Beyond All Dreams (24 page)

He spotted her sitting on a bench at the far end of the basin, a lone figure in the gloomy night. Anna shouldn't be out alone after dark, but he didn't have the energy to grouse at her about it. Not tonight. Besides, he felt better just seeing her. Her profile looked so lovely and fragile against the last streaks of the sunset. But he knew better. Anna was tough. She'd endured and survived . . . thrived even. She'd been battered by life and yet hadn't become bitter and twisted.

“Hello, Anna.”

She stood at the sound of his voice, looking a little hesitant and embarrassed. “Luke.”

Just hearing his name in her throaty, velvety voice made his heart ache. It was torture being near her. If he'd never met her, Jason would be alive right now. Locked in a jail cell, but alive and with hope for a future. That was all gone now.

He held her note up between two fingers. “Care to explain?”

She took a step forward, her eyes on his hand. With gentle fingers she took hold of his wrist and lowered his hand, exposing his scraped knuckles. “Care to explain?” she countered. “The newspapers are having a field day over this.”

There was a note of humor in her voice, and it rubbed him the wrong way. “Jason is dead,” he said bluntly.

She sucked in a breath, her horrified eyes meeting his.

“He got intoxicated the night following his release.” As quickly as possible, he relayed the story of what happened. After returning home from jail, Jason was pale, shaky, and nauseous. Julia had emptied the house of liquor, but in the middle of the
night Jason found a bottle of cough medicine in the pantry and drank every drop of it. No one was sure what he did after that. He was found dead the next morning half a mile from town, facedown in a snowbank.

“We think he was trying to get to a pharmacy or a tavern when the cold and the opiates in the cough medicine overwhelmed him. In any event, he's dead.”

“I'm sorry,” Anna said. “I don't know what to say. . . .”

Her voice was aghast, and she looked so vulnerable in her shabby wool coat, standing there in the buffeting wind. Without thinking, he dragged her into his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin. She didn't resist him. Instead, she tightened her arms around his back.

“It's not your fault,” he managed to say.

But it was. Jason would be safe in that jail cell if Anna hadn't planted the seed of doubt in Luke's mind. He hated himself for it, but he didn't think he would ever be able to look at her without remembering it was Anna who'd prompted him to order his brother's release.

“Jason was a good kid,” he said in a hollow voice. It made no sense, but he didn't want Anna thinking badly of his baby brother. “When he was little, he used to worry about where butterflies went during the rain. Butterflies!” His voice choked, and his eyes brimmed with tears. “I loved him so much. I keep wishing I had done things differently, that I'd never left Maine, never let him out of my sight. That I'd never let him out of prison.”

“I'm so sorry,” Anna said again as she extricated herself from his arms. There was a void now where she'd been. He watched as she turned to stare out over the tidal basin.

He sighed. “Anna, it's not your fault. And the rational piece of my brain says it's not my fault or Julia's either. I just need to keep repeating that until I believe it.”

“I sent you that note because I thought you might need my help, but I'm afraid there's nothing I can do for you. It would have been better if we'd never met.”

She was probably right. There was a time when he'd wanted nothing more than to pounce on this thrilling fascination he had for her and follow wherever it led . . . hopefully to the altar. That was probably ruined now, although he knew a tiny chunk of his soul would be forever owned by Anna O'Brien, and that was exactly how he wanted it.

But he had to get away from her. Maybe someday they could move past this, but not today. For now, he needed to mourn. He had to pull together what was left of his family and find some sort of meaning in this senseless death. And he couldn't do that while his emotions were splintered by his complicated feelings for Anna.

He reached into his pocket and twisted the keys off his tourmaline key ring. He reached out to grasp her hand, pressing the walnut-sized stone into her hand.

“I want you to have this, Anna, a piece of Maine to remember me by.”

She held up the gemstone, the weak light glinting off its surface. “I probably shouldn't accept it.”

“Please. I want you to have it.” If they never saw each other again, he needed her to remember him.

She clutched the stone, holding it to her chest. And when she looked up at him with those luminous eyes, he knew she felt the tug as well. It was mirrored on her face, the combination of longing and regret.

“I wish things had been different,” she said wistfully.

“How so?”

She glanced over his shoulder at the last streaks of light in the sky. “If you were just an ordinary man, like a clerk at the
corner store or a post office employee, I wonder if we would have been good together.”

He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “Make no mistake, O'Brien. We've
always
been good together.”

He left before she could give him back the tourmaline or he did something stupid like beg her to wait for him, to hang on until he could dig himself out from beneath this avalanche of dark thoughts.

Tomorrow he'd leave for Maine to bury his brother. Afterward, he would return to Washington and try to repair his crumbling career. Yet he didn't know if he'd ever be able to look at Anna again and not remember that it was her fault his brother was dead.

T
he funeral, held at the old stone chapel less than a mile from the Callahan estate, was a solemn affair, with Luke's mother silently weeping in the front pew. From the moment he arrived in Bangor, Luke was amazed at Julia's ability to steer the difficult funeral arrangements through to completion. She'd organized a small army of neighbors to coordinate food for after the wake, chosen the readings for the service, and met with the undertaker, all while comforting their mother and keeping Philip occupied. She even had their older brother, Gabriel, helping with the arrangements, not an easy feat.

