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“What do you think he wants?” Lillie said, but when Mac looked up, horrified, she said, “Not that, yet, or at least I don’t think so. I mean, he likes her. He has a crush and I think she likes him back.”

“Isn’t she very young for that?” Mac asked.

“Oh, I’m sure you had a few crushes at thirteen.”

Did he? He couldn’t remember.

Lillie always hung her bras over the shower rod to dry and all of a sudden there were more bras, smaller ones. Mac had never seen a bra in his life before he got to America and saw Jenny’s drying on the clothesline, and now they seemed to be everywhere. There were boxes of women’s things under the sink, and once a month the small garbage basket in there was stuffed full.

“Can someone please put them things in the bathroom away?” he admonished them at breakfast one morning. They had no shame, no sense of privacy. All three looked up from bowls of cereal. There was a missing child on the back of the milk carton.

“Do you mean our bras, Dad?” Mary asked, while her sisters looked to their laps, trying to hold in their laughter. “For our breasts?”

“Mary!” Lillie scolded. The girl was too much.

Later, Mac said to Lillie, “I’m going to punch out the half bath and put in a shower for them. We can’t have five people through the upstairs bathroom every morning.”

“Well, you’ve come a long way from the Cuan, mister,” Lillie said.

For school the girls sometimes needed specific photographs or a specific color T-shirt because they were celebrating school spirit week. They never seemed to have those things on hand, so either he or Lillie would have to run out the night before. They needed glue sticks, cupcakes for their birthday, markers, graphing paper, calculators, a note from the doctor that cleared them for a return to gym, permission slips signed, checks enclosed. When the family got together, the younger Joyce brothers always showed up late and seemed confused to see the food packed away already, the smallest of the kids cranky and needing to be put to bed.

Sean bought a bigger house on Long Island and Barry moved to New Jersey because that’s where Regina’s sisters had ended up. Thomas and his family were still in Yonkers, still a short drive from Mac and Lillie, and Thomas’s oldest son was old enough to walk over to see Annie sometimes. They were in the same grade in school. Vincent and his girlfriend lived together in Manhattan and Mac expected there to be engagement news any day, but after several years there was still nothing. Mac was worried what the girl’s parents would think of them, but Vincent had laughed, said they weren’t Irish, they weren’t Catholic, they didn’t think that way, it didn’t matter to them at all, and anyway why would it reflect on the whole family and not just Vincent? He said it was her choice, so why press it if she’s not interested? Mac brought this to Lillie to find out what she thought about it, as a woman, and Lillie told him to mind his own business and let the young people do as they pleased. Lillie had been back to Ireland with the girls twice since Mac was there for Nuala’s funeral and wanted to go again that coming summer. Could they afford it? Mary was putting up a bit of a fuss. She wanted to stay where her friends were. She said they’d all get boyfriends and all she’d get to do that summer was talk to a few old cows.

“But you love it there,” Mac pointed out one evening after dinner. “Remember the whale bones? Remember the sheep who hopped into the back seat of the car when you were there with Mom?”

“When I was five, Dad? When I was ten? Are you serious?”

AND THEN, ONE EARLY SUNDAY morning in 1994, Sean called Mac to say Eamon had been rushed to the hospital. Mac had been in the Berkshires at a stable all the previous day and was so tired as he was driving home that he pulled over at a rest stop to get a few hours of sleep. When he got home around three in the morning he crawled into bed beside Lillie, huddling up close to her to get some of her warmth. It felt as if he’d only been sleeping for a minute when the phone jarred him awake.

“Who is it?” Lillie asked, going from sleep to full panic in the space of one second as Mac was trying to understand what Sean was telling him. “What happened?” she asked. Next thing he was pulling on the same jeans he’d taken off an hour earlier. He could hear the click click click of Lillie turning the burner on under the kettle.

He called Thomas to tell him he’d be outside in five minutes and they’d head to Montefiore together. Lillie handed him a mug of tea as he walked out the door. Thomas was already jogging down the steps from his house when Mac pulled up. When they arrived at the hospital, Seamus was in the waiting room with his head in his hands. Barry, Fearghal, and Sean were sitting across from him. Vincent and Noel were in separate taxis, on their way.

Seamus had been out with Eamon earlier in the night but they’d parted ways around one in the morning. They hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. Eamon was thirty-four years old; he didn’t need his younger brother babysitting him. This had been their routine for years. They’d start the night together, head home separately, and then walk over to the diner the next day so Eamon could tell Seamus about whatever antics had gone on after Seamus went home. But around four that morning, a friend had called the apartment to tell Seamus that Eamon had been rushed to the emergency room. The friend said Eamon had just passed out cold and no one could wake him.

“But where was he?” Sean asked, as if this might give them insight into what had happened. “Where was he when he passed out?” Seamus went over the evening once more. They’d gone to Midtown, hit the usual places, and then taken the train up to the Bronx. That’s when Seamus called it a night. But it wasn’t unusual for the others to keep going. They could stay out until closing time because they had all day Sunday to sleep and by the time they punched in on Monday morning they’d be right as rain. The friend who called Seamus said Eamon had just closed his tab and next thing was flat on his back. He said the EMTs had given him the defibrillation paddles right there on the floor of the bar, and again in the ambulance. Once they closed the doors and pulled away was when the friend went back in to call Seamus.

“I’m Eamon Joyce’s brother,” Mac said when he went up to reception. “Is there an update?”

“I’m sorry, not yet,” the woman said, glancing at her computer. “He’s still in the OR.”

“The OR. That’s the operating room?”

“Yes,” she said.

The automatic doors wheezed open and in walked Noel and Vincent. Mac could see it was raining. Lillie was probably hurrying the girls to get ready for Mass.

Finally, a doctor came out and asked for the family of Eamon Joyce. “Oh,” he said when eight men stood. He showed them down a hall to another room, and then a different doctor came in. The second doctor shook Mac’s hand, and Barry’s, and then sort of petered out, looking at the rest of them.

“I’m very sorry,” he began.

Seamus clutched his head. “Hang on a second.”

“We did everything we could.”

“No, wait,” Seamus said.

“What happened?” Mac asked.