“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.
Declan had made Anne promise to stay out of harm’s way. She, Brigid, and little Eoin were holed up in my house in Mountjoy Square when Declan and I joined the Volunteers marching through the streets, intent on carrying out our revolution. Anne joined Declan in the GPO on Wednesday, kicking in a window and climbing over the jagged edge to reach him. She hadn’t even noticed the blood streaming from a slice on her left leg and palm from the broken glass until I made her sit so