Chapter Twelve
“Idon’t need your help to do my job.” Miss Groves made the declaration with her chin tipped up a bit.
Emma set the slates she was carrying on the table at the front of the schoolroom. The children had all left for the day. “I never believed you needed my help. I came today because I like being in the classroom.”
“I am a good teacher,” Miss Groves insisted. “I didn’t attend a school as prestigious as Baltimore Female College, but that doesn’t mean that you are better than me.”
“Of course not.” Emma could not have been more baffled. “I would never think such a thing.”
Miss Groves seemed to genuinely believe Emma felt herself superior. They were both trained as teachers. Emma had thought they could have been friends to some extent. She’d hoped to have someone in this town she could talk with who wasn’t connected to the agony of the past.
“It was never my intention to cause difficulties by being at the school today,” Emma said. “I love the children of this town. I enjoyed spending the day with them.”
“You are leaving in just over a week, I understand,” Miss Groves said.
Emma nodded.
“Don’t you think it is a little self-serving to make them grow attached to you because you enjoy their company when you are planning all along to abandon and disappoint them?
” It was not an observation made with any degree of cruelty or unkindness.
Miss Groves seemed to be sincerely concerned that Emma was going to hurt her students.
Emma didn’t think she was being cruel. She wanted to believe that her motivation hadn’t been selfish.
Yet, explaining the complexity of her connection to Hope Springs required laying bare her past and herself, something she didn’t do with the people she loved let alone a person who was so wholly unknown to her.
“If there is anything you think of that I can do while I’m here, I—”
“There won’t be.” Miss Groves stood rigidly still.
“I will not disrupt your day any further.” Emma hoped her smile didn’t look as strained as it felt.
She gave a quick nod, then turned. She did her utmost to give the impression that she wasn’t pained by the very thorough rejection. Her pace as she walked to the back of the schoolhouse was unhurried without being pointedly slow.
Don’t let her see that it hurts. That had been one of her most oft-repeated mottos while she’d still lived in Hope Springs. Hide the hurt. Keep your chin up. Pretend you aren’t in pain.
She kept herself steady as she paused at the back to pull on her coat.
There had been a chill in the air that morning, so she had made certain she and Sean both left home well bundled.
The cold was different in Wyoming than in Baltimore.
She couldn’t entirely describe it, but feeling it again was familiar, even comforting in an unexpected way.
The distraction of thinking about the weather didn’t last long. Miss Groves’ words pushed to the front of her mind unbidden. “You are planning all along to abandon and disappoint them.”
Abandon them.
Emma stepped out of the schoolhouse. Sean had left school with Rigger. She was meant to walk home alone.
Alone.
Abandon them.
Miss Groves didn’t understand. She had no idea the pain Emma felt every moment she was in Hope Springs.
She didn’t understand how difficult it had been for her to face the idea of visiting the schoolhouse, knowing she would have to walk past the cemetery to get there.
She didn’t know all the reasons Emma had needed to return to Baltimore, or that it was an escape, not abandonment.
She didn’t understand. Yet, she also wasn’t entirely wrong. And that weighed on Emma.
A lot of her motivation in spending the day at the schoolhouse was to have time with Sean. She longed to know him better and wanted him to know his oldest sister cared about him. She was trying desperately to think of a way of showing Eimear the same thing.
They would both be hurt when she left. And Eimear was so young that she likely wouldn’t have any memory of Emma having been there.
Papa would do his best to hide his grief and pain when she left again.
Katie cried every time they’d had to part these past five years.
Ivy acted indifferent, but Emma suspected she wasn’t entirely.
Emma’s departure would hurt them. But staying would tear her to pieces.
She stopped on the road directly in front of the home where she’d grown up. Her eyes darted of their own accord to where the barn had once stood, its remembered outline overlapped in part the one that had replaced it. She could smell the smoke. She could taste it. Her heart clenched in her chest.
Emma turned away, pushing away the memories she had never been able to outrun.
But she didn’t turn toward the house. Though she enjoyed being with her family and especially wanted to hold little Finn, she needed a moment to clear her mind and regain the stalwartness she had painstakingly taught herself in the decade since the fire.
