Long Journey Home

by Sarah M. Eden

  “You’d best bandage these,” he told her.

  She shook her head. “I’ve too much work to do.”

  Stubborn, stubborn. “If you don’t take care of the wounds, they’ll turn putrid. Then what good would your hands be to you?”

  With that, she broke. She didn’t cry, didn’t rage. Her shoulders drooped, and she sighed, a sound of soul-deep exhaustion. “I have to finish this. We need the chickens. I can’t keep buying eggs. And keeping a large flock would mean having meat now and then. Aidan’s a growing boy. He needs meat. He needs eggs.”

  He turned to look at the lad. “Are you goin’ hungry?”

  The same stoic determination Ryan had come to know well in the lad’s mother pulled at those young boy’s shoulders. “We’re making do.”

  Which likely meant they weren’t making do at all. He was hanging his hat on the hope of uprooting not merely a widow, but a starving widow and her child. I’ve been made a regular villain.

  “You tend to your hands, Maura,” he said. “I’ll see if I can’t root out someone with a post-hole digger. You’ll have your chicken coop, but it might not happen for another few days. Perhaps not until next week or the week after.”

  “But I need the eggs sooner than that.”

  “This is a very busy time in the fields,” he said. “You’ll get the help you need—I promise you will—but you’ll have to be patient.”

  “I told you I didn’t intend to burden anyone with this.” She looked ready to fight him, bloodied hands and all. If she’d had a pitchfork handy, he’d have been pinned to the wall like a flesh-and-blood Wanted poster. “If I can have the borrowing of the post-hole digger, I’ll manage it alone.”

  “With these hands?” He lifted the one he still held to emphasize the state of things. “If you’re going to survive in a place like this, Maura O’Connor, you’ll have to learn to ask for help and accept it. No one survives here alone. No one. ’Tisn’t a matter of being weak or lazy or any such thing. The land here asks too much of people for anyone to last without help. You learn to depend on your neighbors, or you fail. Sometimes that failure means leaving. Sometimes it means dying.”

  Here he was offering advice to a person in a position to see to it that he failed in a very significant way. Yet he didn’t want her to suffer or even to have to leave Hope Springs entirely. No matter where she eventually settled in the valley, she needed to understand the interconnectedness of the people who lived here.

  Her gaze was on her son, unwavering, worried, heartbreaking. In a tone far less defiant, but no less determined, she asked, “Will you teach Aidan how to dig the posts and stretch the wiring and all that?”

  “He likely ought to learn it,” Ryan answered. Though he was more than willing to help build the coop, he knew with utter certainty that when he asked the O’Connors if any of them had a post-hole digger—and he had no doubt one of them did, and it was regularly lent out between them all—they’d want to know why it was needed. The moment they knew Maura needed a coop built, they’d organize in force and see the job done. If the O’Connors didn’t think to include Aidan in the effort on their own, Ryan would suggest it, though he doubted that would prove necessary. “This’d be a good opportunity for him.”

  “Thank you,” Maura said.

  She pulled her hand from his, then turned and walked almost regally to the house. Her strength would do her a world of good here. Her stubbornness, however, might prove her undoing.

  Chapter Twelve

  Maura wasn’t at all certain what she was going to do. She was out of food and nearly out of money. She’d gone to the mercantile, hoping Mr. Johnson might be willing to accept a trade. She’d do some work for him, whatever he was in need of that her still-healing hands would permit her to do, in exchange for the barest of necessities to see her and Aidan through the next little while. He’d been kind and apologetic, but unable to make such an agreement.

  “During the winter I can barter,” he’d explained. “But this time of year, I need cash on hand. I stock my shelves during the summer months, buying things from the merchants at the depot. They require cash.”

  “I understand,” she’d assured him. “’Twas worth the asking.”

  And so she sat on the banks of the Hope Springs river, catching her breath and fretting. A cough rattled her chest. That’d happened less often of late, or perhaps she’d simply grown so used to it that she didn’t always notice. She pulled in a breath and found she could do so the tiniest bit more deeply than before.