When Luke left for Congress eight years ago, he fully expected Gabe to tame his reckless spirit and become the leader of the family in Maine, but it never happened. A self-taught architect with shaggy chestnut hair and a booming laugh, Gabe would disappear for months without warning. Once it was to live for a year with the Penobscot Indians in the mountains of the Northeast. Last month it was to sail the skiff he built all the way to Canada.

No one wanted to talk about the reason they were all there.
Jason had dug his own grave. Still, they could have done a better job stopping him. They should have handcuffed him to his bed. They should have set guards on him and paid a physician to be in attendance. They should have appealed to the sisters at Saint Agatha's to light candles and say prayers around the clock.

And they should never have bailed him out of jail.

Luke didn't want to blame Julia for it, but he did. He didn't want to blame Anna for it either, but he did.

Most of all, he blamed himself. Jason was his baby brother, who used to hide in Luke's room when their father stormed and raged. Luke always protected him. But later, when he left for Washington, he abandoned Jason to the demons that seemed to plague the Callahan family.

The damp air was freezing as Luke walked back from the funeral, but he let his coat hang open, refusing to protect himself against the icy chill. Jason must have felt far worse during his final minutes of life as he lay freezing in that snowbank. Luke's boots crunched through the thin sheet of ice crusted atop the snow as he trudged uphill toward their house. How many times had he and Jason sledded down this very hill together? How many endless summer days had they wrestled on this lawn or caught fireflies in the evening?

Fresh waves of pain rolled through him as he slogged toward the house, a rambling home of roughhewn timber and stone on the highest point of Callahan land. Over the years, Gabriel had expanded the house, tacking on rooms, towers, and balconies. The house had become a reflection of Gabe's impulses. Mismatched gables, a wing added diagonally from the house, a turret slapped on because their mother had mentioned she fancied one. After a brief fascination with the challenges of designing a spiral staircase, Gabe had built one in the corner of the great room. He'd always intended to add a loft and attach
it to the staircase, but then he grew bored with the project and abandoned it. To this day, the winding stairs led to nowhere.

The house had become a metaphor of his family—spectacular, audacious, and impractical. And yet it had been a good place to grow up. The streams were packed with striped bass, and in the summer a thousand shades of green surrounded them from the pines, oaks, maples, and grassy fields. When the trees were bare, they could see all the way to the lights of Bangor.

Inside the house, everything was still in disarray from the wake the day before. Hundreds of people had tromped through the first floor as every logger, miner, tradesman, and merchant paid his respects. After expressing the obligatory words of grief, half the men wanted to talk politics with Luke. It was the last thing he'd wanted. No one here quite grasped how steep his political exile in Washington had become, and the less said the better.

The moment everyone arrived home from the funeral, Julia sprang into action. “Gabe, I need you to take the carpets outside for a beating. Luke, the tables in the parlor need to go back into the kitchen. Get Philip to help. I'll have Mother clean the silver and get it wrapped for storage.”

Luke stepped closer and said quietly, “Can't someone else do that? She's about to collapse from grief.”

“That's why I'm keeping her busy,” Julia replied, opening the sideboard drawers to put away the china platters. She was probably right.

“Come on, Philip. Help me move the tables.”

Philip followed Luke to the kitchen. Once the door closed behind them, Philip stunned him when he said, “I don't want to go back to Washington. I want to stay here.”

“No.” In all the years Luke had been Philip's guardian, there had never been any question that the wisest course of action was for the boy to live with him in Washington.

“I don't like living in a hotel,” Philip said. “Mother doesn't drink anymore, and Uncle Gabe is here too. They can look after me.”

Like they looked after Jason
. “Absolutely not,” Luke said.

“Why not? Uncle Gabe is older than you.”

“I can give you opportunities in Washington most boys would sell their eyeteeth for. You can't get a decent education here.”

“Uncle Gabe never finished school. He said he'll take me into the mountains, and I could learn from the school of nature. We could find things to paint, just like Winslow Homer did.”

“Winslow Homer had a fine education in Europe and America before he became a great painter. Don't put your cart before your horses.” Gabe always started projects with great enthusiasm, only to abandon them the moment something more interesting seized his attention. Raising a teenaged boy wouldn't be any different.

“Philip, this isn't the time,” Julia said as she hustled into the kitchen, dumping a bucket of coal into the box by the stove. Luke looked from Julia to Philip, then back to Julia. Had they been speaking about this behind his back?

His mother sat at the kitchen table, listlessly polishing the silver. While it seemed cruel to be putting her to work just now, Julia was indeed right. Every few minutes his mother set the item down, her eyes staring vacantly into space. Julia noticed within a heartbeat. “I need those forks polished, Ma.”

Could he return to Washington anytime soon if his mother was still like this, overwhelmed by grief? And since when had Philip become dissatisfied with their life in Washington? True, making him work off his debt in the hotel laundry had been a stern punishment, but it was fair. More important, it was
over.

