Love Remains

by Sarah M. Eden

“And what would I do? I have no means of supporting myself here. Beyond that, I would be abandoning all of the people I could help.”

  He thought frantically, needing to convince her that making her home here was not merely possible but right. “You could still transcribe. That is important to you.”

  “Yes, but so is eating. Transcription does not provide an income. A person must have something to live on.”

  “I wouldn’t let you go hungry, Cecily.” Surely she knew that.

  “In which case, I would be destined to be both a thorn in your family’s side and the recipient of your unending charity.” She spoke more tightly. “Forgive me if that does not sound appealing.”

  The prim and prickly Cecily had made an unexpected reappearance after all these months.

  “I was not speaking of charity,” Tavish said. “There is far more between us than that. I—We could—”

  “No.” She cut him off.

  “No?” Did she understand what he’d been speaking of? “You don’t—you don’t want to stay?”

  She held her chin at a proud angle, something he’d not seen from her since her early days in town. “I don’t want to stay.”

  He’d no intention of letting her lie to them both, not when both of their happiness was on the line. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Tavish, I have given it thought. I have weighed my options.” Her tone left absolutely no room for discussion. She pulled her arm free of his. “I am choosing to go.”

  A fist to the gut would likely not have hurt more. After thought and deliberation, she was choosing to go. Choosing to.

  “You promised, Cecily. Everyone I’ve ever cared about has left me, but you—” The words stuck as his heart lodged in his throat. “You promised you wouldn’t. You promised.”

  “I am sorry.” Her words were quiet but unrelenting.

  No. Cecily could not simply walk away. He couldn’t bear to lose her. “Do you love me?” He only hoped she would give an honest answer.

  “That’s not what this is about.” She pushed ahead of him and took her first step onto the bridge. Her cane searched the area in front of her.

  “That is absolutely what this is about.” He caught up to her, keeping pace at her side. “Love doesn’t abandon; it doesn’t give up. Even when everything else falls apart, love remains.”

  “Love makes the difficult choice,” she said, continuing her forward trek. “Love chooses not to inflict more pain or extend pain. Love puts the other person first, refusing to take away essential pieces of his life.” With each word, her emotion rose. “Love is not selfish. Love does the right thing . . . no matter how much it hurts.”

  “Cecily.” He set a hand on her arm and stopped her at the midpoint of the bridge. “Please, Cecily.”

  She turned back enough for him to see the pain in her expression—not physical suffering, but pain of the heart, an ache he knew all too well.

  “Please,” he repeated, stepping around to fully face her once more. He brushed his hand along her cheek, cupping his hand behind her head. “Please, Cecee.”

  “Oh, Tavish.” She set her open palms against his chest and leaned in to him.

  He pulled her ever closer with one arm and tipped her face to him with his other hand. “I do love you, you know that, don’t you?”

  “I know.”

  He’d leaned close enough that her whispered response puffed against his lips. “And you’ve said you love me,” he pled.

  “I do.” Again, he felt the words as clearly as he heard them. “I’ve loved you for weeks and weeks.”

  “Then”—his lips brushed hers as he spoke—“don’t leave me.”

  Her hand slid up his chest, her fingers settling against the base of his neck, teasing the gap in his collar. He held her to him, so close that the cold in the air gave way to her warmth. He closed the tiny gap, pressing his lips fervently, hopefully to hers. She returned the intimate gesture with the same earnestness.

  He broke the contact between them only long enough to whisper her name. She did not pull away, nor give any indication she wished to. He kissed her again, and she him. As tightly as he held her, she held him just as close, just as fervently.

  “I love you,” he said after a time, not releasing her. “I need you to know that.”

  “And I love you. I truly do.” Yet she pulled away.

  “Cecee?”

  “I do love you,” she repeated, “so I won’t hurt you. Sometimes love means walking away.”

  Shock rendered him unable to respond or move as she stepped farther from him. The cold air wrapped itself around him, stealing the lingering remnants of the warmth she’d lent him.

  “Your family has allowed me to be a neighbor, a teacher. They’ve stopped seeing me as their enemy, and I am grateful for that. But there is one thing I can never be to them, and that is family.” She took a steadying breath, and her posture rallied. “There would always be a barrier, a gap in your family circle, Tavish. And though I am blind, I can see quite clearly what that would do to them—and to you. The strain would gnaw at you. Caught between your wife and your family. My place in your life could never happily intersect with theirs. You would be forever divided between us, and you’d never truly be happy or whole. I cannot be the cause of that kind of pain.”

  “But, Cecily, you would be my family.” He reached out and took her hands. “We would be family. That would be enough.”

  She shook her head. “For a time, perhaps. But the O’Connors have a bond that was forged in the fires of suffering. That bond cannot be easily broken, nor should it be.” She slipped her hands free once more. “How long before your love for me turned to resentment—in small measure, perhaps, but real all the same? I won’t do that to either of us. You will stay here with your family, and I will return to Missouri.”

  “Alone,” he added.

  For a moment, she looked as though she meant to say something more. But in the end, she walked away without another word.

