Finbarr’s glower didn’t subside in the least. The fleeting smiles and moments of laughter the lad had indulged in of late were nowhere to be seen. “Why did I have to come?” he muttered not yet two minutes into the ceremony.
“Because you were part of that day,” Tavish whispered back.
Finbarr folded his arms across his chest. “I’m nothing but a monument, something the town stares at so they won’t forget something terrible.”
“No one thinks of you that way, lad.”
“They all do.” Finbarr had been so much his old self the past couple of weeks that seeing the return of his moping and muttering side was proving difficult to endure.
“This is a difficult anniversary to mark,” Reverend Ford continued. “So much was lost that night.”
Finbarr grew paler. He rocked forward and backward, clutching and unclutching his fingers. His jaw worked furiously, though he made not a sound.
“For that reason,” the reverend continued, “we will mark this day each year, to make certain this town never forgets the price of hatred, prejudice, and divisiveness.”
Finbarr stood and, hands following the back wall, made his way quickly and gracelessly out of the small chapel. Fortunately, they were seated near the back; his exit wouldn’t be noticed by very many.
Yet, somehow, Cecily noticed from the row in front of them. She followed closer on Finbarr’s heels than Tavish did.
“How did you—?”
“I know the sound of someone stumbling toward a door he cannot see,” she whispered.
The winter was cold, and the room unheated. Everyone had kept hold of their coats, which had only made Finbarr’s exit that much faster, as he’d not needed to stop to bundle himself against the weather. He was outside and on his way with only the shortest of hesitations.
Tavish and Cecily were a few paces behind. The sun was out and shining brightly, but it did little to warm the air. Tavish shoved his hands into the warmth of his pockets, watching Finbarr walk away from the school house.
“Is he at least headed in the right direction?” Cecily asked.
“He’s headed toward home,” Tavish said. “I wonder if that is where he thinks he is heading.”
“May I hold your arm?” she asked. “I don’t know this area of the road at all, and I still haven’t replaced my cane.”
He took her hand and slipped it through his arm. “Is this a formal turn about the town? Shall I ask your chaperone for permission?”
She tugged his arm, urging him on. “Finbarr has never made this trip on his own. We need to keep within eyesight in case he gets turned around.”
We. How long has it been since a woman tucked the two of us so casually into that word? ’Twasn’t a difficult question to answer once he thought on it. Katie used to say we with tremendous ease. Before her, Bridget had fully and lovingly thought of the two of them in that way. As had he. Heavens, he missed her.
Thinking of Cecily in a way that at all resembled Katie or Bridget hardly aligned with his vow to keep his distance. But he wasn’t courting or flirting, he assured himself. Yet he was certainly enjoying her company.
Friendly acquaintances, Tavish. Aim for “friendly acquaintances.”
“The lad’s slowed down,” Tavish told her. “Now he’s tipping his head a bit to the side.”
“He’s listening for the river, most likely. Sound is one of the most important senses out of doors.” Her step faltered a moment. “Remind me, though, that we need to get him a cane now that he’s wanting to be more independent.”
“I talked to Jeremiah Johnson, who runs the mercantile,” Tavish said. “He doesn’t have a single cane.”
“Why were you talking to him about canes?”
“Yours splintered out of all recognition. I was trying to find you a replacement.” He wasn’t sure if the cold air was making her cheeks redden, or if she was blushing yet again.
“That was very thoughtful of you.” Her quiet, thick tone told him the answer: a blush.
Tavish liked that far more than he ought to have. With a firmness of purpose, he returned to the topic at hand. “Seems a good thing that Finbarr’s attempting to make his way back on his own.”
“It is. Once I’ve taught him to use a cane, he’ll be even more independent. I’ll warn you, though, he’ll probably hate it at first.” She laughed a very little. “I abhorred my cane when my teachers first insisted I learn to use it. But I could never do all that I do without it, especially when navigating unfamiliar places.”
