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The photograph is old and dull gray, taken when those posing for it believed a portrait taking to be a formal, official occasion, far too somber for smiles. Isabel Birch sits in the middle, poised and elegant, her small, shrewd eyes challenging the camera. Flanking her is Joseph, bespectacled, pot-bellied, his jacket pulled aside to reveal an expensive gold watch chain that disappears into a waistcoat pocket. His hand rests on the seat behind her in a gesture of comfort, or perhaps possession, and he gazes out like a sultan from a sumptuous land.

Around them stand their children, girls with ringlets and crisp pinafores who, if I squint, I can recognize as young versions of my aunts Frances, Grace, Eleanor and Josephine, all standing as if uncomfortable staying still, and all regarding the camera with a look of confused curiosity. On Isabel's lap a baby named Edward, who would grow up to be my father, is caught by the shutter of the camera in the process sliding down his mother's lap to the floor.

The year would be 1924 or thereabouts, if I have my father's age right. It makes the Isabel in this picture 42 years old, and showing no signs of strain from four young daughters and a baby boy. She would live another fifty-five years, would outlive her husband by fifteen years and a daughter, Eleanor, by thirty. She would welcome eighteen grandchildren into the world, and share with all of them her dignified character and considerable wit. As I sit here in the attic of her house holding the ornate cherry wood jewel box she left me when she died, I like to believe I was the one she loved the most.

There are several fading photographs in this box, not all of them so old or so formal. Most of them I haven't seen since I was a little girl perched by Isabel's knee as she sorted through her jewelry. There is a snapshot of my great aunt Geraldine and great uncle Tom, smiling from the expansive running boards of their 1921 Packard Single Six, and another, taken the same day, of them laughing beneath a road sign that reads "Niagara Falls: Honeymooner's Haven." There is a half-torn picture of my grandfather Joseph, laughing through the smoke of his cigarette as an unknown friend tries to slam a Panama hat down over his eyes. There is a sepia-toned portrait of my aunt Eleanor, young and glowing with health, posed with a curled hand resting artfully against her cheek and smiling like she had all the world ahead of her.

Isabel used to describe the people in these photos to me, during those quiet early evenings when I was bathed clean and nightgowned and waiting out the last few minutes before bed. She told me stories about them all, these relatives frozen in time that I would never know. I listened to these stories patiently, waiting for the one story I never tired of hearing: how my grandfather Joseph had sailed here from Ireland at the turn of the century to make his fortune and send for Isabel, the woman he'd waited nine years to marry.

How many nights I went to sleep dreaming of a dashing young man scanning the horizon from the lower decks of an ocean liner, his jacket flapping in the breeze, closing his eyes against the salt air and dreaming of the day he could send for his love. I saw young Isabel in my dreams, imagined her embroidering handkerchiefs by a frosted Irish window pane, glancing forlornly out at rain dampened streets, waiting for the postman to bring news from her fiancé. I pictured their wedding, imagined swelling violins as he slipped the ring on her finger and kissed his new bride. In the morning I would wake full of romance and delight, ready to hear Isabel describe it all to me again.

I used to steal glances at my grandfather Joseph as he scowled at the editorials in the Sunday paper, and tried to imagine him when his glasses were thinner and his hair thicker. I would watch for some spark to fly between him and Isabel, some remnant of their former romance. Sometimes when she leaned over him to pour his morning tea he would touch the small of her back, lightly, and go on dipping his toast into his poached egg as though it was the most natural thing in the world, to touch his wife so silently, so confident that his touch was welcome. This was romance, then, I learned, when couples passed middle age. Tea and poached eggs and a gentle touch. Far better, I thought, than the acrimony and resentment so openly displayed by my own divorcing parents. So much more like what marriage should wind down into. When Joseph died Isabel wrapped her diamond wedding ring in one of his silk handkerchiefs and tucked it in the casket with him, underneath his folded hands.

It seems only fitting to me, now, the night before my own daughter's wedding, that I find something old for her here in Isabel's cherry wood box, in amongst the screwback earrings and ornate lapel pins she used to wear to Mass and Christmas dinners. I sort through the sparkling gems, the paste pearls that Isabel treated as real, the rhinestone bracelet one of her other grandchildren gave her for her birthday. There's a shamrock brooch here made of Connemara marble, cut rough around the edges and dull from years of wear. There's a tara brooch, a fine gold chain, some silver studs, and as I pass over them I remember occasions when she wore them, and how fine and proud she made simple jewelry look.

