he’d promised, their father bought popcorn. And sodas. Even candy.
He’d seldom felt closer to his parents. More like a boy. For a few hours he left his own dark reality for a far-off time and place. He laughed, he cheered, he gave his sister the last little kernel of popcorn. He explained what she didn’t understand. He lifted her onto his lap. He watched his mother hesitate, then let her head fall on his father’s shoulder. His father let his hand fall upon her knee.
They were halfway home when the gunmen suddenly appeared.
They had come from one of those dark and secretive places in the wall that the boy had learned so well himself.
The masked man in the front suddenly called his father by name.
“I am he, and proud of it, I am!” his father replied with strength and defiance, pushing his wife behind him. “But me family is with me—”
“Aye, ye’d hide behind skirts!” the second man said contemptuously.
The popping of gunfire, so suddenly and so close, was deafening.
The boy reached for his sister even as he watched his father fall. It had happened so fast, yet it was almost like slow motion in the movies. He could see the terrible end; he couldn’t stop it.
The gunmen had come for his father. But a stray bullet hit his sister, as well. Somewhere in his mind, he knew that the gunmen hadn’t intended it, nor could they afford to regret it. She was simply a casualty of this strange war.
He heard his mother shout his father’s name. She didn’t know as yet that her baby was gone, as well.
The lad held his sister, seeing the blood stain her dress. Her eyes were open. She didn’t even feel pain; she didn’t realize what was happening. She smiled, her bright eyes touching his as she whispered his name.
“I want to go home now,” she said. Then she closed her eyes, and he knew she was dead.
He just held her, in the darkness of the street and the darkness of his life, and he listened to his mother’s screams and, soon, the wailing of the police cars and the ambulances in the shadows of the night.
They had the services for his father and sister on a Saturday afternoon. They had waked them in the house in the old way, and family and friends had come and sat vigil by the coffins. They had drunk whiskey and ale, and his father had been hailed and put upon a pedestal, the loss of his baby sister made into a cause. There was so much press from around the world that many whispered that the sacrifice of the poor wee dear might well have been God’s way in their great cause.
They hadn’t seen her smile. They didn’t know that she’d been just a child with hopes and dreams and a wealth of life within her smile and the brightness of her eyes.
At last it was time for the final service, the time when they would be buried—though nothing here, he knew, was ever really buried.
Father Gillian read the prayers, and a number of men gave impassioned speeches. His mother wailed, tore at her hair, beat her breast. Women helped her, held her, grieved with her. They cried and mourned and wailed, as well, sounding like a pack of banshees, howling to the heavens.
He stood alone. His tears had been shed.
The prayers and the services over, the pipers came forward, and the old Irish pipes wheezed and wailed.
They played “Danny Boy.”
Soon after, he stepped forward with some of the other men, and they lifted the coffins. Thankfully, he was a tall lad, and he carried his sister’s coffin with cousins much older than he. She had been such a little thing, it was amazing that the coffin could be so heavy. Almost as if they carried a girl who had lived a life.
They were laid into the ground. Earth and flowers were cast upon them. It was over.
The other mourners began to move away, Father Gillian with an arm around his mother. A great aunt came up to him. “Come, lad, your mother needs you.”
He looked up for a moment, his eyes misting with tears. “She does not need me now,” he said, and it was true—he had tried to be a comfort to her, but she had her hatred, and her passion, and she had a newfound cause.
He didn’t mean to hurt anyone, so he added, “I need to be here now, please. Me mom has help now. Later, when she’s alone, she’ll need me.”
“You’re a good lad, keen and sharp, that you are,” his aunt said, and she left him.
Alone, he stood by the graves. Silent tears streamed down his cheeks.
And he made a vow. A passionate vow, to his dead father, his poor wee sister. To his God—and to himself.
He would die, he swore, before he ever failed in that vow.
Darkness fell around his city.
And around his heart.
1
New York City, New York
The Present
“What do you mean, you’re not coming home for Saint Patrick’s Day?”
Moira Kelly flinched.
Her mother’s voice, usually soft, pleasant and well-modulated, was so shrill that Moira was certain her assistant had heard Katy Kelly in the next room—despite the fact that they were talking by phone, and that her mother was in Boston, several hundred miles away.
“Mum, it’s not like I’m missing Christmas—”
“No, it’s worse.”
“Mum, I’m a working woman, not a little kid.”
“Right. You’re a first-generation American, forgetting all about tradition.”
Moira inhaled deeply. “Mother, that’s the point. We are living in America. Yes, I was born here. As disheartening and horrible as it may be, Saint Patrick’s Day is not a national holiday.”
“There you go. Mocking me.”
Moira inhaled deeply again, counted, sighed. “I’m not mocking you.”
“You work for yourself. You can work around any holiday you want.”
“I don’t actually just work for myself. I have a partner. We have a whole production company. A schedule. Deadlines. And my partner has a wife—”
“That Jewish girl he married.”
Moira hesitated again.
“No, Mum. Andy Garson, the New York reporter, the one who sometimes cohosts that mid-morning show, just married a Jewish girl. Josh’s wife is Italian.” She smiled slightly, staring at the receiver. “And very Catholic. You’d like her. And their little eight-month-old twins. A few of the reasons we both really want to keep this company going!”
Her
