She worked to move her arm enough to feel about for the girl. Her fingers brushed what felt like a leg next to her.
“Are you awake, Katie?”
Not particularly.
“Ivy, come down from there. Katie needs to rest. And it is your bedtime as well.” Joseph.
A sudden, almost desperate, need grabbed her. She wanted to see him. She wanted him to come sit by her. Though she couldn’t explain the near panic she felt, she couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving her there.
Her voice refused to cooperate. She pried one eye open, struggling with the other. Ivy’s sweet, angel face hovered just above her.
“She’s looking at me, Pompah!”
“Truly?”
Immediate relief filled Katie’s mind. She could hear Joseph’s footsteps approaching. He wasn’t leaving her. She had both eyes open and nearly focused by the time he came within sight.
“How are you, Katie?” he asked. “Do you need anything?”
With effort, she shook her head. All she needed was him, and he was there.
“I’ve been practicing my loop and loops,” Ivy said eagerly. Loop and loops. That was the phrase Ivy used to mean the crocheting Granny had taught her. “Do you want to see?”
Katie smiled and nodded. Ivy all but jumped off the bed and ran from the room. Joseph took Katie’s hand, pulling her gaze back to him. Dark circles shadowed his eyes. Weary lines weighed down his face.
“You look tired.” Her voice was scratchy, her throat sore.
Joseph only smiled. “It is so good to hear your voice again.” He spoke little louder than a whisper.
She was awakening more by the minute, her surroundings growing clearer. Why was she in Joseph’s room? She hurt too much for it to be anything but a lingering illness or rather extensive injuries.
“I am very confused.”
Joseph ran his hand along her cheek. He looked at her as though she were some great treasure. Katie couldn’t recall anyone looking at her in just that way. She wanted to enjoy it, but flashes of something—memories or lingering nightmares, she couldn’t say which—kept pulling her from the moment. Smoke. Fire. Hay.
“There was smoke,” she muttered.
“Don’t think on it now. There’ll be time—”
Her mind filled with the roaring sound of fire consuming everything in its path. She could see the flames. Taste the smoke in her mouth once more. The girls were there. Afraid. In danger.
“Fire.” She heard the fear in her voice.
“No, Katie. The fire’s out. You’re safe.”
She shook her head, but it wouldn’t clear. She didn’t feel safe. “The girls.” Ivy had been there a moment before, safe. But not Emma. “Joseph!” Panic swept over her. “Where’s Emma?” She tried to sit up, but the effort sent scorching pain up her left arm. Even as she dropped back down in agony, her heart raced with fear. “Emma?”
“Emma is fine,” Joseph said. “She’s with Finbarr.”
“Was she hurt? Is she—?” Her voice quivered. She didn’t finish the thought.
Joseph seemed to grasp what she couldn’t quite say. “Emma and Ivy are both whole and unharmed. You saved them both, Katie. They are fine.”
Katie could remember the fire, but not where it had been or when or how it had started. She had clearly not escaped injury, but that was unimportant. The girls were safe. The thought brought immediate relief.
Finbarr had been in the fire too. She remembered him there, but no details beyond that. “Finbarr is well? He wasn’t hurt?”
Joseph hesitated. A knot formed in Katie’s stomach.
“He was injured,” Joseph said after a moment. “But he is recovering.”
There was more he wasn’t saying, she could sense it. She felt at a disadvantage, lying there like an invalid. The same terrible pain shot through her arm when she tried to sit up again.
“My arm hurts.” She groaned out the words.
He nodded. “Let me help you.”
Slowly and carefully, they managed to get her sitting more upright, pillows stacked behind her. The searing pain in her arm continued. She glanced down, but her arm was wrapped so thickly in bandages she could make out nothing but a lump of fabric in the basic shape and length of her arm. The anguish of her injuries was so great she couldn’t tell where the pain ended and where it began.
Joseph gently turned her face toward him with the lightest touch of his fingers. “Can I get you anything? A drink of water? Something to eat? We have medicinal powders to help with the pain.”
