Chapter 31
Brendan’s gaze met hers from across the room and for a long moment Maggie couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, and certainly couldn’t think. All she could do was feel—a torrent of emotion, rushing faster than Gold Creek, with Brendan like an immovable rock at its center.
She loved him, Maggie knew in that moment.
Truly loved him, and maybe always had, but she just hadn’t known her own silly, schoolgirl heart.
Or maybe she’d simply fought against it for so long because love was frightening, especially a love like this, that rushed through her and made her feel like she’d do anything, anything, for him to feel the same way.
Maggie swallowed hard, lightheaded, a buzzing in her ears, as she walked across the room. Someone reached for her arm, another tapped her on her shoulder, both believing they had the right to claim her waltz.
Maggie ignored them completely.
Brendan hadn’t moved from where she’d first spied him. He simply stood, waiting for her to come to him, looking so wonderfully familiar and yet also somehow different. Leaner, harder, older, but with the twinkle in his eyes she so loved, his mouth already tugging up at one corner in a wry smile.
“I think several gentlemen are trying to claim your attention,” he remarked when she was finally standing right in front of him.
“I’m closest to you,” Maggie replied, and as the waltz started up, Brendan took her into his arms.
For a few moments, they simply danced, Maggie achingly conscious of the way he held her, the breadth of his shoulder under her hand, the feel of his palm pressed to hers.
All she could concentrate on was the feel of him, but then thoughts started to trickle in, and with them, doubts.
The certainty she’d felt mere moments ago suddenly seemed like something to question.
She hadn’t seen this man in three months. She hadn’t spoken to him properly in years. And yet… and yet, she knew. She knew her own heart, but she didn’t know Brendan’s. At all.
But maybe, Maggie reflected, that didn’t matter. Maybe all she could do, all she needed to do, was speak the truth of her own heart rather than guess what was in Brendan’s, after all this time.
“I thought I’d see you somewhere in town,” she told him, her voice a little croaky so she had to clear her throat. “Around somewhere, in one of the stores or on the street, but I haven’t caught so much as a glimpse of you.”
“I’ve been working for a dry goods store on Seward.”
“You mean Hamilton’s?” she asked. “I know it.” She’d been in the store several times, but she’d never seen Brendan in there.
He nodded. “Yes, I mainly work in the office in the back, doing the accounts, but sometimes behind the counter.” He paused, smiling crookedly. “I wondered if I’d see you in there sometime.”
Maggie shook her head slowly. “I’m amazed that you didn’t,” she said.
“Were you looking for me?” he asked, and she couldn’t tell if he was serious or teasing.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I was.” She hesitated, and then began, “Brendan?—”
Just then, the waltz ended, and the room fell silent before people started to clap, and the moment to say something—and she hadn’t even known what she was going to say—had passed.
“It was good to see you, Maggie,” Brendan said quietly, and with a jolt, she realized he was saying goodbye.
“You can’t leave!” she exclaimed, trying for a laugh. “Don’t you know the tradition? Whoever you dance the last waltz with must accompany you in to supper and dine with you.”
Brendan smiled, although Maggie thought she saw a certain sorrow in his eyes. “I’m sure you will have no end to the young men who would gladly take on that role,” he replied.
“But I’m meant to dine with you,” Maggie protested, hoping she didn’t sound too desperate, but then she realized recklessly that she didn’t care if she did. “Brendan, please take supper with me,” she implored with quiet earnestness. “I… I have things I want—things I need—to say to you.”
Brendan stared at her for another moment and then gave a brief, terse nod, his only reply.
It wasn’t until they were seated and the servers were bringing out platters of steaks and bowls of beans that they were able to speak again.
“So, how have you been, Maggie?” Brendan asked. “I’ve heard about you, you know. The firecracker of a nurse who’s brought in a native child to live with her.”
“I hardly think I’m that notable,” Maggie replied with an uncertain laugh.
“But yes, Sheetka lives with me. She lost her mother to the influenza, and her father has never been interested. I’m not even sure who he is, or if he’s still in Juneau.
