Longing for Home (49 page)

“You’ll be excusing me, brother. I’ve a woman to go make up to.”

Ian gave him an encouraging slap on the shoulder. Tavish weaved his way through the somber crowd.

“I’m praying you aren’t going to leave us, Katie,” Rose McCann said in the very moment Tavish arrived at Katie’s side. “I know we’ve not much to offer you, but we need you so badly. We need you.”

Katie stood there, slumped by the weight but still able to meet her inquisitor’s eye. “’Tis my
father.
I’d like to see him again before he dies, but coming back takes more money than I have.”

“But, Katie, the Reds’ll tear us to bits if you go. They’ll have no reason to play nice. You’ve seen yourself what they’ll do”

Katie held her hands up in a gesture of helplessness. “I know, and I don’t want that to happen. I swear to you, I don’t.”

“You’ll be excusing me,” Tavish interrupted. He offered Rose an apologetic smile. “I’m wishing for a moment with Miss Katie.”

If Tavish had doubted his feelings for Katie were well known, the look of empathetic understanding on Rose’s face would have told him as much.

Alone with her at last, Tavish offered his arm. She didn’t accept it immediately.

“Do you mean to lecture me? Because I warn you, I haven’t—” Her voice broke, but she rallied. “I haven’t the strength for it.”

He took her hand, though she hadn’t truly offered it. “No lectures. No scolding. I give you my word.”

Her nod was small and weary.

“First of all,” he said, “I mean to ask after your shoulder. I know you took a blow during the scuffle yesterday, but you’d already gone to bed for the evening when I stopped at Archers’ to inquire after you.”

“I’ve a colorful bruise, I have. And Joseph had to wash all the dishes today as my arm was too stiff.”

He’d have to thank Joseph for that when next he saw him. “But otherwise you’re well? You don’t suspect it’s broken or any such thing?”

Katie shook her head.

“Will you walk about with me?” he asked.

She set her other hand on his arm, moving to walk at his side. “How far are we going?”

That, there, was the question sitting heaviest on his mind. He opted to answer in literal terms rather than burden her with his feelings. “Just up to the back of the house.”

Katie rested her head against his shoulder. He hoped that meant she didn’t entirely hold against him his lack of support the night she’d received her letter. He had been so blindsided by her declaration that going meant staying in Ireland that he hadn’t been as understanding as he should have been.

He led her to a bench not far from the back door. He took the spot directly beside her. “Have you decided to go, then?

“If I don’t go, I’ll never see my father again.”

He took her hand once more, squeezing it. “I know, Sweet Katie.”

“But if I go, my loved ones here will be made to suffer. I’ve seen that already.”

“I know that as well. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t broken up at the thought of you leaving.”

He could hear emotion shaking each breath she took. He wanted to beg her with every ounce of strength he had not to go, but he kept himself quiet. She didn’t need him adding to the pressure she felt.

“If you choose Ireland, how long would it be, do you think, before you go?”

She slipped her arm through his, her other hand held in his own. ’Twas almost as if she was embracing his arm. “As soon as can be. Joseph’s new housekeeper should arrive in the next couple weeks, but he said if I needed to leave sooner, he would understand.”

A couple weeks was the most he would have? It was almost too painful to contemplate. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. I don’t know that I can live without you here.”

He stood and paced away a bit. Hurting Katie was the last thing he wanted to do, but he was dying inside. “What if I lent you the money for your return?” He’d likely have to take out a second note on his land to give her that, but he would if it meant she would come back. “If you had that, you could go back to see your da and still return to Hope Springs.”

But she shook her head. “It’s more than just the money. My mother would have the land after my father died.” She seemed to struggle on the word a bit. “I’d have to stay and help her. She’d be all alone.”

“Does your mother want the land back? I remember you saying how much it meant to your da, but you never once included your ma in that.”

She blinked a few times, contemplation heavy on her face. “She is family, Tavish. A person should be willing to give anything for family.”

Like go work in a dangerous factory at eight years old.
He knew that was a big reason for her insistence on going. She had, in her mind, chosen a selfish route over one that would have helped her family. Returning to Ireland and giving up the life she had in Hope Springs was some kind of proof in her mind. He suspected she couldn’t forgive herself without hearing from her father that he forgave her. Tavish worried deeply that she wouldn’t ever hear that from him, even if she reached him before he died.

“You’re giving up your entire life, Katie. You speak of family, but I think you’ve forgotten that you have loved ones
here.
Biddy sees you as a sister. Granny has outright adopted you. Those little Archer girls love you clear to pieces. Every Irish family in this town would do anything for you. They’ve bought bread and they’ve braved the wrath of the mercantile and the troubles from the Red Road’s fear of you without flinching because they care about you.” Saints, he didn’t want to pain her, but she needed to see things clearly. “Family is who you choose to care for, Katie, and who choose to care for you.”

She wrapped her arms around herself as she sat there taking the blow of words. He very much feared she was going to choose Ireland for the wrong reasons. He couldn’t let that happen.

“But my father cares for me.” She spoke in a small voice. “Deep down in some part of himself, I know he cares for me.”

Tavish hesitated for only a breath before speaking the admittedly harsh response that had immediately sprung to his mind. “He hasn’t sent so much as a word in nearly twenty years. Your mother only a half-dozen letters in that time.” She’d told him as much herself.