“I hope you didn’t pay the Irish price for the powders, Joseph. It’s too dear.”
He smiled a tiny bit. “You have missed quite a lot while you’ve been sleeping. Jeremiah Johnson has renounced the practice of charging an Irish price.”
She was too shocked to even speak, almost unable to think.
“Furthermore, he brought the medicine here free of charge with instructions that his store is entirely at your disposal should you need anything else.”
“I don’t understand.”
Joseph sat on the bed, facing her. “Your efforts at teaching them to be better have paid off.”
If tensions in town were improving, something Joseph had wanted since long before she’d met him, why wasn’t he happy? Her left arm hurt too much to move, so she raised her right hand, brushing her thumb along the dark smudge beneath his eye. “You look so tired.”
He took her hand in both of his and kissed her fingers. She didn’t know what had inspired this affectionate side of him but found she liked it very much.
“This has been a terrible week,” he said. “I don’t think there is a person in all of Hope Springs who isn’t exhausted.”
Again she saw something in his face that told her more had happened than he’d let on, that the past week had held greater difficulties than her injuries and Finbarr’s.
“Look, Katie! Look!” Ivy rushed back inside, a knotted mess of yarn held high in her fist.
She climbed up onto the bed, pushing against her father as she did. Joseph moved to make room for her. He sat with his back against the headboard, directly beside Katie. He only released her hand for a fraction of a moment. Even in her pain and confusion, Katie smiled.
“Mrs. Claire says I’m getting better and better,” Ivy declared, holding up her crocheting for Katie to inspect. “We stayed at her house while you were sleeping. She told me to do my loop and loops so I would stop bothering Emma while she was crying.”
“Emma was crying?”
Ivy paused only long enough for a quick nod. “And I saw Finbarr crying, and Pompah, and Marianne’s mama and papa. Everyone. Mrs. Claire and I did loop and loops, and—”
Ivy rambled on, but Katie didn’t really hear her. Marianne’s name sparked a memory, one as clear as a cloudless morning. She could hear Marianne’s voice. Don’t leave me here. She could hear each word and with it the sound of crackling fire. Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me.
Where was Marianne? Joseph hadn’t said anything about her.
Emotion blurred Katie’s eyes, pricking at her heart. She’d never been one to really believe in premonitions, but in that moment she knew. Without asking. She simply knew.
“Katie?” Joseph whispered as Ivy chattered on.
Katie slowly lifted her eyes. She silently mouthed Marianne’s name.
In a movement so miniscule she almost missed it, he shook his head.
The tears came without warning. Sweet little Marianne.
She’d pleaded not to be left behind. Katie could still hear her frightened voice. Don’t leave me here.
The memory of Marianne’s words mixed with the echo of poor Eimear’s voice from so many years earlier.
Katie, I’m cold.
Don’t leave me.
I’m cold.
Two little girls she was supposed to protect. Two sweet children who had depended on her. Trusted her. Both were dead. Both of them. It was her fault. Again. It was all her fault.
Her breath shuddered through her. She ignored the pain, simply allowing the grief to crash over her like a punishing wave. Joseph put his arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Tears rolled over her cheeks and down her chin.
“Ivy,” Joseph interrupted her chattering, “would you go ask Mrs. Smith to bring Katie something to eat?”
Katie buried her face further into Joseph’s sleeve, hoping Ivy wouldn’t see her tears. The child had clearly witnessed too much crying over the past days. She heard Ivy climb off the bed, her footsteps fading.
She and Joseph sat a moment, neither speaking. Katie had no words. Joseph, she imagined, was searching for the right ones.
“I don’t know that it helps at all, but it happened very quickly.” He lightly rubbed her upper arm as he spoke, the gesture gentle and caring. “She was gone in an instant, we are absolutely certain of it. There was no suffering, no pain.”