Perhaps I ought to give my daughter the whole thing. I turn the box around slightly and examine it from all angles. Perhaps she'd like the legacy of a great grandmother she never knew, a woman who knew romance and happiness in marriage. I bring the kerosene lamp closer to where I'm sitting, pressed up against a rack of old winter coats, and examine the lining of the box. It is sapphire blue satin, and it still looks new.

Except that there is a small rip in the bottom, a tiny frayed split where the fabric meets the wood. I feel the frayed edge with my finger, thinking that perhaps I could mend it before tomorrow. But as I touch it the fabric seems to fall apart, ripping softly as though too weak to stay together any longer, and I am left with a gaping hole in the fabric. I move some bracelets out of the way so I can survey the damage, and tilt the box closer to the light.

Just beneath the rip is a little black latch. I blink at it for a moment, not understanding, until I see that the fabric didn't rip so much as its makeshift stitches fell apart. I tug on it gently and more of it comes away, revealing the smooth seams of the false bottom I didn't know was there.

My heart jumps, and for a moment I feel as though Isabel will come up the attic stairs any minute and scold me for unearthing one of her secrets. I slide the little black latch aside with nervous fingers, almost breathless with wonder at what I'll find beneath the door. The wood panel lifts up and is stopped by the upper jewelry tray. But it is enough.

The space below is no more than three or four inches square, just large enough for two yellowed envelopes to sit, snug and undisturbed.

I balance the box on my knees and withdraw the envelopes between two fingers. I hardly want to touch them, these relics that look and feel as old as the box itself. I set the box on the floor and turn the first envelope over carefully. It is parchment, from the days before envelopes with glue, and is slit along the top neatly as if with a letter opener. The address is written in tiny, ornate black letters: Miss Isabel Callaghan, 42 Fitzroy St., Dublin, Ireland.

This is it, this is the letter, I realize. The letter Joseph sent to her, I'm sure of it, the letter that meant she was coming here to marry him. My fingers shake as I pry open the slit and reach inside for the crisply folded paper. It crinkles as I draw it out, and I'm afraid it'll break in half before I get a chance to look. Unfolded it becomes a sea of precise black ink, written with the elegant hand of long ago, tiny groups of lines squeezed into one page to save on the price of postage. It is Joseph's letter, secreted away in a special little place. I want to read it slowly and savour every word, but my eyes run over it hungrily.

18 October, 1910

Dearest Isabel,

I suppose you thought this day would never come, but here it is at last my darling girl. Look behind this letter, you'll find the ticket I promised you, on the very same steamer that brought me here so long ago. Your passage is booked for the twenty-seventh - and see, darling, you've got a cabin all to yourself like a lady ought. I couldn't bear to think of you in steerage, cursing the day you laid eyes on Joseph Byrne.

Perhaps you'd be right to curse him, not writing you in over a year. But that fella's long gone now, sweetheart. Joseph Byrne that was now lives on as Joseph Birch. I changed from Byrne when I started looking for work some time ago, didn't think to tell you about it til now. I had to do it, I had to pick something that didn't sound so Irish. A friend of mine from the yard, an Italian fella name of Pellegrino, he changed his name to Peregrine although it fools no one if you ask me, what with his swarthy complexion and accent thicker than your mammy's Christmas pudding. Still, it got him a job where no Pellegrino would have got through the front door. He came up from Massa Massachoo Massachu Boston looking for work same as the rest of us, said an Irishman had a better chance down there, if only I'd known. He's the one gave me the name of Birch told me to shake off the Irish as best I can, work on my accent and blend in. I hope you'll take to being Mrs. Birch since I'm after changing it for good now, can't rightfully go back and wouldn't want to anyway.

I can hardly believe you're coming at last, sweet Izzie. At times it feels like more than nine years gone by. I remember that chill evening on the Ha 'penny Bridge when I put my arms around you and asked you to marry me and then had to hush you up from laughing and jumping about and making a right spectacle of us. You were the sweetest thing, all of nineteen, your face all glowing from the cold and alive with delight. It's a sight that's kept me going so long, Izzie.

