Chapter Four
Hope Springs
“If I weren’t having the most glorious adventure, I would be so angry with you.
” Sybil had been undeniably aggravated with Emma two days earlier after being told they were riding the stage from the train depot to Hope Springs because no one in her family, or in the entire town for that matter, had any idea she was visiting.
“The inn you insisted we not stop at looked very comfortable.”
The Hope Springs inn was actually more than merely comfortable.
Emma couldn’t imagine Patrick and Eliza O’Connor weren’t still making it a warm and welcoming place to break a journey.
But it was Saturday and snow hadn’t yet reached the Hope Springs valley, so there would be a great many townspeople at the inn already, beginning their preparations for the town’s weekly céilí.
Emma wasn’t ready to face a crowd of people connected to her past. She was still attempting to rally her courage to face her family. Truth be told, she was struggling to prevent herself from turning around and simply walking all the way back to Baltimore.
I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be here.
But she was, and it was too late to change that. She and Sybil had taken their carpetbags in hand and made their way past the inn and over the hill that led to Hope Springs.
Sybil turned in a slow circle as they continued their walk behind the small collection of buildings that made up the town. “I have never seen so much . . . nothing in all my life.”
“Nothing?” Emma shook her head. “I will have you know the number of buildings in town has almost doubled since I lived here.”
“There are five,” Sybil said, obviously doubtful Emma was in earnest.
“Yes. Almost doubled.”
“Baltimore must have been overwhelming.”
“If our family hadn’t visited so often before I moved there, I don’t know that I ever would have grown accustomed to how different Baltimore is.
” Emma continued onward, both terrified of her destination and desperate to reach it with all possible haste.
She was fully aware of how painful her stay in this town was going to be; she simply wanted to get it over with.
They joined up with the road on the other side of the schoolhouse.
From there, Emma could see the home she grew up in.
For a moment, the nervousness she felt melted away, replaced by the tug of homesickness she’d felt so many times over the last five years.
Her papa was there. And Ivy. Katie. Sean and Eimear.
She’d missed them. How well she remembered leisurely days spent reading on the porch, or, years ago, when Finbarr had chased her and Ivy around the front yard.
I was happy here once.
But the soft memories didn’t keep the piercing ones at bay for long. She breathed them out, pushing them from her mind as forcefully as she could.
Papa’s barn stood tall and sturdy, though weathered by the passage of the almost ten years since it was erected.
All remnants of the fire that had destroyed the barn it had replaced were gone now.
There was no reason she should still know precisely where it had stood, but she did.
She could see it in her mind’s eye with horrible, agonizing clarity. It was a ghost, tormenting her.
Hope Springs was full of them.
“It’s like a painting.” Sybil was looking all around, seemingly amazed by such an ordinary place.
Emma motioned ahead at the two-story house they had nearly reached, with its large front porch and white-washed fence. “This is my family’s home.”
Sybil hooked an arm through hers as they stepped through the gate in the fence. “I, for one, cannot wait to see how they respond to your sudden appearance. I am hoping for something very dramatic.”
“Ivy is exceptionally good at ‘dramatic.’”
Sybil grinned. “Excellent.”
They stepped up onto the porch. Emma took a breath. Doing so was more difficult now that she was so close. Her pulse pounded in her throat. How did I allow myself to be talked into this?
“Should we knock?” Sybil asked, a little laugh in her voice. “Or do you suppose your family can sense that you’re nearby?”
Sybil had always had that magical ability to tease Emma just enough to help her feel better without making her feel mocked. Since Emma had to make this journey—and she still could hardly believe she had—she couldn’t express how grateful she was that Sybil was with her.
“I’m nervous,” she admitted.
“Do you think your family will be upset to see you?”
“No.”
“Annoyed at the inconvenience?”
She smiled a little. “No.”
“Knock, Emma. I know you remember how.”
She let her eyes dart for the length of a half a breath in the direction of the ghost barn. But she didn’t allow her thoughts to linger there. A thick swallow preceded a tense breath.
She set her carpetbag down, then stepped up to the door. And she knocked.
Oh, please don’t let them be disappointed to see me.
Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door. Emma held her breath.
The door opened, and someone she didn’t recognize stood on the other side. “May I help you?”
For a moment, she couldn’t decide what to say. She’d been building her courage to see her family. Coming face-to-face with a stranger upended her. “Are the Archers at home?”
The woman shook her head. “They’re at the inn preparing for the céilí.”
Emma hadn’t thought of that. Ought she and Sybil to go back to the inn? Perhaps they could stay at the house until her family returned. Though, that was likely to be after the party was over, hours and hours from now.
“I can tell Mr. and Mrs. Archer that you came by,” the woman offered. “What are your names?”
This was, then, Papa and Katie’s housekeeper, hired after Emma left home. There was nothing truly surprising in the woman not knowing who Emma was. It shouldn’t have bothered her to be a stranger to someone so closely connected to her family. But it did.
I don’t belong here anymore.
She forced a smile. “We’ll see them at the céilí.” She stepped back from the door and hooked her arm through Sybil’s once more.
The front door was closed again. Emma breathed for the first time since she’d knocked.
“Back to the inn?” Sybil guessed.
Emma’s heart dropped painfully. “Not yet. I need a few more minutes.”
Sybil didn’t argue, and she also didn’t choose to tease her further. “Where shall we go, then?”
Where could they go? Were she to wander down either road branching away from the family home, she would be quickly recognized by the townspeople. She wasn’t ready for that. But she also couldn’t bear to simply hover around her one-time home, feeling so acutely out of place.
“We can walk along the river,” she said. “It’s beautiful . . . and quiet.”