He knew a great many people who would never attempt to navigate unfamiliar places even with full use of all their senses.
“What is Finbarr doing now?” she asked.
“He appears to be searching for the bridge. At what point do I figure I ought to just pull m’ shirt off and dive into the river to catch him?”
“I am sad I won’t be able to see that.”
How easily she gave him reason to be lighthearted, even for a moment. “Were you wanting to see me without my shirt on, lass? Seems a touch scandalous, that.”
“I’m merely attempting to shed my ‘prim and proper’ persona. Do you think expressing a growing interest in your bare chest would be sufficient?”
He laughed out loud, but she immediately shushed him.
“We don’t want Finbarr to know we’re following,” she said.
Tavish slowed their pace, keeping a distance. At last Finbarr found the bridge and made his way across.
“Good for him,” Cecily said.
“How did you—?”
“I heard his boots on the wood. I told you sound is an important sense.”
Tavish hadn’t even noticed the sound.
“In fact,” she continued, “we should probably wait until he is a little farther down the road before crossing the bridge ourselves. He’ll be paying very close attention to every sound around him. He’ll hear our footsteps and realize he’s being followed.”
“Do you think he already knows we’re following?”
She shook her head no. “He’s not that good yet.”
“But you are?” He’d begun the remark as a tease, but realized before the first word was out of his mouth that he already knew the answer.
“I am a nearly sightless woman who travels the country alone. I learned long ago the value of knowing whether someone is following me.”
Tavish stopped mid-step. In horror, he pivoted his head to stare at her. “Has that happened? Have you been followed?”
She looked at him in much the way one does with an adorably thick child. “I have also learned the value of carrying a cudgel.”
“You have a shillelagh?”
“I do, given to me by a family from Donegal, in fact.” She raised her head his direction. “If I told your Irish neighbors that, perhaps they’d stop hating me quite so much. Although, being the evil Englishwoman that I am, even that might not be enough.”
He wished he could tell her she was exaggerating. She wasn’t. “I like you, Cecee. Englishness and all.”
“That is very good of you,” she said in a theatrically solemn voice.
He matched her tone. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
“I am going to ask a question you will likely find terribly nosey,” she said, “but I suspect there are a few things that I will wish I had known sooner.”
There were a great many topics he’d rather not discuss. Yet, she’d never been one to pry without good reason. Hesitantly, he told her to ask her question.
“What exactly happened in that barn a year ago? I know there was a fire, and that Finbarr lost his sight, but outside of that, I know nothing.” She’d picked quite a topic.
“’Tis a long and ugly story,” he warned her.
“I suspected as much,” she insisted.
Tavish took a moment to convince his mind to dive back into that terrible day and everything that led to it. No one in town cared to talk about it; the pain was still too fresh. Yet he couldn’t imagine Cecily asking out o
f mere curiosity. She needed to know what happened to help Finbarr. He’d wade through that abyss again for his brother.
“A year ago, Hope Springs was a town at war with itself. Down our road lived house after house of Irish families. And down the Red Road, as it was known then, lived house after house of families who were not Irish in the least. The Reds hated the Irish. The Irish hated the Reds. Both sides were dedicated to fighting each other to the last.”
She listened in complete silence. Her expression didn’t change. Without the tiniest peek at her eyes behind the green spectacles, Tavish hadn’t the slightest idea how she was reacting to the story.
“At that time, we had a man here in town, a man whose name is no longer spoken among us.” Indeed, Tavish shuddered even thinking of him. “His hatred was boundless, and white hot. Joseph Archer played peacemaker between sides, a lost cause if ever there was one. In vengeance for Joseph’s unwillingness to side against the Irish, this man set fire to Joseph’s barn. The man never would admit whether he knew as much at the time, and none of us is sure to this day, but Joseph’s two girls and the daughter of the local merchant were in the loft when he set the barn ablaze.”
“Oh, good heavens,” Cecily whispered.
