Longing for Home (21 page)

He didn’t reply, neither did he move away. He stood, studying her. Katie couldn’t say if he meant to yield or was simply taking a moment to formulate more arguments.

“Please, Mr. Archer.”

“This is something important to you?” He sounded as though he already realized the answer to his question.

“Yes, sir.”

His gaze grew more pointed at her slip.

“Mr. Archer,” she corrected.

He let it go without further objections. “But you will eat?”

“Yes.”

While he didn’t actually say anything, she saw in his face the moment he decided to leave her to her task. She offered a small nod of gratitude. He moved silently back into the dining room.

Though she knew herself free to go about her work, she remained with her back pressed to the door, hand on the knob beside her. She hadn’t expected that of Mr. Archer. No employer of hers had ever cared if she ate or slept or rested. Yet, the same man who rarely had a word for her during the day, who grumbled a great deal more than any person ought, seemed to concern himself with her welfare.

The contradiction stayed with her as she pulled down and folded the laundry. She thought about it as she washed the Archers’ dishes and scrubbed out the sink. Her mind had not yet moved on even as she ate her own hurried meal. The moment she took the handle of her father’s fiddle case in her hands, however, those worries quieted, slipping back to the furthest reaches of her thoughts.

Katie stepped out the back door, fiddle firmly in her grasp. Under her other arm she held a blanket, one old and worn that would not mind an evening spent in the outdoors. The night had grown dim and a touch chill. She set her eyes on the clump of trees she’d decided upon earlier.

The wind blew across her path, pulling her skirts hard against her legs. She clutched the blanket and fiddle to her and pushed on. The evening was far from silent, though what noises she heard were too distant and too garbled for identifying. How very unlike the constant roar of the city.

Katie stepped beneath the canopy of branches. The air turned cooler. The trees grew near the bank of the river that wound its way around Hope Springs and past Mr. Archer’s fields. A person would be hard pressed to cross the river without the help of a bridge.

She spread her blanket beneath the trees and sat overlooking the river. The sun dipped lower on the horizon, the sky filling with the blazing colors of sunset. ’Twas a perfect setting for a quiet evening of music.

She opened the fiddle case, her eyes falling on the familiar instrument. She tightened the hairs of her bow, then took up the fiddle. She closed her eyes and pulled the bow across a string.

“Too low,” she whispered.

One string at a time, Katie tuned the fiddle just as her father had taught her—she kept her eyes closed and listened, shutting out every other sound. She always found the act of tuning deeply satisfying. Here was one trouble she knew how to fix. Few other problems could be seen to so quickly and disposed of so easily.

Katie sat with her fiddle tucked under her chin, bow in hand. How she missed her father. She’d not heard a single word from him since the day he left her in Derry. Mother wrote now and again, her words written out by their priest. Katie’d had those words read to her, even dictated letters in return. But Father never sent so much as a second-hand greeting.

Someday she would give him back his land and home. She would show him the headstone she meant to purchase for Eimear’s grave. He’d see it all, and he would love her again.

“And I’ll do it all, Eimear. I’ll do it all even if takes my entire life long.”

She needed a quick-paced tune, something to lift her heart. With the first measures of “Reel Du Goglu,” her uncertainty gave way.

Here was home.

She played through “After the Sun Goes Down,” “Paddy McFadden,” and many other tunes she’d never learned the proper names of. Jigs ran into reels, which gave way to airs and waltzes. She played until every joint in her left hand ached and the tips of her fingers pained her. Far too much time had passed since she’d last spent more than a few short minutes playing. Her fingers weren’t used to it any longer.

The music took her back across time, before Baltimore, before Belfast, even before Derry. In her mind Katie could perfectly see the hearth in her childhood home and her family gathered around. William, her oldest brother, had left before Katie had any memories of him. But she could picture Danny and Brennan sitting there during the short time before they’d followed their brother to Manchester and the promise of work and wages and food to eat. Their faces grew more vague with every passing year, but she remembered their being there. Her clearest memories were of only Mother and Father and Eimear sitting with her around the fire.