Would I were born a rich man. If I'd only been born a few miles away from those damnable Richmond Cottages, if my father had learnt a trade after the famine instead of just scraping by selling the labour of his hands, maybe things would have been different. We'd have been nine years married already, the parents of a good half dozen I'll wager, and I wouldn't have had to sail away to this new place in order to do it. But I always said I'd do better by my wife than a shabby tenement house with washer women and gangs of kids tearing up the place like my mother had to contend with. There's nothing in Dublin for the likes of us. I hope you've come to see that through the years. I hope it gave you some peace, in there amongst all the poverty and pettiness, to realize there was a man across the ocean working to get you out of there and give you a better life.

And so I have! You'll be so proud of me, I've put away enough to buy you the shiniest diamond ring you've ever seen. It's only proper and right that my wife sport such a ring, having been so patient without one all these years. I'll slip it on you the minute I see you and ask you all over again.

I should close now before I make a right fool of myself, carrying on like this. Only I can't wait to see you, dearest Izzie. I'll be camped out on the dock the night before you arrive, waiting for you to come down that plank. Mind you get off first so yours is the first bright face I see.

Yours faithfully,

Joseph

I read it over three times, my grandfather's voice coming alive off the page. It makes me blush, reading these intimate words from him. But how perfect it is. No amount of money could have bought a better wedding present for my daughter. I lay the parchment out gently across my knees, thinking how it will look behind a chestnut frame, with maybe a sprig of baby's breath in the corner, pressed beneath the glass.

I lift the letter off my knees and set it down on the planks of the attic floor. As I bend, the other envelope, long forgotten about, also slips to the floor. I retrieve it with two fingers, thinking it to be as light as Joseph's letter. But it is heavier than I thought, and when I turn it over I see that it is addressed to Miss Geraldine Callaghan of Fitzroy Street, and, evidently, never sent.

A question forms on my lips, as though I were asking the ghosts of this house to explain themselves. The return address has been faded by a spill of some sort, or maybe an errant drop of rain, but I can make out that it is from 1. Birch, on the street where I believe they had their first home. Why would Isabel have kept a letter to her sister? I know my family's history too well to think this commonplace.

The envelope is unsealed, thick and overfilled for its size. I gently lift the familiar yellow parchment out and notice the writing on these pages is larger, the ink a little messier, the pages adorned with the odd splotch of ink.

20th June, 1911

Dear Geraldine:

Well I arrived safely, as I'm sure you can see, but, my, what a whirlwind it's been since then. I can't believe it's going on seven months since I left Dublin. I hardly know where to begin.

The crossing was grand, sure there wasn't so much as a ripple the whole way. I was in terrors for the first few days, thinking of the horrible big waves and the wind and the rain. The ocean was no fiercer than Dublin Bay. You were no help to me before I left ... the cheek of you filling my head with stories about steamers capsizing and the like.

God bless us it's like a bleedin' furnace here. I had no idea it was so hot and humid here, I always heard this was a bone-cold place. Here I am fairly swooning under this oppressive heat, trying to maintain my ladylike composure whilst the little drops of sweat roll down my nose and plop onto the paper. Excuse me, will you? I'd be more dignified but I'm roasting in this curse of a wool dress.

Joseph was there at the dock like he promised, all chuffed with himself and bogged down with the biggest bouquet of roses I've ever seen in my life. He scooped me up right there in front of everybody and planted a kiss on me that'd make a jezebel blush. I hardly recognized him, to be honest, he's grown coarser working out in this harsh sun. His hair's a little thin on top, more salt than pepper now, and there are lines around his eyes that he says were put there by smiling so often at the thought of our getting married. Smooth talking divil, isn't he? A well. I'm sure he was surprised at the looks of me too, nine years away from that little slip of a thing he proposed to.

I stayed with Giacinta Pellegrino - isn't that a fine name that rolls off the tongue?-- the sister of some fella he works with, but we didn't talk much what with the difference in languages and such. She seemed a little sad to me, had oil paintings of Sicily all over the parlour, and only went out with the women in her neighbourhood who could read the street signs for her and such. If you ask me she was too old to make the journey here, what with having more of her life behind her than in front of her. But she's a sweet lady all the same. She stood up with me at the wedding ... oh, I know you've been dying to hear about the wedding but it wasn't nearly as romantic as those silly novels you read would have you believe. We were married, there's not much more to tell. I'm now Mrs. Byr Birch good and proper so Mammy can stop crossing herself and calm her nerves.

