“Have they?”

“They said he’s on trial for being a Communist.”

His mother stopped fixing the hat and lowered her hands. “Well, he’s not on trial and he’s not a Communist. So much for what they know. Just don’t listen, okay? It only makes it worse. They’re looking for Communists, so they have to talk to a lot of people in the government, that’s all.”

Nick came back to the mirror, studying them both, as if the world reflected would be his mother’s cheerful dream of before, when all they had to worry about was school gossip.

“They want to hear what he has to say. That’s why it’s called a hearing. There,” she said, pressing the hat like a protective shell. “How do I look?”

Nick smiled. “Beautiful.”

“Oh, you always say that,” she said lightly, glancing at the mirror again and leaning forward. Nick loved to watch her dress, disappearing to the edge of her careful absorption. It was the harmless vanity of a pretty girl who’d been taught that how you looked mattered, that appearance could somehow determine events. She blotted her lips one last time, then noticed his expression. “Honeybun, what’s wrong?”

“Why can’t I hear him too? I’m not a little kid anymore.”

“No,” she said softly, touching the side of his head. “Maybe just to me. But ten isn’t very old either, is it? You don’t want to grow up too fast.”

“Is he going to go to jail?”

She knelt down to face him, holding his shoulders. “No. Look, I know all of this seems confusing. But it’s not about you, do you understand? Just-grownups. Your dad’s fine. You don’t want him to have to worry about you too, do you? It’s-it’s a bad time, that’s all.”

A bad time. Nora, for whom Ireland was always just a memory away, called it troubles. “Before your father’s troubles started,” she would say, as if everything that was happening to them was beyond their control, like the weather. But no one would tell him what it actually was.