She stopped in the midst of “The Irishman’s Choice,” suddenly too overcome to play on. Emotions waged a war inside her. Loneliness, homesickness, and the joy of happier times mixed and melted together. Her throat thickened.

Try as she might, Katie could no longer picture her family together. She saw only her mother’s tired face, her father’s smile replaced with defeat. She saw Eimear, pale and thin. Then she heard from across the years the tune Father had always played at the end of each evening.

She took up her bow once more. She hesitated only a moment before allowing the plaintive strains of “Ar Éirinn” to step out of her past and fill the air around her. She felt herself very much as she’d been all those years ago when hearing her father play late into the night. ’Twas as if she again lay wrapped in a quilt tucked safely in bed, blissfully unaware of the pain that lie ahead of them all, free of the guilt she would carry the rest of her life.

As the last note died out over the river before her, Katie opened her eyes once more. The sun had long ago set, the fields cast in deep impenetrable shadows. She held her fiddle to her heart.

“I miss you, Father,” she whispered. “Do you miss me, I wonder?”

She would see him again one day, she’d vowed to herself she would. She’d see him again and tell him how sorry she was for all the wrong she’d done, for the pain she’d caused him. And she would play “Ar Éirinn” just for him. Between the tune and the restitution she meant to make, he just might welcome her back.

She would be home again at last.

Chapter Nineteen

Katie and Biddy sat on the Archers’ front porch Thursday afternoon taking turns at the butter churn and chatting about nothing in particular. Katie had developed something bordering on a talent for pointless gabbing, though she’d never done it before coming to Hope Springs. She found she enjoyed having someone to talk to.

“I’ve thought of something I can do when this job isn’t available any longer,” she said.

“Have you?”

There was something very comforting in knowing her new friend cared enough about her to be excited on her behalf.

“Well, as near as I’ve been able to tell, no one else in Hope Springs is looking to hire on household help.”

Biddy shook her head. “No one else can afford it. The ranchers out at the edges of the valley might be able to, but I’d not go there if I were you,” she added quickly. “They’re single men, every last one of them, and not terribly well mannered or civilized.”

Katie had heard all that herself. “I was thinking more along the lines of, well—” She found herself reluctant to confess her idea. What if Biddy laughed? What if she truly was a fool for even considering such a scheme? “I thought I’d start something of a business.”

Such relief surged through her when Biddy didn’t scoff. “What sort of business?”

Katie could breathe again. She had a supportive and listening ear in her new friend. “I haven’t many talents,” she said. “I can clean and I can bake, but that’s it.”

She wiped beads of sweat from her forehead. The day was hotter than any she’d yet experienced in Wyoming. A breeze blew, the only relief from the heavy summer air.

“So I thought I might try selling baked goods.” The idea was young, and Katie wasn’t fully sure of it yet.

Biddy’s eyes grew wide. “A bakery? Wouldn’t we be the fancy town?”

“I don’t mean a full bakery like in Baltimore or Belfast or any of the big cities.”

“Katie! Katie!”

She turned at Ivy’s voice. For reasons she couldn’t explain, the littlest Archer girl had become increasingly friendly over the past week. Despite her efforts to keep a distance, Katie couldn’t seem to manage it.

“Watch me, Katie. I can run so fast!” Ivy’s dress whipped hard against her legs as she ran with all she was worth the full length of the front of the house. Apparently finished with her demonstration, the little girl dropped dramatically to the ground, lying on her back with her arms and legs sprawled out.

Katie looked over the porch rail at Ivy. “I hardly even saw you pass by, so quick were you there and gone.”

“I. Told. You.” Her gasps for breath made the words choppy.

“Where did you learn to run like that?” Katie asked as she continued churning.