They left their bags on the porch and walked a little way along the road toward the bridge over the Hope Springs river.
Emma kept her gaze away from the barn, both the one actually there and the one that lived on in her worst memories.
They turned upon reaching the bridge and, rather than crossing over, walked along the banks of the river.
“I can’t believe you didn’t come back even once in the last five years,” Sybil said. “It is, just as you said, beautiful and quiet. I would miss that terribly if I’d grown up here and had traded it for Baltimore.”
Beautiful and quiet, yes. But it had been ten years since Emma had felt any lasting peace here.
“Is that snow on the mountains in the distance?” Sybil asked.
“Yes. The snow will start to fall in the valleys in a few more weeks. In a couple more months, there’ll be so much snow down here that the stage will stop running for the winter. That’s why we’re staying for only two weeks.”
“Is that why?” How well she knew Sybil’s I-don’t-believe-you voice.
“Yes,” Emma said firmly, knowing full well her friend was unlikely to believe her.
“Would anyone mind, do you think, if I sat under those trees just there and sketched?” Sybil indicated a small clump of trees not far from the river.
“That is where Katie plays her violin.”
“Will she let me borrow the spot?”
Emma nodded. “I am going to keep walking, but I’ll double back when I’m ready to go to the inn.” If I’m ever ready.
“You’ll know where to find me.”
She continued on, following the riverbank. With her back to the house and the barn, she could breathe a little easier. A very little.
“Your sister needs you.” She had repeated that bit of the telegram to herself countless times as she’d made the journey west. And she repeated it again now. Nothing short of the welfare of a family member could have convinced her to return to this place where her heart hurt so much.
I will simply have to pretend again. She’d grown adept at pretending that she felt content, that she didn’t still have nightmares about fires, that she didn’t still weep sometimes when she thought of her sweet friend Marianne buried in the churchyard.
That Finbarr’s coldness hadn’t continued breaking her heart for years after the smoke had cleared and the ash had blown away in the ever-present Wyoming wind.
“Your sister needs you.” Emma could endure all of this again for Ivy or Eimear.
She could at least try. Two weeks wasn’t so very long. She would be a little broken by then, but she was unlikely to have fully shattered. And she could piece herself back together in Baltimore.
A soft bark pulled her attention back to her surroundings. She turned to look, and froze on the spot. Madra—she would know the dog anywhere—walking alongside the grown-up version of the young man who had broken her heart.
“Finbarr,” she whispered too quietly for him to hear from the distance he was still at.
Madra barked again, not an angry or threatening sound, but almost like a casual comment. The dog was watching her, tail wagging.
Finbarr’s head tipped a little toward the dog as they continued walking on, his ever-present cane helping him navigate. “That sounds like a someone bark and not a something bark. Who are you seeing, girl?”
The same bark answered. It was like the two were having an actual conversation.
Finbarr was approaching from the direction of the main road, which prevented her escape in that direction.
She could have rushed out into Papa’s fields.
Jumping into the river was, technically, also an option.
But Finbarr was practically even with her before she had a chance to formulate any meaningful strategy.
Madra stopped him right in front of her.
“It’s not bright enough today for me to have any clue who Madra has found,” Finbarr said.
How was it that the mere sound of his voice could fill her with both the remembered fondness she’d so long had for him and the grief so intrinsically tied to him?
“I was walking along the river,” she said, “and was not paying heed to where I’d wandered.”
His brow pulled. The scars from that long ago fire made his expressions twist a little unevenly. “Are you newly arrived in Hope Springs, miss—ma’am—?”
He didn’t recognize her voice. Relief warred with sorrow at the realization.
“Yes, I have only just arrived.”
Finbarr nodded. “Are you lost? Not many people walk along this part of the river.” He didn’t sound or look uncomfortable, but he also seemed anxious to continue on his way.
Finbarr had once been personable and unfailingly friendly.
He’d grown quiet and distant after the fire.
And the closeness and kinship she’d felt for him, the trust she’d had in him, had vanished.
“I was exploring,” she said. “I hadn’t meant to intrude on anyone’s privacy.”
“You weren’t.” He dipped his head in her general direction. “Enjoy your explorations.”
“Thank you.”
He walked past her, but she still didn’t move. She hardly breathed.
He spoke again. “I don’t know if you’ve been told—”
She twisted enough to look at him.
“—tonight is the weekly town party out at the inn. You would be warmly welcomed.”
“The preparations were underway when we arrived on the stagecoach.”
He nodded. “The preparations can be overwhelming.”
“Are the parties also overwhelming?” she asked.
“That depends on who you ask.” Finbarr had avoided the céilís after the fire. He’d gone from being one of the most consistent and enthusiastic participants to being present at likely no more than five or six céilís in as many years.
“Do you attend the parties?” she asked him.
“Sometimes.” That, then, hadn’t changed. “The town will feed you well. There will be good music. And you’ll be treated like an old friend.”
“Why, then, don’t you attend more often than ‘sometimes’?” she asked.
“That is too long a story to share on a riverbank.” And with that, he continued his walk down the riverside path. His home sat in that direction, further removed from the main road than most of the farms were.
Was he lonely there? When she’d left Hope Springs, he’d seemed to be doing at least a little better than in years past. But was he actually?
He had just spoken willingly and easily with someone he thought was a stranger. He wouldn’t have done that five years ago. Ten years ago, yes. But the fire had changed a lot of things. For both of them.
“Who was that?” Sybil had arrived beside her without Emma realizing.
It was testament to how distracted and frazzled she was that two different people had managed to sneak up on her.
Emma finally took a full breath. “That was Finbarr O’Connor—the boy who tore my heart into pieces.”