But there was still the inescapable fact that another small child she might have saved was dead, was likely already lying in the frozen ground. How vividly she remembered helping her father dig her sister’s tiny grave.
I should have been faster. I shouldn’t have wasted time with words. I should have . . . I should have . . .
She sobbed, sending shards of pain through her ribs.
Joseph kept her at his side, silently smoothing her hair with his fingers. He didn’t speak, didn’t offer empty words of comfort. He simply held her as she cried.
She opened her mouth to ask him to stay with her. But the words died even as they echoed in her mind in Marianne’s frightened voice. Don’t leave me.
Katie could do nothing but weep as her heart broke irreparably in two.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Joseph stepped away from Katie for only the briefest of moments to look in on his daughters, checking to see if they were sleeping. No one in the house had rested well since the fire. They had passed a long and grueling week. Ivy was plagued by nightmares; Emma wouldn’t eat.
He’d spent the hour since Katie had awoken holding her while she cried. She hadn’t spoken, hadn’t looked up at him. She simply cried against his shoulder. Deep breaths had ended in whimpers of pain. He’d sat there, silently, with an arm around her. She had been deeply suffering, and he, like a useless idiot, hadn’t been able to think of a single thing to do or say.
“Is something wrong, Papa?” Emma’s sleepy voice floated through the dim room.
“No, sweetie. I’m only checking to see that you’re sleeping.”
He saw her shift beneath her quilt. She didn’t get up, didn’t seem truly awake. He slowly closed the door, careful not to make noise. The girls were finally sleeping. He stood in the hallway, searching for the strength to make it through the rest of the evening.
“Joseph.”
He turned at the sound of Biddy’s strained voice. She stood in the doorway to his room, her arms full of bandages. The bleeding at the stubs of Katie’s fingers had slowed, but not stopped entirely. Mrs. Smith had lectured them all on the importance of changing out the linens used to bind Katie’s wounds. Women on the Irish and Red Roads had volunteered to wash the strips of fabric Katie and Finbarr had used up over the past days.
The tight pull around Biddy’s mouth instantly worried him.
“She’s unbound her hand,” she whispered, the words quick and concerned.
Not yet. She isn’t ready for this yet.
He moved swiftly inside the room. Katie sat with her feet hanging off the edge of his bed. Her arm, bandaged and splinted from wrist to elbow, was unwrapped from the wrist down. She kept completely still, her gaze never leaving her fingerless hand. The only sound in the room was her too-quick breathing.
What do I say? I can’t fix this.
She didn’t look up as he reached her. He knelt on the ground in front of her. Katie’s eyes remained riveted to the red, tender remains of her left hand resting on her lap. The look of horror on her face cut him deeper than any knife could.
Maybe he should have said something when she first woke. He should have broken it to her gently rather than leaving her to discover it this way. But when could he have possibly told her? There’d not been a chance before she’d realized Marianne’s fate. She had been in no condition for further difficulties afterward. He wondered if she’d already realized she couldn’t feel her fingers and had pieced together what had happened.
Coward. You only told yourself that to avoid this moment.
“What happened?” Katie spoke not in the broken whisper he’d expected but in a voice so flat it worried him more than her silence had.
“Your arm broke when the barn collapsed, and your hand was crushed.” He watched for her reaction, needing to know if he was causing her more pain. He saw nothing. He couldn’t even say for certain that she heard him. “We did everything we could, but it was so badly broken. It couldn’t be saved.”
“I need my hands, Joseph.” Her tone was direct, all but empty of emotion.
“Katie, I—”
“I don’t know how to do anything without both hands.” Her words picked up speed, the first hints of worry entering her voice. “How will I do any of my work? How will I bake my bread?”
“This town won’t let you go hungry or be in need while you’re adapting,” Joseph insisted. “You can relearn.”
“What good will I be?” she muttered. “If I can’t work, I’m worthless.”
Joseph took her face in his hands, turning it so she was looking at him. “You have never been worthless, Katie Macauley. Not ever.”
