“The love or the magic?” I whispered.
“The history,” he murmured, but his eyes were bright and soft on my face, and he leaned in and kissed me lightly before pulling back. We had discovered that kissing halted conversation, and we were both as hungry for the exchange of words as we were for each other. The words made the kisses mean more when we finally circled back to them.
“What do you miss?” he asked, his breath tickling my mouth, making my stomach shiver and my breasts ache.
“Music. I miss music. I write while listening to classical music. It is the only thing that sounds like stories feel. And it never gets in the way. Writing is about emotion. There is no magic without it.”
“How did you write to music? Do you know many musicians?” he asked, confused.
“No,” I giggled. “I don’t know any. Music is easily recorded and reproduced, and you can play it anytime you want.”
“Like a gramophone?”
“Yes. Like a gramophone. But much, much better.”
“Which composers?”
“Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, and Maurice Ravel are my favorites.”
“Ah, you like the French men,” he teased.
“No. I like the piano. The period. Their music was beautiful and deceptively uncomplicated.”
“What else?” he asked.
“I miss the clothing. It’s much more comfortable. Especially the underwear.”
He grew quiet in the darkness, and I wondered if I’d embarrassed him. He surprised me every once in a while. He was passionate but private, ardent but reserved. I wasn’t sure if it was just Thomas or if he was simply a man of the times, where a certain dignity and decorum were still de rigueur.
“It’s a great deal smaller too,” he murmured, clearing his throat.
“You noticed.” The sweet ache began again.
“I tried not to. Your clothes and the holes in your ears and a million other little things were easy to rationalize and ignore when your very presence was so unbelievable.”
“We believe what makes the most sense. Who I am doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“Tell me more. What is the world like in eighty years?” he asked.
“The world is full of convenience. Fast food, fast music, fast travel. And because of it, the world is a much smaller place. Information is easily shared. Science and innovation grow by leaps and bounds in the next century. Medical advances are staggering; you would be in heaven, Thomas. Discoveries are made with inoculations and antibiotics that are almost as miraculous as time travel. Almost.”
“But people still read,” he murmured.
“Yes. Thankfully. They still read books.” I laughed. “‘There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away,’” I quoted.
“Emily Dickinson,” he supplied.
“She’s one of my favorites.”
“You love Yeats too.”
“I love Yeats most of all. Do you think I might meet him sometime?” I was half kidding, half serious. The thought that I might meet William Butler Yeats had only just occurred to me. If I could meet Michael Collins, surely I could meet Yeats, the man whose words had made me want to be a writer.
“It might be arranged,” Thomas murmured. The shadows in my room were mellow and moonlit, softening but not obscuring his expression. His brows were furrowed, and I smoothed the small groove between his eyes, encouraging him to release the worrisome thought that perched there.
“Is there someone waiting for you, Anne? Someone in America who loves you most of all? A man?” he whispered.
Ah. So that was the fear. I began shaking my head before the words even left my lips.
“No. There is no one. Maybe it was ambition. Maybe self-absorption. But I was never able to give anyone the kind of energy and focus I gave to my work. The person who loved me most in the world no longer exists in 2001. He is here.”
“Eoin,” Thomas said.
“Yes.”
“That might be the hardest thing to imagine . . . my little lad, grown and gone.” He sighed. “I don’t like to think of it.”
“Before he died, he told me that he loved you almost as much as he loved me. He said you were like a father to him, and I never knew. He kept you a secret, Thomas. I knew nothing about you until that final night. He showed me pictures of you and me. I didn’t understand. I thought they were pictures of my great-grandmother. He also gave me a book. Your journal. I’ve read the first few entries. I read about the Rising. About Declan and Anne. About how you tried to find her. I wish now that I’d read everything.”
“Maybe it is better that you haven’t,” he murmured.
“Why?”
“Because you would know things that I haven’t even written yet. Some things are better left to discover. Some paths are better left unknown.”
“Your journal ended in 1922. I can’t remember the exact date. The book was full, all the way to the last page,” I confessed in a rush. It was something that had bothered me . . . that date. The end of the journal felt like it was the end of our story.
