“Well, yes, but... I wasn’t sure if...”

Damien shakes his head, nudges Dad. “Your own daughter doesn’t believe it, Eugene.”

“It’s not that, it’s just...he only told us after he...got sick, and we thought...maybe he was confused?”

Damien shakes his head. “The soul of discretion, aren’t you, Eugene?” He looks at me. “Sinatra asked him not to say a word about it. He was supposed to be playing a gig in Las Vegas. But he didn’t want to do it. So he basically rang in sick and legged it to Dublin for a couple of days. He had himself hidden under a hat and behind sunglasses and he was all dressed up like an ordinary Joe, but yer man—” he nods towards Dad “—had him clocked straightaway. Didn’t you?”

Dad nods, sits up straighter in his chair. “It was lashing rain and I was driving down Harcourt Street,” he begins, like he always does.

Damien listens to the story as if he’s never heard it before, nodding and smiling in all the right places.

The second drink was a viscous white substance. “You can stay where you are on the couch,” Hanneke told Iris after she drank it. “Or you can lie on the bed. As you prefer.”

The bed was in the corner. A pretending-to-be-regular bed, made irregular with the wheels at the end of each leg.

“I’ll stay on the couch,” Iris said.

“What’s going to happen now?” Dad asked.

“I’m going to die now,” Iris told him. Her voice was calm and clear.

“Why?” Dad said.

“It’s my time,” said Iris.

“Is it my time?” he asked, worried.

“No,” said Iris.

She looked at me and I wanted to say something then.

Something profound. Something meaningful.

I said, “Do you need to go to the ladies’ first?”

Damien scribbles my telephone number on the cover of his guidebook. “I’ll give you a buzz when I get home if that’s okay,” he says. “Make arrangements to visit Eugene.”

Home. Already I can make out a faint outline of land, pinpricks of light, brightening as we move closer. It feels like I’ve been gone for such a long time.

“Dad would love that,” I tell Damien. When I hug him, he smells of suncream and mothballs. He pats me awkwardly on the arm, the way Dad does.

I didn’t hug Iris. After she drank the second drink. I was afraid I might never let her go. Instead, I asked her if she wanted me to hold her hand.

She smiled at me. “I’m fine,” she said. “I don’t want you to worry about me.”

“Well, would you hold mine?” I whispered.

“I’d be glad to.” She slipped her big, warm hand into mine. I tried not to think about how cold her hand would be. How stiff. I tried not to think about anything but this moment. Iris and me, sitting on a couch together, holding hands.

Of course, I couldn’t do it. I thought about the past. The future. What had happened. What would happen. But the panic of earlier had left me. And the anger of before had evaporated too.