“Katie Mac—” He cut himself short. “Katie Archer saw the fire and knew someone was in the loft. Finbarr spotted the fire as well and went inside to release the animals, only to learn from Katie that more lives were at stake than the horses and cow.”
Only with effort had they pieced together what had occurred that night. Finbarr’s memories weren’t whole, owing to the severity of his injuries. Katie’s recollections were every bit as broken and incomplete. Everyone suspected that the Archer girls remembered every terrifying moment, but Ivy’s explanations, given as they were by a five-year-old child, had been difficult to sort through. Emma wouldn’t speak of the events except in the broadest, barest of terms.
“As near as we could discover,” he continued on, “Katie and Finbarr coaxed the wee ones down into the leaping flames, their only option for escape. The two Archer girls, who’ve long thought of Finbarr as a brother and Katie as a mother, were more easily convinced than their friend, Marianne. Katie ran for the doors with her girls. Finbarr carried Marianne.
“The fire brought the roof down just before Katie escaped. Finbarr and Marianne were still inside as well. The weight threw them to the ground. ’Twas clear by how the two were found that my brave, tenderhearted”—the word choked him a bit—“little brother shielded his precious bundle, but the impact was still too brutal.”
Tavish swallowed back the thick lump of emotion that always accompanied these memories. “Little Marianne landed with tremendous force and in precisely the wrong position. Her neck was broken. When they were found, she was dead in his arms.”
“Oh, mercy.”
Tavish took a breath and continued. “Finbarr didn’t wake for more than a day. He had a great many broken bones. I know you likely can’t see the scars, but his face was badly burned in places.”
“Including his eyes,” Cecily said.
They walked on in heavy silence. Her mouth pulled down at the corners, though not in a frown. She was pondering. Deeply.
“We’ve only just reached the point where any of us can talk about it with each other.” It had been a very difficult year.
“I’ve been going about this all wrong.” Her sigh was one of exhaustion as much as frustration. “He is a very young man who experienced a horrific ordeal but survived, while someone, a tiny someone in his care, did not. Much more than frustration and sadness are attached to Finbarr’s vision loss. There is a crushing guilt. Guilt for failing to save her. Guilt for having survived instead of her.”
Guilt. Tavish could see the truth of that. Buried under the sadness and anger and shutting out of the world, the lad blamed himself for what had happened every bit as much as little Emma did.
“We’ve told him he’s not to blame,” Tavish said. “He’s been hailed a hero. Without him, they’d all’ve died.”
“Pain distorts logic,” she said. “Guilt can seldom be reasoned away.”
“How is it you’ve become such an expert in guilt?” He guided her around a patch of ice on the road.
Finbarr was still a great many paces ahead, though he’d noticeably slowed down.
“Guilt is often part of grieving,” Cecily said. “My students all grieve for the lives they once had and for the futures they’d expected.”
She might’ve been describing Tavish himself. He still mourned for Bridget’s loss, though much of the pain had dulled. And if he were being entirely honest, he still carried around a vast deal of guilt over her passing.
Why had she grown ill, but he hadn’t? What if he’d done something different in nursing her? What if . . . What if her death was all his fault?
Cecily stumbled the slightest bit on a rock, but quickly righted herself. Tavish vowed to pay a little closer attention; she was trusting him to help her navigate.
“For Finbarr,” she said, “the guilt associated with this tragedy is likely holding him back every bit as much as the adjustment to darkness. Likely even more.”
“What can we do?” Tavish hated the idea of his brother hurting so deeply.
She thought a moment. “What did he enjoy doing before the fire?”
“Laughing with the other lads his age. Flirting with the lasses.” That last was a particular favorite of all the O’Connor men during their single years. “He worked every day for Joseph Archer, and he loved being there. Those little girls held his heart in their hands. And Joseph was something of a hero to him.”
“Has he associated much with the Archers since the fire?” Cecily asked.