Ivy put a hand up to her eyes to block the sunlight. “Finbarr showed me. He says you have to watch where you’re going and then run like the banshee is out to get you.”

Katie smiled at that. Irish children would run for their lives at such a thought.

“What’s ‘the banshee’?” Ivy asked. She hadn’t yet pulled herself up off the grass. “Finbarr made it sound scary.”

“The banshee is an ill-meaning spirit,” Katie warned. “’Tis said the banshee will lead the unsuspecting into dangerous paths until they’re hopelessly lost forever and all time.”

Emma arrived at the porch’s edge in time to hear Katie’s words. Ivy seemed quite excited at the idea of a horrid specter, while Emma didn’t appear to like the possibility in the least.

“Then Finbarr wasn’t merely teasing us?” Emma asked.

“He was teasing you, sure enough. But tales of banshees have been around since before St. Patrick himself. Finbarr hardly made it up.”

Emma’s mouth twisted in thought. “Why do boys do that? They say things they know will scare us just to tease.”

“I have known Finbarr nearly all his life,” Biddy said. “He teases the girls he’s fond of. All the O’Connors do. My Ian, when we first met, called me Itty Biddy. ’Twas his way of teasing me.”

“Truly?” Emma looked unmistakably hopeful. “You think Finbarr is fond of . . . us?”

“I most certainly do,” Biddy answered.

Katie watched closely as Emma pondered that. Part of the little girl’s puzzle fell into place in that moment.

“Poor thing’s in the throes of first love,” Biddy whispered.

“Aye. I didn’t piece it together until this very moment.”

A look of absolute empathy entered Biddy’s eyes. “She’s been sweet on Finbarr since she was Ivy’s age.”

“Does he realize as much?”

Biddy smiled and nodded with emphasis. “Poor little thing doesn’t realize she’s too young to catch his eye.”

Ivy scrambled back to her feet. She waved enthusiastically to a wagon just making the turn at the fork in the road, this one destined for the Red side of things. Katie hadn’t met many people from that side of town, none she’d care to meet again at the very least. Still, the young family in the wagon offered a friendly “good afternoon” and returned Ivy’s wave without hesitation.

So Katie waved as well. They looked shocked and didn’t return the gesture. Apparently waves between roads was as forbidden as sitting together at church.

“Tell me about this bakery you’re opening up.”

Katie shook her head. “Nothing so grand as that. Only bread, and perhaps cakes for special occasions.”

Ivy ran alongside a pony cart as it turned toward the Irish Road. The little girl giggled, drawing a grin from the driver. Katie recognized him from the céilí
,
one Ryan Callaghan from Cork. Biddy waved, and he tipped his hat in return. The Red Road family hadn’t even acknowledged Biddy sitting there.

“’Tis a complicated place you’re living in, Biddy.”

She laughed lightly. “Aye, but isn’t every place?”

A great deal of wisdom lay in those words. “Troubles follow us wherever we go, it seems.”

Biddy nodded again. “But you don’t see a view like this one everywhere you go.” She motioned out over the sprawling horizon just in front of them.

Katie had quickly come to appreciate the stark beauty of the area. “That you don’t.”

A wagon crossed over the bridge. Ivy darted out as she had with the previous passersby. She drew too near for Katie’s peace of mind.

“Don’t run out in the road, Ivy dear!” she called out. “You’ll get yourself run down, you will!”

Ivy’s shoulders dropped dramatically, as though Katie had singlehandedly ruined her entire life.

“So you can really make a living selling bread?” Biddy asked.

There was the difficulty. Katie wasn’t sure she could. “I can’t rightly say. I don’t know the proper way to figure those things. I hope so.”

“What’ll happen, Katie, if you can’t?”

She paused in her churning and rolled her sore shoulders. “I’ve no other ideas. If this won’t work, I’ll have to consider going back to Baltimore.”

“Pompah!” Little Ivy’s voice carried across to them.