to me. He put his hat on his head and stood, counting out a few coins for our breakfast. Neither of us looked back as we walked out of the café.
The next morning, in the early hours before dawn, fourteen men were gunned down across Dublin, many of them members of the special unit sent in to deal with Michael Collins and his squad.
By afternoon, the Crown forces were in an uproar. Reeling from the blow to their officers, they sent armoured cars and military lorries to Croke Park, where Dublin was playing Tipperary in a football match. When the ticket sellers saw the armoured cars and the packed lorries, they ran inside the park. The Tans chased them down, claiming they thought the ticket sellers were IRA men. Once inside the park, the Black and Tans opened fire into the crowd of spectators.
People were trampled. Others were shot. Sixty injured. Thirteen dead. I spent the evening offering my services to the wounded, riddled with guilt at my part in the mayhem, seething with anger that it had come to this, and filled with longing for it all to end.
T. S.
11
BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE
If I make the lashes dark,
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity’s displayed;
I’m looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
—W. B. Yeats
Thomas knocked on my door after the O’Tooles, clearly reassured that all was well, left. I watched the couple walk past my window, their arms laden with loaves of bread and the mutton, potatoes, and gravy Eleanor had prepared for dinner.
I was burrowed in my covers, my face hidden and the light extinguished. The door was not locked, and after a moment, Thomas opened it carefully.
“Anne, I want to check your wound,” he said, coming no farther than the threshold.
I feigned sleep, keeping my swollen eyes shut, my face buried, and after a moment he left, closing the door softly behind him. He’d said I should go. I considered pulling on the clothes that sat on my top shelf, dressing myself for the life I’d lost, and tiptoeing out to the lough. I would steal a boat and sail home.
I pictured the morning dawning as I sat in a stolen boat on the lough, waiting to return to 2001. What if nothing happened? What if Thomas had to rescue me again, me dressed in my odd clothes with nowhere to go? He would think I was truly crazy. He wouldn’t want me near Eoin. I moaned, the thought snatching my nerve and quickening my heartbeat. But what if it worked? What if I could go home?
Did I really want that?
The thought brought me up short. I had a beautiful apartment in Manhattan. I had enough money to comfortably last a lifetime. I had respect. Acclaim. My publicist would worry. My editor would fret. My agent might even grieve. Would anyone else?
I had thousands of devoted readers and no close friends. I had hundreds of acquaintances in dozens of cities. I’d dated a handful of men a handful of times. I’d even slept with two of them. Two lovers, and I was thirty years old. The term lovers made me wince. There had been no love involved. I had always been married to my work, in love with my stories, and committed to my characters, and I’d never wanted anyone or anything else. Eoin had been my island in a very lonely sea. A sea I’d chosen. A sea I’d loved.
But Eoin was gone, and I found I had no desire to cross the waters if he wasn’t waiting for me on the other side.
Thomas had left before I rose the next day and was home again after I retired that night. I changed my bandages with very little trouble, confident that Thomas wouldn’t have to tend them again, but he obviously didn’t agree. When he knocked the following night, I had not yet extinguished my light and was sitting at the small desk. Feigning sleep would not be possible.
I knew Eoin’s birthday was coming on Monday, and I wanted to make something for him. I’d found paper in the drawer in Thomas’s office, along with a few pencils and a fountain pen that I had no idea how to use. Maeve had helped me put a long, fat stitch down the center of a thick stack of paper, binding the pages and making a spine. Eoin had danced around, knowing it