1934.

(...)

Grace (the first wife) had died because of him, or so Thomas thought: he really loved her, yet she died from a bullet aimed at him. Yet nothing stopped this death spiral: when he took revenge on the Changretta(s), they in turn managed to kill John, one of his brothers. But the horror of Tom’s life was not only guilt, no: there were also hallucinations, epileptic seizures... Nobody knew anymore whether to blame the war or the alcoholism. (...) He stopped drinking for some time, but being more lucid did not help him to forget what he wanted to forget: he had married again, with Lizzie, only because she was pregnant with a girl... But even the daughter he loved was dead: Ruby, in fact, died of tuberculosis at only 7 years old. He had everything: money, alcohol, drugs, women. But at the same time he had nothing: around him there was an unspeakable political puddle and a whirlwind of death and despair, even more without his aunt Polly: his mother figure, killed by the IRA.

So, one day, almost without reason, he found himself crying: he was sitting on the driveway that led to the Garrison, alone, crying as he had never done in 44 years of life.