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O’Brien chuckled. “My number isn’t really private, you know. Anyone can find it in the phone book. You’re calling from New York, you said?”
    “Yes, Father. Our headquarters are here in midtown.”
    “New York City.” Father O’Brien paused as he tried to remember the last time he had been there.
    “The reason for my call,” Julia continued, “is to ask whether I could interview you for my story. I’ve been doing some research, and I think you might be the oldest priest in the country with pastoral duties.”
    “That might well be,” Father O’Brien said. “Of course, Ms. Tomlinson, I’d be happy to give you an interview.”
    “Oh, wonderful! And please, call me Julia. I could come up to Vermont this week or next if you have time to meet with me.”
    Father O’Brien chuckled again as he remembered the crowded streets and harried pedestrians in New York. “I have plenty of time, which is one of the wonderful things about Mill River. But even if I didn’t, I would make time. Any afternoon this week would be fine.”
    “Why don’t we try for Tuesday around one? I can meet you at the church,” Julia said.
    After he gave her directions to St. John’s and ended the call, Father O’Brien leaned back into his chair. He removed the hearing aids from his ears and set them on the table next to the phone. Finally, his ears felt normal and natural, even if the deep quiet that surrounded him wasn’t. “New York City,” he said again, his voice louder than before, but with no one there to hear him, it didn’t matter.
    When he closed his eyes, picturing the skyscrapers and bustle of the city, he felt a kind of nostalgia. It wasn’t a longing for New York—far from it. Instead, he recognized the memory of childhood wondering, the feeling of not having seen and wanting to see. It was almost as if he were a boy again, yearning to know what his father and brother were lucky enough to experience while he had remained at his grandparents’ farm in the Vermont countryside so many years before.

Chapter 4
    Saturday, March 31, 1934
    M ichael looked across the table at his mother. Their lunch had been meager—a bit of soup left over from the previous night’s dinner and the last of a loaf of day-old bread—but she’d eaten very little.
    “Mother, are you all right?”
    “Just tired, that’s all,” his mother replied. “Here, Michael, you have this. I’m not really hungry.” She pushed her plate and bowl across the table to him, and he didn’t refuse it. “There’s a bite of crust left in the kitchen, too,” she added.
    Michael looked at his mother’s portion of soup and bread. “That’s all right. This’ll be enough.”
    As he finished her food, she reached over to pick up a postcard that had been wedged upright between the salt and pepper shakers. On the front was an image of the Hudson River Bridge in New York City, which had been completed only three years earlier. Niall had sent the postcard to tell them the address of the room he and Seamus had rented, along with a phone number where he could be reached in an emergency, and to show them something of the work they were doing.
    The Triborough Bridge will be something like the one on the front of this card,
Niall had written,
but bigger and connecting more pieces of the city
. He had promised to send money once he had been paid.
    While his mother traced a finger down the edge of the postcard, rereading the message, Michael stared at the painting of the bridge on the other side. In the foreground was a street called Riverside Drive, carrying several fine-looking automobiles. The bridge rose up in the background, with great metal towers and steel support cables swooping majestically over the Hudson River. He was so fixated on the image that he didn’t realize someone had knocked on the front door until his mother rose to answer it.
    A strange man stood on the front porch. His clothes were dirt-covered and worn, and he hastily removed his hat.