The Woman Who Left Before I Learned Her Last Name
I met her on a wet Thursday evening outside Connolly Station, the kind of Dublin rain that does not fall so much as lean into you. I was standing under the awning…
The Story That Sounded Too Real
I used to think fiction was a safe place to hide. You could change a name, move a street, give someone a different coat, and nobody would know which part was true…
The Umbrella I Returned on Camden Street
I met her because I was too proud to run in the rain. It was one of those Dublin evenings where the sky looked bruised from lunchtime and still managed to surprise…
The Woman Who Came Back After Twenty Years
I was fifty-one the morning I saw her again, standing under the clock in Connolly Station with a small red suitcase and the same careful way of holding herself, as if the…
My Biggest Regret Was Letting Her Leave Ireland
I met Clara on a wet Tuesday evening outside Trinity College Dublin, both of us standing under the same thin shop awning, pretending our umbrellas had not betrayed us. She was from…
The Weekend in Galway I Never Told Anyone About
I was twenty-eight, living in a flat near Rathmines, and pretending I was grand at a level that deserved an award. My mother had died the previous winter, my job in town…
The Irish Holiday That Ended My Engagement
I came to Dublin with a ring on my finger and left with it wrapped in a receipt from a chemist on Westmoreland Street. It sounds dramatic now, like the sort of…
She Left Ireland Without Telling Me She Was Pregnant
I met Clara on a wet Thursday outside Whelan’s, both of us pretending we weren’t waiting for the same taxi. She had a green coat, a cigarette she never lit, and a…
I Couldn’t Hate the Person Who Broke My Heart
I met Anna in the queue for coffee near St Stephen’s Green, both of us pretending not to be annoyed by the rain. She had a green scarf wrapped around her hair…
The Night We Promised Never to Meet Again
We met on a wet Thursday in November, which is to say we met in Dublin in the usual way: both pretending the rain wasn’t bothering us. I was standing outside Grogan’s…