  Hope began to surge, but she quickly pushed it back. She knew better. She’d indulged in the hope that her mother would live despite the obvious deterioration she’d seen day after day. She’d clung to the hope that her sister would survive childbirth, even as the delivery grew more and more dangerous. And she’d hoped—heaven help her, she’d hoped against all logic against all reason—that Grady would simply knock at the door one day and tell her there’d been a miscommunication on the battlefield and he’d not been killed after all. She knew it could happen. She knew of soldiers who had returned after being declared dead. It was possible. But she had received confirmation that Grady had, indeed, been killed, confirmed by a soldier who’d seen him die.

  Hope was an all-too fragile thing, and she couldn’t afford to be breakable.

  “Maura,” a woman’s voice said, sounding both surprised and pleased.

  She looked up. “Good afternoon to you, Katie. As you see, I’ve trespassed a bit on your land here. I needed to rest a spell.”

  “You’re welcome to do so. Though on a hot day like today, you might prefer sitting among the trees a bit farther down the river.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve no intention of trespassing as far as that.”

  Katie sat down, adjusting so little Sean could sit on her lap. “I’ll be very clear, then. You’re welcome to sit under the trees any time you’d like. ’Tis a bit of a magical place. I practice m’ fiddle there. I’m nearly convinced it’s a fairy circle like those we had in Ireland.”

  “You play the fiddle?”

  Sadness touched her eyes. “I did.” She held up her left hand, the one missing every finger but the thumb. “Lost them all in an accident. I’ve been trying to learn to play with m’ other hand, but it’s frustrating.”

  She could appreciate that, though not fully understand it. “I once played the pipes. We had to leave them in Ireland, though. I’ve not touched a set of pipes in twenty years. If I tried my hand at them now, I’d likely make a noise that’d send the neighbors running, thinking the cow was dying of dysentery or some such thing.”

  Katie nodded knowingly. “My first few efforts after this”—she raised her fingerless hand again—“bore a horrible resemblance to an alley cat losing a fight.”

  “Perhaps you and I could play at the next ceílí.” The idea made her laugh in spite of her heavy mind. “Though we’d best wait until the very end when the O’Connors wish for everyone to leave.”

  “They’d run for their homes.” Katie bounced little Sean on her legs. “Though an early night wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I could use the sleep.”

  Katie did look tired. Exhausted, even.

  “Are you unwell, Katie?”

  She shook her head. “I confess, though, I’m swimming against a tide. I know that women the world over manage to keep home and look after their children, even with working long hours in factories or as maids, some juggling their demands all on their own. I’ve none of those extra burdens, but I’m having a terrible time keeping up with the house and the little ones. I thought, perhaps I was simply struggling to relearn how to do things one-and-a-half handed. But it’s been over two years since I lost my fingers. I can’t still be struggling because of my lost fingers. Not after so long.”

  Maura knew well the burden she heard in Katie’s voice. “My Grady had been fighting in the war for years when word came that he’d not survived Gettysburg. Though I’d cared for Aidan and the home and earned the money we
needed while he was away, something about knowing he’d not be coming back changed everything. What I’d managed to do before, I suddenly couldn’t. Every task was harder. Every setback loomed larger.”

  Katie, to Maura’s surprise, wiped away a tear.

  “Your life has changed,” Maura said. “After I lost my husband, my mother told me that change, especially tragic change, leaves a person different from before. A different person can’t approach life the same way. Until you sort out who you are after that loss, you can’t begin again.”

  “So much has changed in the last two years,” Katie said. “Not all of it has been bad, though.”

  Maura shrugged. “Even good change is change. The fact that any of it was bad would make all of it harder.”

