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“What in the world?” Fearghal and Noel said when it came. Cathal sent letters, but never parcels.

“I have to wait for Lillie,” Mac said. “It’s meant for the both of us. And the wedding is still three weeks away. Maybe we should open it afterward.”

“Oh come on,” Thomas said. “Maybe there’s something in there for the rest of us.” “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers came on the radio as Mac considered what to do. It was cold outside but the windows were open because the radiators were far too warm. Outside someone shouted the name “Jean” over and over. They could hear their upstairs neighbor hacking and coughing in her kitchen—the sound carried along the airshaft. “Jean!”

So he opened the box, his curiosity getting the better of him. Inside was something soft. Mac pulled out a large square of linen trimmed with lace that he recognized instantly as his mother’s. He tipped the box upside down and a letter fell out along with the packing materials. In the letter, Cathal said that he’d visited Lillie’s people. He was going that direction anyway and it seemed wrong to pass their door. They had a great welcome for him and he was very glad he went. Mac wondered if he’d bombarded them with thoughts about fishing rights.

“Cathal sent this?” Noel asked, holding the delicate material in his hands.

“Are your hands clean? That was our mother’s.”

Noel set down the lace and wiped his hands on his pants.

“What are you supposed to do with it?” Thomas asked. He drove his hands into his pockets as if he didn’t trust himself not to get it dirty.

“I don’t know,” Mac said. But as soon as Lillie arrived and saw it, she said she’d have it made into a veil. She draped it over her hair. “What do ye think?”

Noel shrugged and looked at Fearghal, who said. “Very nice.”

“I won’t have the seamstress cut it,” Lillie said. “You see how it drapes? There’s no need to cut. I’ll tell her to make the stitches very loose to the headpiece and then it can be made into a baptism dress one day. And that will be for all your children, too, of course. All Joyce children.”

“My children?” Thomas asked, astonished. Fearghal laughed.

How strange, Mac thought, to have something of his mother’s all the way in America, to think that it was carried in an airplane, put on a truck, tucked under the arm of a man his mother had never fathomed, and dropped off at a door she’d never seen. How strange to see his lovely dark-haired girl walk it over to the window to examine it more closely in the gray Bronx light. His whole history, and hers, and everyone who came before them was there in the room with them for a moment, he could feel it. It often felt as if a chasm existed between his old life and this one, and yet a square of lace had brought them right next to each other.

“What are you thinking?” Lillie asked, as she always did.

Mac was thinking that the past seemed slightly different every time he returned to it. He was thinking that for as far back as he could remember he’d wondered at the particularness of living things, why that flower bloomed there, why this person with these specific characteristics was born above another, how despite the billions of people in the world, no two people were exactly alike, not even twins, wasn’t that remarkable? He was thinking about how it came to be that they mattered so much to each other.

And he was also thinking it was possible that he’d never get an answer, that all of life was the question, never the answer, and if that was the case, he wondered if it was even possible to ever feel truly settled.

“Do you think your mother would have liked me? Would she have liked that we’re going to be married?” Lillie asked as he pulled her close and his brothers disappeared into their bedrooms. She leaned against him as they swayed to the song on the radio.

“Absolutely I do. I know she would have.”

THE WEDDING CEREMONY WAS AT St. John’s and the reception was in the church hall. They invited fifty people and almost all of them came. Sean was supposed to say a few words during the toast, but at the last minute he said he didn’t realize there’d be so many people and he made Barry do it. The band played until midnight, and when the lights came up, signaling an end to the evening, there were napkins and empty glasses and women’s high heels strewn everywhere.

In those first months, Mac and Lillie got up to the alarm clock, showered, slurped mugs of tea at the counter, and headed off to work each morning with their packed lunches—Lillie to the subway and Mac to the van he’d purchased secondhand, where he kept his mobile forge and anvil, his rack of various shoe sizes. Mondays were never as bad as expected and went quickly. Wednesdays were the worst, and then when Fridays arrived they only had to get through and it was the weekend again. Weekends were for get-togethers. Sean, who was working in the city water tunnels again, moved his family to Long Island and bought a gas grill—such a simple thing, standard issue for any suburban house, but also so completely American that it was a subject of discussion for several weeks. Barry and Regina were expecting their first baby and followed Sean and Marie to the same town, a walkable distance away. The kids played and the adults talked and then, fortified, they headed into another week.

For seventeen months Mac and Lillie took whatever extra hours they could and socked away every penny that wasn’t needed for bills. Lillie got promoted to head of the data entry pool, so when she worked overtime the company covered her dinner and a car service home. Usually, she just had Mac pick her up and kept the money. The dinner they ordered for her she always brought home for them to split because the restaurants the bosses ordered from always packed so much into the container and it was expensive—short ribs and steaks and all sorts of sides. Splurges were calculated in advance—Christmas, a birthday. They went to Cape Cod for the Fourth of July when they’d been married only a few months and stayed at an inn with a shared bathroom down the hall. There’d been a last-minute cancellation so the owner, finding out they were newlyweds, gave them a room with a balcony that overlooked the harbor. Sitting out there in the early mornings made them feel like they owned the entire world.

Lillie’s friend moved to Florida because her husband found work there, so in the winter they flew down to visit and the four of them drove to Ft. Lauderdale for a night. They were on the beach one afternoon when a whistle blew and the water was cleared for sharks. “Now who’s the wise one of the two of us!” Mac said when Lillie came running out of the water, half laughing and half terrified. They watched, fascinated, as a helicopter flew low to the surface and eventually the flag went up that swimming could resume. “Not on your life,” Mac said, and the whole group laughed. They came back suntanned and happy and somewhat impressed with themselves for having seen so many places.

Sometimes there were too many weddings in a matter of weeks, or too many friends’ babies born, and it set them back. A wedding gift, a baby gift, these were no places to skimp, so they were generous and figured what goes around comes around. They went to the pub when they felt a craving to go out, but they were careful. There was no sense spending money on a drink when the same could be had at home for a quarter of the price. On the other hand, home didn’t have a jukebox. At home you didn’t run into anyone you weren’t expecting, and you didn’t get any news.

And then one day Lillie stood in front of the mirror cupping her breasts. She lifted one, then the other, then let go. “Can I help with anything?” Mac asked, watching her from their bed.

“I think they’re bigger,” she said. She turned to show him. “No funny business. I’m being serious. They’ve grown.” The boys were out, though Fearghal and Noel would probably get in from work at any moment. Even though it was only six a.m., they’d tear the kitchen apart reheating whatever dinner had been left over from the night before.

“They look as good as they always do,” Mac told her. She climbed back into bed.

“It’s gone six,” he said. Normally she was in the shower by then.

“I’m calling in. I’ve been exhausted all week. I need one big sleep to cure me.”

And then Mac knew. When he looked at her face, he watched it dawn on her, too.

She bolted from bed once again and rushed to the dresser. She opened the top drawer and removed a pocket calendar.