This name he's picked out for himself, it's taken me forever to get used to it. Mrs. Birch, it doesn't sound right at all. Maybe Byrne would have been just as hard to get used to, my being Miss Callaghan for so many years. But Joseph hardly seems himself, either, calling himself Joe Birch and carrying on as though he never set foot in Ireland a day in his life. You wouldn't know him anymore.

Gerry, he's a changed man. He even sounds English now, or at least, not Irish anymore. And he's proud of it, too, making Paddy jokes with all his mates.

I shouldn't be hard on him. It's not easy being Irish here, I'm learning that right quick. It was little wonder Joseph had such a hard time landing a job at first, the way the English here dislike the Irish so much. A shop across from the butcher had a position vacant sign and right beneath it, plain as day, another sign that said "no Irish need apply. "An old biddy in the post office the other day, a right miserable cow, sneered at my accent and cast her eyes up and down me like I'd no right sullying her counter. I had half a mind to tell her she could go to ... well I didn't, I just took my parcels and left but I know my face was burning.

I don't dare wear the diamond he bought me, it's so out of place in this little street of ours. Good Lord, Gerry, you should see the thing, it's as gaudy as anything you'd win at the carnival, all clunky and filigreed with sapphires all clustered around it. When he first put it on my hand I swear to God the first thing I thought was "For the price of this he could have sent for me two years sooner." It's miles too big, too splashy, I don't wear it because I'd be sick at the thought of wasting so much money if it ever got knocked off my hand going through the door. I feel like some exiled foreign princess, clothing herself in tattered furs and a shocking big ring her ancestors used to wear. That English postmistress would make short work of me if I ever waved it in front of her face; I know what she'd be thinking, too. Duck dressed up as quail.

Is it a sin, Gerry, to look at a man who's worked like a madman for nine years to give you a home and feel like you don't know him anymore? Maybe it was just too long, I don't know. Or just too many miles between us. I just know that when he pulled the sheets up over us that first night I felt such a panic come over me that I burst into tears and wouldn't let him touch me. He was grand about it of course, and thought it was just nerves, and so I didn't dare tell him otherwise. I oughtn't tell you this, really, but I sometimes wonder whether it would have better, for both of us, if I'd written to him when ... well, as soon as I realized. He might have found some young English thing here to wear his ring and settle in nicely among his English friends ... God'll strike me dead for this, any minute now I'm sure. I really oughtn't tell you this, Gerry, I'll corrupt your young mind. Go to confession straight away and pretend you never heard a word. I've a good husband and a nice home, everything I waited nine years for and a good deal more than a lot of women in my position have. I don't think I should be writing such things to you, I'm half tempted to rip this letter up. Go on and marry that Tommy Doyle if he ever gets around to asking you, but whatever you do, don't let him sail away across the ocean to make his fortune for you first.

There is one thing I need you to do for me, as a special favour. Would you please ensure that the enclosed envelope finds its way to Mr. Edward O'Farrell, lately of Anglesea Street? If you'd rather not send it to him directly, he'd be sure to get it if you forward it to the Gaelic League.

It would be unseemly for a married woman to be posting off letters to strange gentlemen, and so if it wouldn't be too much trouble .... I know I can trust you, Geraldine.

Affectionately,

Isabel

I put the pages down.

I slip my fingers into the envelope and withdraw the smaller one that had rested behind the letter to Geraldine. I hold it carefully, this letter that was sealed nearly a hundred years ago and has lived in silence in this box ever since. The handwriting reads Mr. Edward O'Farrell, at the address of O'Farrell's Booksellers on Anglesea St. in Dublin. I hardly want to open it. But my fingers shake a little and I know that if I put it back in the box I won't be able to sleep tonight. I have to know.

I take a long, thin hatpin from the jewel box and carefully slit the top of the yellowed envelope. There's only one sheet of paper, creased carefully in half. I imagine the scent of Isabel's flowery perfume set free from the aged envelope, but there is no such scent. I unfold the letter carefully, and hold it closer to the light.