After the kitchen had been restored to order again, he escaped into the great room to read in solitude. It didn't last long.

“Hey, Luke!” Gabe bounded into the room, glancing around and seeing they were alone. “Come out back and help me chop wood. Quick, we've got a lot to do.”

He threw on a coat and followed Gabe to the towering stack of timber laid in for the winter. Listening to Gabe's plan for the evening made him doubt his brother's sanity. “I just got word the ice cutters are heading in from the fields,” Gabe said. “They couldn't make it for the funeral, but we'll hold a bonfire tonight that will light the skies all the way to Bangor.”

Luke leaned against the handle of his ax. “Bonfires are a throwback to pagan Europe, a reckless show of male bravado and shameless waste of resources. Besides, it's a fire hazard.”

“Of course it's a fire hazard. It's a blithering bonfire!” Gabe laughed. “It will be big enough for Jason to see from heaven. Those dreary ceremonies Julia has been subjecting us all to are about to drive
me
six feet under. Now pick up that ax and get to work.”

There was some truth to Gabe's comment. Picking up the splitting maul, Luke took aim at the log propped on the chopping block and split the wood with a satisfying
crack
. The ice cutters were a rowdy lot, and if they were coming all the way from Big Bear Lake, they'd expect a proper bonfire.

Soon he and Gabe settled into a rhythm as they chopped in tandem. The scent of freshly split pine, the sound of chopping wood, even the ache in his muscles—all of it brought back memories. How much of his life had been spent on this exact spot, splitting wood alongside his father and brothers? Now only Gabriel was left. A sheen of tears made it hard for Luke to see, but he didn't break his rhythm.

Jason
. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine Jason swinging a maul only a few feet away, cracking jokes and whistling a tune.

Luke's muscles quivered, and his lungs struggled to keep up
after an hour of splitting wood. He'd gotten soft in Washington, but the bonfire might not be such a bad idea. Julia came outside once to scowl at them, and he saw his mother look out with curiosity a few times as he and Gabe rolled stones into a big circle that would contain the bonfire. There would be a rousing send-off for Jason tonight.

The sun had just slipped below the horizon when the ice cutters began arriving. When Maine's logging season ended, the ice harvest began, and many of the lumberjacks took to the hills for another three months of labor. Maine's deep lakes and frigid winters produced a pure crystal-blue ice that was shipped down the East Coast and made a good living for the men willing to live in the frosty wilderness. It didn't take much to coax them down into civilization, even if it was to commemorate the death of someone they barely knew.

But they knew Luke Callahan, the man who sent books to their camps and fought to protect the logging industry. They were willing to come and pay homage to Luke's fallen brother. They even helped stack the timber into a tall column that climbed higher as more men arrived to help prepare the bonfire.

By nightfall it was ready. With wood chips and bark stuffed into its base, the bonfire was lit and began shooting up the column, the flames burning brightly against the dark sky, reflecting on the field of snow. The men circled the fire, staring into the glow with hypnotic fascination as the wood snapped and sparks swirled into the air above.

Gabriel hopped up on top of a stump, his eyes reflecting the fire, his face flushed and full of life. “We're here to pay homage to my brother,” he shouted, his voice echoing over the field. “He was like the sun itself, bursting with light and warmth. A light that burned so fiercely it could not long survive. He will not vanish from this earth, but live on in our memories forever.
Jason Callahan was taken from us in the depths of winter, when snow and ice grips the land and freezes the blood in our bodies.”

Gabe reached down, light glinting off a bottle he snatched from the ground. Holding the bottle of rum aloft, he shouted to the sky, “You're free now, brother! You're free of the shackles of this life. But your memory will echo across the hills and valleys and down into the deepest reaches of the tourmaline mines!” Gabe threw the bottle into the bonfire, the glass smashing into pieces and igniting in blue flames that leaped toward the sky.

“To Jason!” one of the ice cutters said. “He always loved this old carving knife. Now it's yours, lad!” The knife spun in a high arc before landing in the center of the fire. Another bottle of liquor followed, along with an old pair of snowshoes.

Everything about this firelit night was typical Callahan bluster, but against Luke's will, a surge of joy welled up inside. His heartbeat quickened, exuberance racing through his blood. Gabriel was magnificent, standing there and shouting his grief with the strength of a Viking. Jason had been magnificent too. He'd stumbled during his final years, yet Gabe's heartfelt tribute summoned only the good memories of Jason.

His face tilted upward. The clear night sky was spattered with countless stars, their beauty nearly driving him to his knees. He could only pray that somewhere up there, his brother's spirit soared with a peace he'd been unable to find in life.

A movement near the house caught his attention, and Philip slid behind one of the stone pillars that supported the wraparound porch. Luke's eyes narrowed. This was precisely the sort of wild behavior he wanted to protect the boy from. Pivoting on his heels, he strode to the house, his boots thudding as he sprang up the steps and crossed to where Philip stood staring at the bonfire.