He remembered the day he’d turned five, waking up in the morning and going downstairs to find the kitchen table covered with presents, all wrapped in the Sunday comics. He couldn’t remember what gifts he’d received, but he remembered his mother sitting at the end of the table and watching him with tear-filled eyes.

She’d cried a lot that month and Marcus hadn’t understood why. And then, one terrible night, his father had gathered them all around the kitchen table to tell them that their mother was very ill. Marcus remembered his confusion over the word: cancer. He’d never heard it before, but it was his father’s somber expression and watery eyes that told him how serious it was.

Marcus wondered if she were crying now. There would be a phone call later that day from Da and Ma, as there had been for his sixth and seventh birthdays, and Marcus felt a sick knot growing in his stomach. It was always difficult to talk to his mother, to ignore the tears in her voice and pretend everything was all right, to lie to her and insist that he was happy living in Ireland.

Everything wasn’t all right! His ma was sick-so sick, she could no longer care for her three youngest sons. So sick, his father had to go back to fishing with his uncle Seamus to make enough to pay the hospital bills. So sick that he and Ian and Declan had been sent away to Ireland so they wouldn’t have to watch their mother die.

A fresh round of tears threatened and Marcus swallowed them back. She couldn’t die, she wouldn’t, if they’d only let him go home and take care of her. Marcus had always been able to make her laugh. He’d been her sweet baby, her silly clown, her wee boy. If anyone could make her well, he could.

“Come on, Marky!” Ian shouted. “We know you’re in here. Nana’s gonna take us to see Top Gun. It’s supposed to be really neat, with jets and bombs and stuff.”