“Hardly at all. He’s kept away from most people, including his family.”
“I think spending time with them would help him. It would offer a sense of reclaiming some of what was lost, as well as allowing him to associate with someone he admires.”
“The Archers are a little put-out with him just now,” Tavish reminded her. “He twisted Emma’s own guilt rather painfully.”
Cecily turned her face up toward him again. How much of his face could she see? Or did she look at people as she spoke merely out of habit?
“The Archers have seen Emma through her guilt and mourning. They can help us help Finbarr.”
Tavish had been so alone in his desperate struggle to help his brother. Whenever he’d pulled in one of his family members, they’d crumbled a bit themselves.
“I could use the help.” Somehow the admission didn’t humiliate him as much as he expected. “I can’t keep doing this alone.”
“You are less alone than you realize,” she said quietly. Before he could inquire into the statement, she spoke again. “Does Finbarr seem likely to find the house on his own, or is it time we intervened?”
“He has just walked past the house. Shall we stage a rescue?”
“Only if you promise to be very daring and adventurous. No rescue is worth enacting if it’s boring.”
A jest during difficulties. A smile in the midst of worry. He needed those things. Saints above, he needed them.
Chapter Twenty-two
Tavish drove his buggy over the bridge and pulled up beside the Archers’ barn. In the months since Katie and Joseph’s wedding, he’d done his best to avoid the Archer place. Even when working to bring in Joseph’s crop while the family were all far away, he’d steered clear of the house itself. He didn’t begrudge them their happiness. ’Twas simply awkward yet.
Cecily moved to climb down.
“You’d best wait,” he warned her. “The snow left a great many drifts, and I can’t say with certainty you’d not simply drop into one.”
“So I am to pay for your poor driving? That seems unfair.”
“Be patient, lass. I’m walking through the snow for you, after all.”
She gave him a perplexed look. “I thought the reason you were driving was so that we could avoid wal
king in the snow. I am quickly losing faith in you as a buggy driver.”
Despite his efforts to keep a distance between them, Tavish had grown quite fond of her teasing. She was his friend, which wouldn’t sit well with his neighbors or his family. When she left, they would likely cheer. He, however, would miss her.
He hopped down then tied the horse’s rein to the hitching post. “Stay put, Cecee.” He’d spied her shifting toward the end of the bench. He stepped over to her side of the buggy. Not simply snowy, the ground was icy. “Don't chop my head off, but I think I’d best lead you to safer ground.”
“Am I surrounded by rabid dogs or something?”
“Stop your sassing. I’m trying to be a gentleman.” He reached up and took her hands in his.
“If you start doing that now, how will I recognize you?”
He held her fast as she stepped onto the icy ground. “Put your arm about my middle, and I’ll do the same,” he instructed. She obliged, and with a little maneuvering, they began their walk up the snowy path. “Now, what exactly do you mean to say to the high and mighty Mr. Archer?”
“‘High and Mighty’? Is that anything like ‘Your Majesty’?”
“They’re in the same vein,” he admitted.
“You don’t like him either?”
“First of all, you troublesome colleen, I don’t dislike you no matter that you’ve apparently decided otherwise.” He guided her around a particularly treacherous-looking patch of ice. “And secondly, I don’t dislike Joseph, either.”
He could hear that his last words weren’t entirely sincere. It seemed he had not yet let bygones be bygones.
Cecily didn’t press the issue, but neither did she seem to believe him. “Have we passed the blood-thirsty hounds, or the life-threatening ice patches, or whatever danger it is you set me in the midst of?”
“One can never be too careful.” Truth be told, he was enjoying having her up close to him once more.
Da would’ve scolded him to the ends of the earth for it. But Da had no idea what it was like to be alone. Cecily laughed with him and genuinely enjoyed his jesting and lighthearted approach to difficulties. Beyond that, she trusted him with her thoughts and questions. She asked for his input and offered hers to him in response. It was . . . refreshing.
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