“Only because I haven’t made amends yet. I’ve not made my restitution. You can’t blame them for—”

He hunched down in front of her and took her hand in his again, careful not to overtax her shoulder, and looked up into her face. “If they have not forgiven you after all these years for a decision you made as a child, a wee tiny child, and a decision that never should have been yours to make in the first place, then grand gestures and acts of atonement aren’t likely to change that.”

She shook her head again and again. “I’ve counted on this all my life. I need it. Eimear’s forgiveness is out of my reach. But my father’s is not. I need to hear him say he forgives me.”

He lightly brushed her cheek with his hand. “I believe, darlin’, ’tis not your father’s forgiveness you’ve needed all these years, but your own.”

Her gaze fell away from his face, dropping to their clasped hands. “I can’t forgive myself if he still hates me for what I did, if he still thinks I’m no better than the selfish little girl I was then. I can’t. I never could.”

“There are more ways to prove that to your own self than buying a plot of land and a slab of stone.”

She pulled free of his grasp and rose from the bench. Her quick, tense steps took her into the shadows behind the house. Tavish followed cautiously. He suspected he had offended her. But what else could he have said that would have driven the point home? He did not want to lose her over a fool’s errand.

“I’m sorry to speak to you so sharply, Katie. I wouldn’t say the difficult things if I cared for you any less than I do. But you’ve wanted this so long, depended on your father someday telling you that you’re a good person. The only thing that could prove the kind of person you are is nothing more nor less than the way you live your life.”

She didn’t say anything, didn’t look back at him.

“You can show him the person you’ve become by writing and telling him of the life you’ve lived, of the good you’re doing here. I’ll write to him, myself. Every Irish family in Hope Springs would write and tell him of their admiration for you, of how much they all care for you.” Tavish would pay the postage himself if need be.

Though she didn’t say as much, indeed, didn’t so much as glance at him, he thought he saw the tiniest thread of contemplation in her expression. How he hoped she would at least consider it.

“I suppose I mostly just want you to know that, though your blood family is back in the old country, you have full half a town here that cares deeply what happens to you. And you’ve proven to them time and again that you’re in no way the selfish person you paint yourself.”

“What about his fiddle? How can I give that back to him if I don’t go back?”

He rubbed at the back of his neck, brow furrowed deeply. “That I can’t tell you, Katie.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. What if . . . What if it isn’t enough?”

Katie finally looked at him. The worry and pain and uncertainty in her eyes cut him to the quick. He couldn’t bear to see it there. “Do you need to go back, Katie? Is going back what you need to find peace?”

She hesitated. After a moment her shoulders drooped anew. “I don’t know anymore.”

He leaned closer, his mouth a breath from hers. “I hope you know I love you, Sweet Katie. I will love you no matter what you choose.”

Tears rushed to her eyes immediately. She opened her mouth, but no words emerged. Her lips quivered a moment before she simply pressed them closed again.

He brushed his lips against hers, the touch no more substantial than a breeze. Her hands rested gently against his chest. He lightly kissed her again. Many times he’d held back, kept himself from pulling her into his arms and truly kissing her. Their first real kiss, and it was a sad and brokenhearted one.

Tavish pulled back by a hair’s breadth. For a moment he didn’t move or speak. He simply stood there, silently holding her to him.

He pressed a brief kiss to her forehead, then one more, and turned away. He didn’t know what else to say. He very much feared she was leaving, and though he understood why, he was still dying inside.

Chapter Forty-Two

Life, for Katie, had always been a matter of passing through. She’d never anticipated facing the same decision she had faced as an eight-year-old girl. Once again she had to choose between leaving a place that was home to her for the sake of her father, or remaining in the one place she truly felt loved.

She sat on the edge of her bed, her mother’s letter in her hand.

“Your father hasn’t sent even a word to you in nearly twenty years.” Tavish’s words had pierced her. They were painful but true. She would be leaving behind people who embraced her and loved her, who she knew would rally around her if ever she needed them to, for the thin hope that this man who’d not acknowledged her in nearly two decades would finally decide to do so.

And, yet, he
was
her father. She loved him whether or not he returned that affection. She loved him, and he was dying.

He’d never written to her. But she had never sent word directly to him, either. She asked mother to give him her greetings, but nothing beyond. Tavish’s suggestion from the night before rushed back to her. She could write to her father. She could write her apologies, tell him of the life she was living and the person she’d become, and hope her words arrived in Ireland before her father left the world for good. It wasn’t a final decision
not
to go. She couldn’t quite commit herself to that. Not quite.

If Joseph was still willing to send her words as a telegram, the letter could reach Belfast in a fortnight. That was time enough. She could apologize. She could reach out to her father. It was not the full atonement she’d always meant to make, but it was a beginning.

Katie slipped her mother’s letter into the old biscuit tin where she kept her savings. Was she truly brave enough to risk writing to him? Surely she was. If she was willing to give up the life she had in Hope Springs to see him again, she could certainly summon the courage to send a letter.

She set her mind to it, committed herself to the task. An almost immediate, unexpected sense of peace settled over her in that moment. For days on end she’d agonized over the obligation she felt to return to Ireland. Even eighteen years of working toward that goal hadn’t been enough to make her feel truly at ease with the decision. But writing a letter, beginning that way, felt right.

The family had returned from services more than an hour earlier, though Katie had not come out of her room to greet them. The time had come to stop hiding and begin taking control of things.

She went looking for Joseph, determined to ask if he was yet willing to send a telegram on her behalf. The calmness she felt didn’t disappear, didn’t lessen. The choice to stay or go had twisted about inside her every minute of every day since her mother’s letter arrived. Yet, she found an uncharacteristic peace of mind in this new path.