  Katie took a shaky breath, gently running her hand over Sean’s hair. “Joseph says we should hire another housekeeper. We had one before, but she left to live with her sister.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “My mother never had a housekeeper. No one I’ve ever known has. We’ve many of us worked as housekeepers, but . . .” Misery tugged at her brow. “I ought to be able to do this on my own.”

  The famous Irish stubbornness. “Would hiring a housekeeper put your family in the poor house?”

  “It wouldn’t.” Katie actually smiled again. “That alone is a struggle to accustom myself to. I’ve lived a breath away from disaster all my life.”

  How well Maura understood that. “And would having a housekeeper help you pull your head above water again?”

  “’Twould be a breath of air to one who’s drowning,” she said. “Yet, saying I’m needing the help feels like admitting defeat.”

  Again, Maura understood all too well. “What is it you’d say to one who was drowning but fully refused the air that would save her?”

  Katie pulled Sean into her arms once more. “You are telling me to stop being so stubborn and accept the help I’m being offered?”

  “I suppose I am. Though if you tell Ryan Callaghan that I’ve talked at such length on the very topic he lectured me on only a few days ago, I’ll deny the whole thing, swearing on the saints if I have to.”

  Katie laughed. Maura kept herself to a smile, afraid her unusually cooperative lungs would fall to bits if she tried to laugh.

  “What is it you need help with?” Katie asked. “Ryan’s not one to lecture for the sake of lecturing.”

  Though Maura was one who normally kept her concerns to herself, she found Katie to be an easy person to talk with. “I was trying to repair something around the house, something that would help save us money as time went on. Money’s in short supply, and I was a little desperate. Managed to tear my hands up.”

  “I’d wondered about the bandaging,” Katie admitted.

  “I had opportunities enough for employment in New York, even if none of them were truly enjoyable. I’d not anticipated Hope Springs being devoid of options.” Maura coughed quickly. Then once more. After a moment, she had breath enough to continue. “We don’t know how to farm, so we can’t earn a living from the land. There’re no factories; that’s not a bad thing, really, but it is one less option.”

  “Did you work in a factory?” Katie’s tone turned deeply empathetic.

  She nodded. “I’d been working as a maid, but getting from the neighborhood where we lived to the home where I worked took too much time. The factories were drudgery and dangerous, but they were close and the work was reliable. ’Twas what I needed.”

  Katie’s head turned sharply to look at Maura. “You worked as a maid?”

  “I did. I returned to that work the last few months we were in New York.”

  “Have you ever considered being a housekeeper?”

  Understanding hit her in a flash. “Oh, Katie. You’re needing a housekeeper.”

  “I am.”

  “And I’m needing a job.”

  “That you are,” Katie said. “Now, mind you, once I manage to get myself sorted, I’ll not need a housekeeper. This wouldn’t be a permanent arrangement.”

  Maura turned enough to be facing her instead of the river. “It needn’t be permanent. I’d have money to live on while I looked for something else, while I found my footing.” And who was to say how long she’d be able to do the work? If her health began to fail, she’d have to quit anyway.

  “I think I could bear the thought of having a housekeeper if I knew that the housekeeper understood why I struggle with the idea.”

  Maura nodded. “And I’d be grateful having a job, especially one so near both my house and the school.”

  “When could you begin?” Katie asked. “I know your hands are hurt, and that would make things difficult for a time.”

  She’d not thought of that difficulty, but it was a real one. “Beginning of next week?” She didn’t know what she and Aidan would do until then in terms of food, but they’d make do.

  “You can come up to the house and talk with Joseph about what you’d be paid. He’s in the fields, but I could find him.”

  Maura shook her head. “We’ll sort out the details later. I’m simply relieved to know I’ll have something to live on. That worry has been suffocating me.”

  “It seems to me, Maura O’Connor, we’re both about to get the air we’ve so desperately needed.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Maura walked home after her gab with Katie. Her heart felt lighter than it had in months. Heaven help her, she was letting herself hope again.

