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She pulls back. She takes my hand, my big bloody scarred hand, and puts it flat on her belly.

“I didn’t know,” she says. “I swear I didn’t know till he said it. But I think so. Yeah. I think it’s true.”

I look at my hand. I look at her.

And I go down.

I don’t decide to. My legs quit. I go down on both knees on that filthy floor in front of my wife, and I wrap my arms around her hips, and I press my forehead against her stomach.

I’ve never knelt to anybody. Not my father. Not a judge, not a priest, not a man with a gun. Eamon wanted me on my knees, and I’d have died first.

I kneel for her.

Her hands come down on my head. She’s stroking my hair. She’s saying something soft, over and over. It’s okay. I’ve got you. We’re okay.

My eyes are wet. I let them be.

Hi, I think, to whoever’s in there. It’s your dad. Sorry about the noise. I’ve got you now. I’ve got you both.

“Mo chroí,” I tell her belly.

That’s how my brothers find us.

I hear the doors come in. I hear boots. Then I hear them stop.

“Jesus Christ, Dec,” Finn says from somewhere behind me. He sounds hurt. “You didn’t leave us anything.”

Zahra starts to laugh. She’s still crying, and she’s laughing, and she’s holding my head against her.

I don’t get up for a while.

Sixteen

Epilogue

One week later

I’ve got the paper from the doctor in the pocket of his shirt. I’ve been carrying it around for three days like it might change its mind. Seven weeks. He’s had his hand on my belly so much I threatened to have it removed, and he said try, and I didn’t.

It’s morning. I’m sitting on the back steps of his mother’s house with my bare feet in the grass, and he’s standing above me with his hand on the back of my neck, and the sun’s on both of us, and nobody’s coming.

“Come on,” he says. “I owe you something.”

The back field goes on forever. Fifty acres of long grass, gold this time of year, and trees on the far side, and nobody. There’s never anybody. He told me his father bought the land so nobody could ever see them out here.

He walks me out to the middle of it with my hand in his. The grass comes up to my knees.

Then he stops, and he takes his shirt off, and hands it to me. I fold it over my arm. He takes off everything else, and I watch him do it, all of him, in the sunlight, and I don’t try to hide what it does to my face.

“You promised,” I tell him.

“I know.”

“First day, Declan.”

“I know, sweetheart. I’m late.” He puts his hand on my cheek. “Stand right there.”

I stand right there.