He’d never seen such bleakness in any person’s eyes.
“I can’t play my fiddle.” The words trembled, yet she sat stoically still.
The loss of her music hurt the deepest. He’d known it would.
“I am so sorry.” He had said those four words to her more than any others over the past few days. They were woefully insufficient but the only ones he had.
He let his hands slide down her arms, careful of her left arm, which was still splinted and bandaged, and took her hands in his. It broke his heart to feel the difference between the two.
She lowered her gaze again. “I stole my father’s fiddle. I took away his music.” Her quiet words grew more steady, a terrible hopelessness entering her tone. “Now I’ve lost the music as well. That’s fitting, I suppose. The cruelest of punishments. I rather deserve it, actually.”
He had fully expected her heartache, but he hadn’t anticipated the guilt she had so quickly tied to it.
Her shoulders rose and fell with an unsteady breath. “Life just takes and takes. I can’t bear it anymore. I can’t.”
She pulled away from him, moving her legs back up onto the bed. This was one of the moments Joseph had worried about. She needed the peace and reassurance playing her music brought her, but where would she find that now?
Katie slipped under the blanket, her back turned to him. She blamed him as much as he blamed himself it seemed. He should have done more to stop this. He should have thought of something else to try before letting this happen. Joseph dropped his head against the bed.
Life just takes and takes. She was suffering, and he couldn’t help. He couldn’t do anything for her.
Biddy came in the room and knelt on the floor beside him. She held out the bundle of bandages. “Her hand still needs wrapping,” she whispered.
He shook his head. Katie wanted nothing to do with him.
“During the darkest times in Katie’s life,” Biddy lowered her voice even further, “everyone abandoned her. She has faced every hardship alone because no one would stand by her. Don’t you do that to her as well, Joseph Archer.”
“Nothing soothes her like playing her violin, and she doesn’t have that now.” Joseph kept his voice as quiet as Biddy’s. Katie didn’t need to overhear them discussing her.
“And there is no way to change that now, so you need to help her through this.”
He sat back on his heels, a wei
ght settling in his chest. “You should be talking to Tavish; he is the one who knows how to make her laugh and smile.”
“When a person is dying inside, she doesn’t need a jester.” Biddy set the bandages in his hands. “She needs a champion.”
Joseph thought about that for several long moments after Biddy left the room. Katie needed so much. He despaired of being equal to helping her through the struggles that lay ahead of her. She had lost something vitally important to her, something he couldn’t give back. Even if those failures made her hate him in the end, he knew he could never abandon her.
He came around to the other side of the bed. Katie’s eyes were closed, tears trickling over the bridge of her nose. She’d shed too many tears.
Joseph pulled the chair close then sat, trying to decide the best way to ease her worries. He slipped his hand beneath her wounded one.
“I’ll be very careful,” he told her.
Each wince struck him like a blow, but he kept working. Katie didn’t speak, didn’t even open her eyes. The gravity of the situation sat heavy on his shoulders. He’d never known anyone with her fortitude and determination, but her inner reserve of strength seemed to be failing her.
Tavish would have teased and joked with her until she smiled. He would have banished her tears with laughter. Joseph didn’t have that talent. What did he have to offer her? He could talk her ear off about budgets and profit projections and sound like a sentimental fool speaking endlessly of his daughters and his land. That wouldn’t help at all.
He tied off the bandaging, then slipped her arm back under the quilt. He sat silently beside the bed.
She needed her music, but he couldn’t give that back to her. She still hurt over her father’s rejection, but he couldn’t change that either. Her family was in Ireland, too far to send for or bring by.
He did, though, have the telegram Joshua Johnson had brought back after his last trip to the train depot. It wasn’t exactly a declaration that she was loved and cherished. But it was something.
“A few days ago I received an answer to a telegram I’d sent to Belfast.”
He thought he saw the smallest of reactions in her face, though she kept her eyes shut.
Hope Springs (Longing for Home - book 2, A Proper Romance) Page 34