  She was leaving him because she thought that would make him happy. She thought it would save him heartache. Nothing, he suspected, could be more painful than losing her. How in heaven’s name could he possibly convince her to stay when she believed so entirely that leaving was best for him?

  It seemed he needed to have a rather pointed discussion . . . with his family.

  Tavish tossed open the door of his parents’ home. “I’m in love with an Englishwoman,” he announced.

  Da clutched at his heart, eyes pulled wide. “The shock, lad. I’m near to dying of it.”

  Ciara, whom Tavish hadn’t spied at the table upon first entering, rolled her eyes. “You’re not telling us anything we don’t already know, brother.”

  He hadn’t expected to find her there. “Has something happened?” She’d all but avoided the family for months, though she’d come around more and more ever since the singing at the churchyard. “Are you unwell?”

  She rose from the table. “That is the Tavish we know and love: always jumping to our rescue, even when there is nothing to rescue us from.” Ciara gave him a quick hug before turning back to look at Ma and Da. “Thanks for the gab. I’ll see you for Sunday supper, though I expect a full accounting of Tavish’s reason for bursting in here to declare something so obvious.”

  Her teasing was welcome. ’Twas a sign she was returning to herself once more.

  “Ciara seems to be doing better,” he said once she’d left.

  “I believe she is.” Ma sighed with clear relief. “Though she’s not said as much, I suspect she and Keefe lost a baby. A few things here and there point to it. That is a difficult grief to bear, made worse by how unseen it often is.”

  Poor Ciara.

  “But it needn’t have been unseen.” Tavish said. “This family would rally around her, offer comfort, grieve with them.”

  “Perhaps,” Da said, “she’s coming to a place where she is ready for us to be part of her pain. Seeing you face your own has helped her. It’s helped
us all.”

  That brought them back to the original reason he’d come. “I was able to face my grief only because of Cecily, you know. She’s offered me hope. She offered it to us all.”

  Da nodded. “That she has.”

  Such easy agreement. Tavish had fully expected to plead and argue and struggle to convince them to see her as the remarkable person she was. “Why do you continue being so cold to her?”

  Ma took up her sewing and motioned him to take the seat beside hers. “Have we been cold of late? We’ve been uncomfortable; I’ll admit that. There’s still a bit of unease between us. But overcoming such long-held ideas takes time, son.”

  “We don’t have time.” He looked at them each in turn. “Cecily intends to leave for Missouri in three weeks, when Johnson and his oldest make their first trip to the depot. She’s leaving, not because she must, but because she’s convinced that staying will turn my family against me. She’s doing this for my sake, because she sees no other option.”

  Da, to his credit, looked more than a little worried. “I thought she was leaving because of a job she has waiting there.”

  “She does want to continue helping the blind, but she can do that with her books. She loves that part. And she could do that here. I am convinced she would stay if she felt there was any hope that this family would eventually accept her as one of our own. It’s that impossibility compelling her to go.”

  “Would you follow her to Missouri?” Ma asked.

  “In a heartbeat, if it would fix the problem, but it wouldn’t. She’d always worry that I regretted leaving all of you, and that worry would hang over us forever. She could never truly be happy so long as she wondered if I regretted my choice.” He squared his shoulders. “Her happiness is more important than my own. But following her wouldn’t make her happy. Convincing her to stay if she’s not wanted wouldn’t make her happy either.” He sat on the bench facing his parents. “I believe in this family. Help me show her that we can move beyond the prejudices we inherited, that we can see people for who they are and not simply as a product of the place they came from.”

  Ma reached over and took his hand. Da leaned forward and met his gaze.

  “Tell us what we can do,” Da said.

  Tavish released his pent-up breath. “I have a plan.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Cecily stood on Granny’s front porch. The air felt warmer than it had in months. She could smell the soil again, something that didn’t happen during the freeze of winter. Spring was fast approaching. She’d stepped out not to sniff about for dirt, but to test the state of her vision. Much of the past week had been spent inside with no lanterns burning—there’d been little point in lighting any—and taking her powders on a regular schedule in the hope of enduring this latest awakening of her much-despised disease.

  The pain had eased. This latest deterioration would be complete. She was ready to discover how bad things had become.

  The sun warmed her face, so it was bright out. Leaves rustled in the breeze. A bird sang somewhere nearby. She could piece together all of these bits of her surroundings. But what she could not do was see them.

  She tried to breathe, but the pain in her heart made it difficult. The doctors had predicted twenty years, perhaps thirty. She’d had seventeen. Fate, in all its cruelty, had plunged her into blackness early. The darkness seeped into her, wrapping its fingers around her aching heart. Every bit of light was gone, and she would never have it back.

  A lifetime of knowing this moment would come had not truly prepared her for the reality of it. Everything was gone.

  Everything.

  The sound of approaching wheels forced her to push aside the crushing disappointment. She didn’t care to wear personal struggles on her sleeve for everyone to see. She’d be gone soon, and while the town would remember her as nothing but an outsider, she hoped they would remember her as a stalwart outsider. Fiercely independent. Determined. Strong.

  “A fine day, is it not?” called out an achingly familiar voice. It was almost as if the silent pleas of her heart had been sent to heaven itself, who had mercifully delivered precisely the person she needed.

