibility of rescue, only to sink slowly beneath the surface. It was a dream I’d had before. I’d always thought it stemmed from my need to write things down, to preserve them, to give them eternal life, if only on a page. I came awake gasping, remembering. Thomas Smith’s journal, the one that ended with a warning to his love, might very well be at the bottom of Lough Gill. It had been in my bag, the picture of Garvagh Glebe tucked between the pages. I’d forgotten about it; it had been lying there beneath the urn with Eoin’s ashes.
A wave of sorrow and regret pinned me back against the pillows. I’d been so foolish, so careless. In that book Thomas Smith had lived, and now it was gone. We were specks, bits of glass and dust. We were as numerous as the sands that lined the strand, one unrecognizable from the other. We were born; we lived; we died. And the cycle continued endlessly on. So many lives lived. And when we died, we simply vanished. A few generations would go by. And no one would know we even were. No one would remember the color of our eyes or the passion that raged inside us. Eventually, we all became stones in the grass, moss-covered monuments, and sometimes . . . not even that.
Even if I returned to the life I’d lost in the lough, the book would still be gone. Thomas Smith would be gone—the slant of his words, the turn of his phrase, his hopes and his fears. His life. Gone. And the thought was unbearable to me.
19 March 1919
The Great War is over, but Ireland’s war is just beginning. An armistice was signed on 11 November, signaling the end of the bloody conflict and the end of conscription fears. Over two hundred thousand Irish boys still fought, even without conscription, and thirty-five thousand of them died for a country that doesn’t recognize their right to self-determination.
Maybe that boiling cauldron is finally ready to overflow. In the December general elections, Sinn Féin candidates won seventy-three of the 105 Irish seats in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. None of the seventy-three will take their seats at Westminster. In accordance with the manifesto signed by each member of Sinn Féin in 1918, Ireland will form her own government, the first Dáil Éireann.
Mick has been organizing breakouts for political prisoners, smuggling in files to cut through bars, throwing rope ladders over walls, and pretending the spoons in their coat pockets were revolvers to scare off the warders.