On Christmas morning, Annie gifts Maeve the very same tea set Maeve will one day use to serve Annie tea in 2001. The men play hurling, a ball game, outside. Then, Thomas gifts Annie two wedding bands as a formal marriage proposal. With Eoin’s blessing, they agree to marry the next day.

A gunshot rings out, reminding Annie of an attempted assassination of Michael Collins: While Collins was in someone’s home, someone tried to shoot him through the dining room windows. Brigid rushes to see who shot the gun but returns without news. Everyone feels but doesn’t say that it could have been one of Brigid’s sons attempting to kill Collins. Thomas, Collins’s friend Fergus, and Robbie O’Toole form a search party and find a man with a gun aimed at the house. Thomas suspects the man of being one of the three who had shot at Anne on Lough Gill; possibly he was trying to kill Anne, not Collins now.

Annie and Thomas get married in a simple but heartfelt ceremony.

Worried that Liam and Ben will hurt Annie, Thomas decides to ban the Gallagher sons from Garvagh Glebe. Brigid protests, but Thomas insists that they cannot return to the house, or else Brigid must leave as well.