  She wanted to answer Tavish’s greeting with a cheerful one of her own. But no words came. Indeed, only tears made any sort of an appearance, but she forced them back.

  The wagon stopped. His boots landed on the ground with a thud; he always hopped off whichever vehicle he was driving. Though he’d once described his late fiancée as a bundle of energy, the description was apt for him as well. More subdued than he’d described Bridget, perhaps, but just as full of life. Cecily loved that about him. She loved so many things about this man.

  His footsteps drew closer, then came up the steps. Heavens, she couldn’t see enough to make out so much as his shadow crossing her face, though she felt the loss of sunlight.

  It really is gone, then. She took a shaky breath, hoping against hope that she could keep a tight hold on her emotions.

  “What’s the matter, a mhuirnín?” His concern nearly undid her.

  “I’ve had a difficult morning,” she managed.

  Quick as anything, his arms were around her. So she set hers around his waist, leaning into his desperately needed embrace. For the first time since stepping onto the heartbreakingly dark porch, she could breathe. But how could she allow herself to depend on him for comfort again? She needed to learn to bear her heartaches alone as she used to.

  “Are you up for a little excursion?” he asked. “Or would you feel better spending your day like this, no doubt marveling that you’re embracing a fine specimen of a man?”

  “And a humble one, too.” Only a moment earlier, she’d been trying not to sob. Tavish, with his heaven-sent humor and compassion, had lightened her heart as only he could. How was she to go on without him? She feared her grief would consume her without him in her life.

  His arms loosened a bit, and he leaned back. “Will you go for a ride with me?”

  “I would like that.” More than like it, she needed it. Needed him and the strength he offered.

  As they drove from Granny’s house, Cecily forced herself to simply breathe. She’d long known that losing her sight was inevitable. Nothing could have prevented it. She knew that the final descent into darkness ought not to be seen as a defeat, but it felt like one anyway. Heaven help her, it felt so horribly that way.

  Tavish turned the buggy—she could tell by the length of the bench that this was not his wagon—off the road only a short pace from where they’d entered it. They were going to his house, then. But when they didn’t stop, she knew where he was taking her. Their spot at the lake. The lake she wouldn’t be able to see ever again.

  “You’re quiet this afternoon,” Tavish said as he pulled the wagon to a stop.

  “I suppose I’m feeling a bit contemplative.”

  His hands settled on her waist, and he helped her to the ground. “Let me tell you my secret for when I’m thinking so much that I find m’self in the doldrums.” He threaded her arm through his and guided her forward. “My secret is this: I quit thinking so much.”

  She offered a theatrical, “Ah. If only I’d known this secret years ago, I could have saved myself a great deal of . . . thinking.”

  “The bench is just here,” he said. “I’m certain you used your magical abilities to discern where it is I’ve brought you.”

  Soon they were settled cozily. He took her hand in his, and she clung to it, needing his strength.

  “I can’t say there’s a time of year when I don’t care for this view,” he said. “But the changing of seasons is something special. Just now there’re still bits where winter is hanging on fiercely, but other spots where spring is clearly making herself known. The contrast is beautiful in and of itself.”

  She swallowed the rise of thick emotion in her throat. A quick cough didn’t dispel the weight that had settled on her lungs.

  “Cecee?”

  “I can’t see it.” The confessi
on did not emerge whole. She heard the words echo inside her, a bullet ricocheting off every tender corner of her heart. “That is why I was on the porch, to test my vision, to see how much I had left.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. I can’t see shadows or even the sun shining directly on my face.” She pushed out a breath, trying to maintain her increasingly perilous hold on her composure. “It’s all gone.”

  He shifted, and his arm wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her against him. He kissed the top of her head. Cecily braced herself for words of pity, or the insistence that she didn’t need to be sad. Or that she’d known this would happen, so that ought to make the loss easier to accept. She’d heard such things from countless doctors, from many of her own teachers when she’d lamented each further deterioration.

  Tavish said none of those things. “The mountains are still covered in snow,” he said instead. “I’ve always been convinced that Winter, herself, resides there. The snow retreats very slowly on the mountains, sometimes never leaving the peaks all summer long. But down here in the valley, Spring is waging a mighty war against her coldhearted sister, banishing her to her mountain home. There is no clear winner yet. Spring has claimed only the smallest of victories. The trees near us have shaken the snow from their branches, replacing it with a sprinkling of the tiniest dots of green buds. The ground has pulled the snow down in many places, and the rich soil is making a reappearance, preparing for the arrival of lush, green grass that is Spring’s way of claiming her territory.”

  On and on he described the scene, in words so poetic even scholars would have been hard-pressed to believe they’d been improvised. His musical, Irish manner of speaking turned his beautiful descriptions into a soothing lullaby. Cecily’s heart ceased its seizing and settled, cocooned for the moment, back into its normal rhythm. She forced away all thoughts of darkness and simply let his words wash over her.

  “In the midst of this battle”—Tavish had described nearly every imaginable detail but was, apparently, not done yet—“is a rough-hewn bench, obviously crafted by someone with more determination than ability. And on that bench sits a man of such handsomeness as defies all description.”