Likely he’s a prospector who has headed for the hills. ”
“Likely,” Brendan agreed. “And if he doesn’t come back… what will you do?”
“I don’t think she ever knew her father properly, so whether he comes back or not, Sheetka will stay with me,” Maggie replied firmly. “At least I hope she will.”
“Some people don’t like it,” Brendan remarked mildly, and Maggie’s temper flared.
“I don’t care if the whole town doesn’t like it,” she retorted. “I do.”
“I can see that,” he replied in the same mild voice. “And I’m not saying anything against it, far from it. But it’s a hard road you’ve chosen, that’s all.”
“Yes, and it won’t get any easier if no one ever walks it,” Maggie replied fiercely. “Sheetka might not have an easy life, but maybe her daughter or granddaughter will, or at least easier, because of what has gone before. Because of us.”
Brendan chuckled softly, a sound rich with affection that made a fluttery kind of pleasure ripple through Maggie. She wanted to hear him laugh like that again. “You haven’t lost your spirit, I see,” he remarked quietly.
“No,” Maggie answered after a moment. “Truth be told, I thought I had, back in San Francisco. After what happened in Chicago…” She paused before continuing with difficulty, “I thought I’d never feel… passionately… about anything ever again.”
“You seemed to care about your nursing, back in San Francisco,” Brendan remarked as he took a bite of bear steak.
“I did,” Maggie agreed. “But even then it felt like something was missing. I was lonely in San Francisco,” she confessed.
“More even than I realized at the time. I didn’t fit in at the hospital, even though I tried and…
and certain people did their best to make me feel welcome.
” She felt rather than saw Brendan tense at her mention of certain people.
He couldn’t possibly know about her association with the Browns, much less that brief kiss she’d shared with Phillip, but perhaps he guessed something of its nature.
“And now you feel like you fit in, in this rugged place?” he asked with a small smile.
“I feel like I know why I came here,” Maggie told him honestly. “For Sheetka. For having my family around me, all of them, at long last, the way it should have been all along. The way I’ve always wanted it to be.”
Brendan was silent, staring off into the distance for a moment, before he nodded. “Then I’m happy for you,” he said, and Maggie thought he sounded resigned.
She hadn’t said half or even a quarter of the things she wanted to, needed to, she realized with a flutter of panic, but Brendan’s tone made it sound as if their conversation was already over.
“That’s not what I wanted to talk about,” she said hurriedly. “At least not all of it. Brendan—I wanted… I wanted to talk about you. About… us.”
Already, he was shaking his head. “Maggie,” Brendan said in a low voice. “We don’t have to talk about… all that again. It would just be painful and… and pointless, for both of us.”
“No, I need to,” Maggie replied, her voice rising in her anxiety to say what she needed to say before Brendan cut her off.
“There are things I want to say, Brendan, because I never got the chance to say them before, and that’s my own fault, because I didn’t even realize what I needed to say, or what I felt, until recently, and then when I saw you in the schoolhouse and I knew I’d been looking for you all along, I always have…
” She swallowed hard. “Well, then, I knew I needed to say them to you tonight.”
She scanned his face, looking for clues as to how he felt, but Brendan’s closed, watchful expression gave no indication to his feelings. It didn’t give her much hope, either, but still she persevered. No matter what Brendan might feel, Maggie knew she needed to say what she did.
“I fought against what I felt for you for so long,” she confessed in a low voice.
She couldn’t bear to look at him, and so she dropped her gaze to her plate, and her almost untouched supper.
“I had such silly notions of what I wanted out of life. Dreams of dresses and hats and fortune and fame that were all so childish?—”
“They weren’t childish,” Brendan interjected quietly. “You did amazing things, Maggie, and I’ve always admired your ambition. I’ve always told you that.”
“I know.” She made herself look up at him, and when she did, she feared the look in his eyes might be pity. “And maybe they weren’t childish dreams, but I was childish about them. I didn’t know my own heart, or what was important in life?—”
“Maggie…” Brendan was shaking his head, and Maggie felt tears start in her eyes.
It was too late. Of course it was too late; it had been years.
