To respond to some of your reviews: Yes, Molly had whooping cough. Killed a TON of kids at the time. I will definitely keep this going...I've got about 3-4 chapters planned :) Not sure if/when Kat will show, other than in mentions of older Jack's memories, since we all know how they met and their relationship.
...
May 1890
Ciara was born just a few hours before the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Pat held her close as he stood at the open window to watch the celebration. "All them people and canons and music is for you, a chroí (uh Kree, my heart). " he said. "A new world wonder."
Ciara never learned to walk. She just hopped up one day and ran. Around her first birthday, she jumped from constant laughter to constant chattering. She was speaking in sentences before Jack was.
By time she was four and Jack was five, every kid on the block knew the little Irish girl with dark braids and huge blue eyes who raced boys twice her size and sometimes even won. Ciara could've sweet talked a brick wall into a game of jump rope or another piece of candy.
Her father called her firecracker.
Her mother called her unladylike.
Jack, a year and a week older, taught her to play marbles and held onto her legs to keep her from falling when she tried to use the fire escape ladder as monkey bars. When she tripped out a cartwheel and had to get stitches, he cried and held her hand.
.
All the women of the building who gossiped about their children while they hung laundry from the fire escapes liked to say Jack and Ciara were like the sun and the moon: polar opposites and best friends. While she lived life at 100 miles an hour and often upside down, Jack preferred to lay on the fire escape and watch the stars, or the clouds, or the people passing by. By time he'd worked up the courage to break away from Evelyn's side, she was friends with half the neighborhood. They both loved Evelyn's stories, Pat's roughhousing, and fighting over who got to hold Molly. She would grab his hand to pull him into the neighborhood baseball game. He would grab her hand to pull her out traffic.
...
The week that Jack turned 7 and Ciara turned 6, at the end of May, it was already over 80 degrees.
Evelyn opened all the windows as she set to making their birthday dinner. Shouts and laughter rose from the streets below where the neighborhood kids played, and Evelyn leaned out the window to watch. Ciara was jumping rope with some older girls, her braid thumping rhymically against her back as she sang. Jack knelt in the shade of the building across the street, coaching the youngest of the bunch through a game of marbles. She muttered a quick prayer of thanks for the breeze. It'd be a long summer.
As she retreated back into the heat of the kitchen, Evelyn glanced around for her redheaded shadow. Then she froze and took a deep, shaky breath. It'd been over a year and loss still knocked the wind out of her. Molly would be 2 ½ now, which was hard to imagine. She was frozen in time, forever a freckled, smiley baby crawling around her feet. Jack and Ciara had stopped asking when she was coming back. Now her name felt taboo. Evelyn didn't know which one was worse.
…
Ciara brought flowers to her own birthday party, skipping through the front door with a fistful of dandelions she'd snatched from the alleyway.
"Your hair is an absolute mess, gal." Evelyn said, shaking her head. Ciara squirmed as her mother pushed stray curls from her flushed face.
"Cause she was standing on her head again." Jack said. His pockets jangled with the marbles he'd collected.
Pat was right behind them, trudging up the stairs, dirty and dripping with sweat. Evelyn gave him a kiss and glass of water. He chugged it, then smiled down at Jack and Ciara. "What's all this nonsense about some birthdays?"
Jack was sitting on the floor, sorting his marbles, not listening as Ciara bounced around telling Pat was he already knew: Jack had turned 7 three days before, and she would be 6 in three days. On their actual birthdays, their father would hold them upside down and gently bump their heads against the floor-one bump for every year plus one for good luck. Pat collapsed into a chair as Ciara started making up a song about leprechauns and the tooth fairy.
"Ciara Kelly, be quiet and come act like a lady." Evelyn said sharply. She gave Pat's shoulder a squeeze.
The kids got the message and climbed in their chairs to sit as politely as they could. They requested shepherd's pie and gooey strawberry cake every year. Food was one of the things they always agreed on.
Jack and Ciara held hands under the table as their parents recited their favorite birthday blessing. They said it every year:
May you always have a sunbeam to warm you
A moonbeam to charm you
A sheltering angel so nothing can harm you.
Laughter to cheer you
Faithful friends near you
And when you pray, Heaven to hear you.
...
Ugh I love Ciara so much, guys. Obviously Jack is an orphan, so this is gonna get SAD again, but I thought after watching Molly stop breathing we all deserved some fluff!
Also, I am a stickler for medical/historical accuracy in my writing, but I'm not Catholic and I have a tourist/student knowledge of Irish culture so I'm doing my best :) (Any mistakes probably bother me more than anyone else lol) Thank you thank you thank you for reading and reviewing! Love