“Then there will be another book. I’ve kept a diary since I was a small boy. I have a shelf of them. Fascinating reads, all,” he said, his expression wry.
“But you gave that one to Eoin. That was the only one he had,” I argued.
“Or maybe that was the only one you needed to read, Anne,” he offered.
“But I didn’t read it. Not all of it. Not even close. I didn’t read any entries past 1918.”
“Then maybe it was the one Eoin needed to read,” he reasoned slowly.
“When I was a girl, I begged him to take me to Ireland. He wouldn’t. He told me it wasn’t safe,” I said. Thinking of my grandfather made my chest ache. It was like that, his loss. Out of the blue, his memory would tiptoe past, reminding me he was gone and I would never be with him again. At least . . . not the way he was, not the way we were.
“Can you blame him, Anne? The boy saw you disappear into the lough.” We were both quiet, the memory of the white space between places making us move closer and cling unconsciously. I laid my head on his chest, and his arms tightened around me.
“Will I be like Oisín?” I murmured. “Will I lose you, just like he lost Niamh? Will I try to return to my old life and discover that I can’t, that three hundred years have passed? Maybe my old life is already gone—my stories, my work. Everything I’ve accomplished. Maybe I am one of the vanished,” I said.
“The vanished?” Thomas asked.
“We all vanish. Time takes us away, eventually.”
“Do you want to go back, Anne?” Thomas asked. His voice was gentle, but I could feel his tension in the weight of his arms.
“Do you think I get to choose, Thomas? I didn’t choose to come. So what if I can’t choose whether or not I go?” My voice was timorous and small; I didn’t want to wake time or fate with my musings.
“Don’t go in the lough,” he begged. “If you stay out of the lough . . .” His voice trailed off. “Your life could be here, Anne. If you want it to be, your life could be here.” I could hear the strain in his voice, his reluctance to ask me to stay, even though I was sure it was what he wanted.
“One of the best things about being a writer, about being a storyteller, is that it can be done in any time and in any place,” I whispered. “I just need a pencil and some paper.”
“Ah, lass,” he murmured, protesting my capitulation, even as his heart quickened against my cheek. “I love you, Manhattan Annie. I do. I’m afraid that love will only bring us pain, but it doesn’t change the truth now, does it?” he said.
“And I love you, Tommy Dromahair,” I replied, glib and unwilling to talk of pain or hard truths.
His chest rumbled with laughter. “Tommy Dromahair. That I am. And I’ll never be anything else.”
“Niamh was a fool, Thomas. She should have told poor Oisín what would happen if he set foot on Irish soil.” His hands rose to my hair, and he began to loosen my braid. I tried not to purr as he separated my curls, spreading them over my shoulders.
“Maybe she wanted him to choose,” Thomas argued, and I knew it was what he expected me to do, without pressure from him.
“Then maybe she should have let him know what was at stake, so he could,” I chided, rubbing my lips across his throat. Thomas’s breath hitched, and I repeated the action, enjoying his response.
“We’re arguing about a fairy tale, Countess,” he whispered, his hands tightening in my hair.
“No, Thomas. We’re living in one.”
He rolled me beneath him abruptly, and the fairy tale took on new life and new wonder. Thomas kissed me until I began to float up, up, up before drifting down, down, down, sinking into him as he welcomed me home.
“Thomas?” I moaned into his mouth.
“Yes?” he murmured, his body thrumming beneath my hands.
“I want to stay,” I panted.
“Anne,” he demanded, swallowing my sighs and caressing my cares away.
“Yes?”
“Please don’t go.”
October 20, 1921, fell on a Thursday, and Thomas brought home presents—a gramophone with a wind-up crank and several classical recordings, a long coat to replace the one I’d lost in Dublin, and a newly published book of Yeats poetry. Hot off the presses. He quietly put the gifts in my room, probably worried that I would be uncomfortable with his generosity, but he instructed Eleanor to make an apple cake with custard sauce and invited the O’Tooles to dinner, making the meal a celebration. Brigid obviously didn’t remember when her daughter-in-law’s birthday had been, and she didn’t balk at all when Thomas insisted on a party.