Three Months Later March 1890 Chicago, Illinois

Despite Tom’s insistence that nothing is wrong, Mary Agnes finally prevails. He has an appointment on Wednesday afternoon at four. Tom leaves work an hour early—Mary Agnes doesn’t press him for the excuse he gave—and she meets him downtown at the doctor’s office off Madison on La Salle.

“Fatigue? Night sweats?” the doctor asks. “Cough? Phlegm.”

Mary Agnes nods.

Motioning Tom to the examination table, he listens to Tom’s lungs with a black stethoscope. “Deep breath.”

Tom struggles to take in a breath.

The doctor puts the stethoscope down, removes his eyeglasses, and turns to Tom. “Consumption,” he says, one word to change a life.

Mary Agnes and Tom look at each other. There are no words, the diagnosis flattening.

Since then, Mary Agnes has read everything she can about the disease. A bad cough. Pain in the upper chest. Bloody sputum. All of these symptoms present and yet she still hopes.

Tom no longer goes to the rail office. His last day was the twenty-eighth of February, just past his twenty-third birthday. He wanders the house during the day, hollow-eyed and deathly thin. Mary Agnes encourages him to eat, drink water, rest. He sleeps on the parlor couch now that he labors to take the stairs, but Mary Agnes can’t sleep herself, so she checks on him several times each night, helps him to sit when he coughs, wipes him down when he sweats.

When she catches a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror one night—is it two a.m.? Or closer to three?—she gasps. She looks a fright. From somewhere deep within her gut, she feels rage rising. She pounds the wall next to mirror so hard, the mirror shakes. She throws herself on the bed then and pounds the pillow, as if beating a feather pillow will change anything. The sobs begin then, first dry heaves and then gasping breaths between sobs.

“Mary A.?” Tom is at the bedroom door.

“Tom!” Mary Agnes sits up, swipes her eyes, straightens her hair. “What are you doing upstairs?”

“I heard you crying.” He comes to the bed and climbs in next to her.

She lies in his arms as the tears come again.

He holds her close, strokes her hair, whispers. “Shh, now, Mary A. I couldn’t ask for a dearer woman at my side.”

“It’s so unfair,” she says, between sobs. “C-c-consumption. You’re only twenty-three.” And then another raft of sobs.

“We can beat this, Mary A. Together.”

She doesn’t answer and he doesn’t elaborate.

“How?” she asks.

He cups her face and bends to kiss her forehead. “The fellows at work told me about a place, Colorado Springs. It’s said to be the best environment for consumptives.”

Consumptives. I hate that word.

“Pure air, clear water,” he continues. “We should think on it.”

“Colorado Springs? In—”

“Colorado. I know it’s not what we hoped, staying here, having a family. But it’s worth a try.”

A try? Is that all we can hope for, a try? Mary Agnes, face tear-stained and heart drumming, sinks into half-sleep.

Tom stays up and tends to her this once, humming an Irish tune and stroking her arms, her shoulders, until, at last, she succumbs to sleep.

“IT’S FOR THE BEST,” HELEN SAYS, closing Mary Agnes’s suitcase with a sharp snap. Mary Agnes’s and Tom’s meager apartment on Monroe Street is now empty except for the spare furniture that came with the rent.

“That’s what my gram said to me when I came to America,” Mary Agnes says. “And see where that’s gotten me.”

“It’s gotten you a good husband and a good friend.”

“One of whom is not long for this world and the other who is saying goodbye to me. I am tired of other people making decisions for me.” Mary Agnes shakes her head. “I should be making my own decisions. Or at least be in concert with my husband on this.”

“Chin up, Mary A. You need to be strong for Tom’s sake. And then for you. After.”

“I refuse to think about ‘after.’ He’s only twenty-three.”

“Colorado Springs is known for the cure,” Helen says.

“Why not here? There are doctors, sanitariums, even. Colorado Springs is a thousand miles from here.”

“Rock Island will take care of him. Best job in all Chicago. Men are dying to get a job with the Chicago-Rock Island Line.”

“I don’t think ‘dying to get a job’ is the best way of phrasing it.”

Helen colors. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mary A. I didn’t mean it that way . . .”

“I know you didn’t.” She pats her cousin on the shoulder. “You’ve been so good to me, Helen. Even if you never let me get a word in sideways.”

“Oh, pah,” Helen says. “You’re right handy with words yourself.”

“Even if I didn’t go to university.” Literature. Poetry. Writing . . . When is the last time she wrote anything other than a grocery list?

“Who needs to go to university?” Helen says. “There’s a whole world out there.” She takes the two small suitcases from the bottom of the stairs and places them by the front door. “You’ll have to write me from Colorado. Just think, the mountains, the clean air . . .” Helen chats on and then checks her pocket watch. “I’ll get these to the curb before Tom gets back from the bank.” She hefts the suitcases to the porch. “Don’t want him to strain himself before he even leaves Monroe Street.”

Is it that obvious?

“I’d like a moment, Helen. For remembering. Oh, but before I go . . .”

Helen turns, a quizzical look on her face.

Mary Agnes hands Helen two dollars. “. . . Here’s the money I borrowed from you when I first got to Chicago.”

“I’ve forgotten about that.”

“I never forget.”

After Helen takes the satchels outside, Mary Agnes walks slowly from room to room, fingering the wallpaper, the woodwork, the door handles, simple things one takes for granted in a home.

In the entry, she hears the echo of Tom’s laughter as he comes in from work, hanging his grey coat on the brass hook and sweeping her into a kiss, every night, the same. Although the parlor was already furnished, Mary Agnes did what she could to make it feel homier. The coal fireplace is cold now, and her decorations—the framed picture of their wedding day, the bits of lace she saved up, a single brass candlestick—are packed.

She lingers in the kitchen—I spent most of my waking hours here, sometimes with little more than pennies and love. She runs her hands over the backs of the two chairs scooted up to the table where she and Tom ate each night, the dining table too large for just two. Memories.

As she goes upstairs, Mary Agnes fingers the banister, its whorled woodwork soft beneath her fingers. At the bedroom door, she stops, surprised how emotional she feels. The wallpaper in the bedroom she loves, a green and cream stripe. When she couldn’t sleep at night for all the worrying, she would count the stripes on the near wall, the counting alone blurring the burning fear of Tom’s illness and the thrumming in her head, I cannot be a widow. Not yet. She remembers many grieving widows at wakes in Dawrosbeg. Most of them were aged, although some of them were younger, with children. But none were under eighteen, none.

Mary Agnes hears Tom coughing in the entry. She hurries downstairs and takes his arm as they stand in the parlor one last time. It looks smaller and shabbier than when they first arrived, but maybe they didn’t notice then, being newlyweds with other things on their minds.

“We’ve been happy here,” Tom says. “Except for—”

“Except for nothing. I will always remember this place, my love. Our first home.”

Helen waves to Mary Agnes, and shouts, “Hurry, we don’t want to be late for the train.”

“Come now, Tom,” Mary Agnes says.

Tom walks out the front door without looking back and uses the iron rail for balance. Mary Agnes lingers in the doorway for just a second more, one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, like she’s done so many times before in so many situations to stave off leaving, leaving, leaving—Am I leaving again?—before she pulls the door closed behind her.