  She’d not yet reached the house when a sudden burst of distant laughter reached her. She might have only vaguely wondered about it, but she was nearly certain the voices had come from the very destination she herself was aiming for. Were people at the house? That seemed unlikely. Other than Tavish on that first morning, and Ryan Callaghan, who kept mostly to the fields, no one had ever come by.

  The voices grew louder as she approached. Too many sounded at once to be discernible, but the tone could not be mistaken. Whatever the gathering she would momentarily be interrupting, it was a jovial one.

  She stepped up the path and saw the O’Connors at the side of the barn. Tavish and Cecily. Ian and Biddy. Mary and Thomas Dempsey. Ciara and the man Maura felt certain was Ciara’s husband though she’d not yet met him. Mr. O’Connor was there, calling out instructions.

  “Pack the soil in tight, or that post’ll never stand,” he called to Thomas and to, presumably, Ciara’s husband. “Don’t allow too much slack in the meshing,” he warned Tavish and Ian. To the women, who stood in the middle of what would soon be a chicken coop, building some kind of small lean-to against the side of the barn, he said, “We can fetch you more nails if you need.”

  “I think we’ve enough, Da,” Mary answered.

  Maura watched the scene in shock. They were building her chicken coop. They’d made such progress in the two hours she’d been gone.

  Neighbors gather and work together and manage the thing in no time, Ryan had said. He’d been entirely correct on that score.

  “Maura, there you are.” Mr. O’Connor waved her over.

  “I can hardly believe this,” she said, looking over the family’s accomplishments.

  “We weren’t certain when you’d be back, but we wanted to get started straight off.”

  “But you all must have work to do on your own land.” She knew they did.

  Mr. O’Connor gave her a sweet smile, a sight she remembered so very well from their years in New York. He was, quite possibly, the kindest man she’d ever known. “Don’t you fret over that. The lads feel they ought to be done with the fencing in another hour. The women’ll be well on their way with the henhouse by then. We mean to stop for lunch. Ryan Callaghan says he can see to finishing whatever’s left to be done on the henhouse in the next few days.”

  In silent shock, Maura turned once more to watch the family accomplish what she could never have done alone. “How did you know?”

  “Ryan told us.”

  Embarrassment filled her. “He was
n’t meant to spill that in your ear.”

  “He wasn’t gossiping,” Mr. O’Connor said. “Not truly. He came asking if any of us had a post-hole digger. Being insufferable busybodies, we harangued him until he told us why he needed one. After that, there was nothing for it but to gather everyone together and come see to the coop. Of course, upon realizing you didn’t have a proper henhouse, either, we added that to the list.”

  “The last thing I want is to be a burden to you.” Life would make a burden of her soon enough.

  Just as Maura’s own father used to do, he set his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t you ever feel you can’t come ask for anything you’re needing, even if it’s nothing more than someone to talk to.”

  “I won’t be much help to them today,” Maura said. “My hands didn’t fare well when I tried managing this on my own.”

  “Ryan might’ve mentioned that as well.” Mr. O’Connor turned her toward the house with gentle pressure on her arm. “And that you’re needing to obtain laying hens and a rooster. Between all of us, we can piece together a small flock for you to begin with.”

  What an unexpected blessing that was. She wouldn’t have to go searching for chickens. She didn’t know if Mr. Johnson sold animals and hadn’t had the first idea where else to look. “If you’ll tell me what it is I owe you—”

  “None of that.” Mr. O’Connor motioned her inside. “We know you’re still trying to get settled. Beginning again in a new place is not without expense.”

  “Did Ryan also tell you I’m short on money?”

  Mr. O’Connor smiled gently. “He didn’t have to, dear.”

  All the town had likely noticed how famished she and Aidan had been at the ceílí. The other students couldn’t have helped but notice Aidan’s sparse lunches. She hadn’t yet obtained lye, so their clothes were in need of washing.

  “Go inside, lass. Your mother-in-law’s there seeing to lunch for the lot of us, and I’d guess she’ll want to help you tend to your hands.”