Small Things Like These

by Claire Keegan

Before long, he caught a hold of himself and concluded that nothing ever did happen again; to each was given days and chances which wouldn’t come back around. And wasn’t it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for once, despite the upset, instead of always looking on into the mechanics of the days and the trouble ahead, which might never come.

‘You don’t mind bringing the foreigners in.’ ‘Hasn’t everyone to be born somewhere,’ Furlong said. ‘Sure wasn’t Jesus was born in Bethlehem.’

‘What it is to be a man,’ she said, ‘and to have days off.’

Why were the things that were closest so often the hardest to see?

In an earlier time, it could have been his own mother he was saving – if saving was what this could be called.

The worst was yet to come, he knew. Already he could feel a world of trouble waiting for him behind the next door, but the worst that could have happened was also already behind him; the thing not done, which could have been – which he would have had to live with for the rest of his life.