Years of them missing each other, just as she’d once said, so why on earth did she think they’d be able to find each other now, even if they were sitting right across from each other?
“Maybe it’s too late,” she burst out in a rush.
“Maybe you’ve found someone and you’re happy and I…
” She trailed off, swallowing again, finding her courage.
“But I need you to know, Brendan, that I love you. I know I’ve said before that I’ve cared, but even that I think I said reluctantly, like I was afraid to feel it, or anything at all.
But the truth I now know is that I’ve loved you for a long time, even if…
even if I didn’t want to.” She let out a shaky laugh, her heart racing so fast she could feel the blood thrumming in her ears.
“And it’s never been that you weren’t what I wanted, it’s just that for so long I didn’t even know what that was. ”
She stared at him, willing him to soften, but his expression remained inscrutable.
“And sometimes,” she continued hesitantly, “I wonder if it wasn’t even that I thought you weren’t what I wanted, but that you didn’t believe it.
” His eyes widened a fraction then, and he pressed his lips together but said nothing.
“After Chicago, I mean,” she continued stiltedly. “What happened with Holmes?—”
“Don’t,” Brendan said, his voice quiet yet sharp.
“You know he’s been executed?” Maggie asked. “Back in May. I read it in the paper.”
“I know.” Brendan stared down at his plate. “They said he might have killed as many as twenty-seven people, most of them young women, all in that terrible castle of his.”
She heard the ache of regret in his voice, and she wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, but they’d had that conversation already, and she didn’t know if she’d ever convince him. He’d have to learn it, believe it, for himself, if he could.
“But with all of that,” she explained slowly, painfully, “I’ve wondered if it made you feel like you weren’t… if you weren’t good enough for me somehow, when… when I’ve felt like I wasn’t good enough for you…”
Still he said nothing, and worse, she didn’t know what he would say if he spoke.
“I was so silly back then,” she burst out. “So vain and… and selfish, in my own way, so determined to have my dreams that nothing could?—”
“Everyone,” Brendan cut her off quietly, “should be able to have their dreams.”
“Yes, but…” Maggie trailed off uncertainly, taking in the hard, stubborn look on Brendan’s face.
With a flash of despairing understanding, she realized there was nothing more she could say.
She didn’t want to have to beg for him to love her; she wanted him to realize that he did, and that it didn’t have to be something to run away from, to fight or to dread, the way she once had.
“Well,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster, “I suppose then… that’s all I wanted to say. ”
Brendan nodded slowly. “And now you have,” he said evenly, and Maggie had to fight not to flinch at such a cool reaction to what had amounted to a declaration of love, clumsy as it might have been.
They ate the rest of the meal in a silence that felt more miserable every moment it went on, and by the time they finished, Maggie was desperate to get away.
“I suppose I’ll see you around,” she said stiltedly, in farewell. It was well past midnight, the sky finally dark. “Even if I haven’t before.”
“I’ll walk you back,” Brendan told her brusquely. “Where are you staying now?”
“We’re renting a cabin on 7th Street, on the edge of town.”
They walked in a silence that felt as miserable to Maggie as the one over supper had, and it wasn’t until they’d reached the door of the cabin that Brendan turned to her and said abruptly, his face hidden by the shadows, “Maggie, I… I heard what you said. And I hope, after all this time, that we can be friends.”
Friends.
The word struck a dismal chord, but Maggie managed a nod. “Yes, of course,” she said. “Friends. I’ll… I’ll always be your friend, Brendan.” She tried to smile, even though she wanted so much more than friendship.
He stared at her for another moment, and although she couldn’t make out his expression, she thought—she hoped—that he was going to say something more. Something, maybe, that she wanted him to say.
The moment stretched on, the only sound the rustle of the wind through the trees, the lonely hoot of a barred owl—Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?—echoing through the night.
“Goodbye, Maggie,” Brendan said finally, and he turned to go. She watched him walk away until he was swallowed up in the darkness, the sounds of his footsteps fading into silence.
Maggie leaned against the door and tilted her head to the sky, taking a deep breath to steady herself. She stared at the cold, distant stars so high above and felt more alone than she had in a long, long while.