My beloved Edward,

I peer at the salutation again, and my heart quickens. Beloved ... ?

My beloved Edward,

This is not an easy letter to write. I've written it out about a dozen times and tossed them all in the stove, unfinished. We were married on the 29th of December. I don't know how else to say it, except to state it plain out. You wanted to know, and so there it is.

Edward, I know you're angry with me, it breaks my heart to think of it but I know you're still hurt. I had no choice, I hope you come to understand that eventually. I had made a promise. There he was off in a strange land trying to make a life for me. I couldn't look out at the ocean and not think about him, you understand.

But you've heard this a thousand times already, I don't need to fill your head with it again. Just let me believe that you forgive me and I'll be grand.

Edward ... I read the passage over again. She had never spoken of any Edward ... only my father, her last baby, her only boy.

I'd write this in Irish if I could, I was doing so well with the lessons until Joseph's letter came. I'm forgetting it already. I can piece together bits and pieces sometimes, but Joseph doesn't know a word and even the young Father here doesn't know as much as he ought and so I've no one to speak it with. I'm afraid all our work will be for nought, macushla. There, at least I remembered that.

Maybe I should have addressed this letter to Éamonn Ó Fearghail, not the Edward O'Farrell you were when I first met you. I asked Joseph to change his name to Seosamh O'Brionn or at least let me call myself Isibéal Ban Brionn, but he just laughed, saying all that Irish nonsense is behind us now. We are the Birch family, Joe and Izzie to our friends, and, well, I ought to tell you this too, ... we've a baby due in the new year. If it's a boy Joseph wants to call him Frederic, and although he goes white at the thought of its being a girl, he says we'll name her Frances, after his mother, if it is. Frederic. I pray it's a girl.

Bless us, this is harder than I thought. I feel like you're just in the next room, and that any minute now I'll feel your hand on my shoulder, and the warmth of your breath on my cheek. To this day I can't turn the leaves in that book you gave me, can't even read the first lines of Araby without thinking of that night, halfway through reading it, when you put out the candle with your fingers and used the dark to steal a slow little kiss. I thought your father would come upon us any minute and I was just about crimson with shame, but I couldn't push you away. If I close my eyes I can still feel myself kissing the tips of your fingers, and scolding you for burning them just to get me to do it.

I miss you desperately, Éamonn ..., but I have to return your ring to you, dearest, I just can't bear to look at it. Joseph saw it one day and when he asked where I got it I lied and said Geraldine had given it me when I went away, but I just about cried and had to go hide from him. I love this little ring, it's the most beautiful little pearl I've ever seen, but looking at it reminds me so much of you. I wish you'd never bought it for me.

I peer into the envelope anxiously, certain I'd felt no ring there before. But tucked in the comer is a tiny square of white silk, cool and soft beneath my fingers as I unfold it. Nestled in the middle is a tiny pearl, set simply on a small gold band. I lift the ring up into the light, and notice that it is too small for even my baby finger. Isabel always had small hands; I remember that about her now, as I picture some strange man named Edward slipping this ring on her hand so long ago. I feel my cheeks redden. I am, ridiculously, embarrassed for Joseph.

There are so many things I wish, sweet Éamonn. I wish I could have worn that ring instead of the one I've got now, I wish I was back in your father's bookseller's again learning how to say "is mise Isibéal Ban Fearghail, ta sé go hointach inniu," and keeping house for you in the little cottage outside town you said you'd take for us. I wish I was a Daughter of Ireland again, instead of a bride of the new world.

I just couldn't abandon him, he's worked so hard. If I could take back that one word of mine from the Ha'penny Bridge a decade ago I surely would.

I won't forget you, my love. But I hope you forget me.

Always,

Isibéal

I read the letter over again, and again, before folding it gently and slipping it back into the envelope along with the unsent letter to Geraldine.

Her baby, Edward. Her only boy. She must have told Joseph she simply liked the name. She must have told Joseph so many things, and hid so much more.

I look around me, at the generations of junk that have come to rest up here, and, foolishly, think of each trunk of clothes, each chessboard and box of super eight films as witness to a marriage that shouldn't have been. Five children ... three houses ... tea and poached eggs and secrets.

Joseph's eyes address me from the faded gray photograph just as I am about to close the lid and return downstairs. His gaze has changed, I think.