“You are leaving in just over a week.” Miss Groves had offered the reminder as something of a chastisement. Emma repeated it in tones of reassurance.
She set her feet on the path running along the riverbank. She could circle back after a while and return to the house.
Emma tucked her arms around herself as she walked. The air was not as frigid as it would be when winter set in but was noticeably colder than it had been. And the incessant Wyoming wind made certain the chill didn’t go unnoticed. Oddly enough, Emma missed the wind when she was in Baltimore.
A happy little bark caught her attention, pulling her focus to her surroundings once more. Madra trotted to her, tail wagging.
Emma hunched down and rubbed Madra’s nose and scratched behind her ears. Miss Groves’ rejection had stung more than Emma cared to admit. She’d needed someone to be happy about her presence, even if that someone was a dog.
“She almost never runs off.” Finbarr.
Emma looked up, a bit of a flutter in her heart that she wasn’t at all expecting. He was walking toward her, his cane sweeping the path, a hint of a smile on his face.
“Either you’ve offered her a bit of food,” he said, “or she likes you quite a lot.”
“Would it surprise you to hear that I don’t have any food with me?”
Finbarr’s eyes opened a touch wider. “Ah. I’d wondered if our paths would cross here again.” A bit of a smile tugged at his lips.
He was happy to be with her. Finbarr of all people. Emma let that wrap reassuringly around her heart. After so many years. Finbarr was happy to be with her.
“I was going to delay my walk until this evening,” she said as she stood once more. “I’m glad I didn’t.”
“Are you?”
Nervousness wrapped around her as she realized she might be implying more than she was ready for. “It is chilly this afternoon. It will likely be quite cold tonight.”
He nodded slowly. “The air feels like we might have snow overnight.”
“You can feel that?”
“I can’t explain it, but, yes, I can feel it. And it’s not entirely unreliable, either.”
“My grandmother can predict rain with some degree of reliability,” Emma said. “Her bones ache.”
Madra loped back over to Finbarr, brushing against his legs as she circled him.
“I don’t think anyone would ever doubt that you are Madra’s favorite,” Emma said.
“I got to meet the newest little Archer. Madra’s been a little jealous ever since. I think she worries that Finn is going to be my new favorite.”
Emma had once been one of his favorites. She’d missed that. She’d missed him. “Finn is so sweet. I am hoping I’ll be given a chance to hold him again tonight. Holding little ones makes the world feel peaceful.” She pushed out a tense sigh before she could stop herself.
“Did something happen to upset your peace?”
“I’m a little discouraged.”
Finbarr stepped closer. “What has you feeling discouraged?”
“I had a difficult time at the school. I want to be helpful and do a bit of good, but . . .” It was more than just Miss Groves’ dismissal of her.
Emma hadn’t openly shared these feelings.
She could only inch toward them now. “I knew, coming to Hope Springs, that I’d be an outsider.
But I hadn’t expected to be so saddened by it.
I don’t know how to sort through all of that. ”
His brow pulled and his mouth tugged down. “I know all too well how that feels.”
“Being an outsider? You’re related to half the town.”
“It is entirely possible to feel alone even in a crowd.”
Alone. It was an apt description. She felt painfully alone.
“Do you like having so much family around?” she asked.
“I love my family.” He offered the observation with a return of his smile.
But she was struck by the fact that he hadn’t actually answered her question.
And the smile he offered put her in mind of Ivy’s description that first night in Hope Springs.
She had said his smiles weren’t real. This one wasn’t.
Oh, Finbarr. She stepped closer enough to lightly rest her hand on his arm. “If you need someone to talk to, I walk along this river every day.”
“I don’t usually talk about the things on my mind.” He didn’t pull his arm away or seem uncomfortable at her touch. And she didn’t particularly want to let go.
“I don’t usually, either, yet you’ve managed to get me to.”
His smile returned, a little more sincere than it had been a moment earlier. “And you’ve managed to get me to more than I usually do.”
A sudden gust of angry wind tugged at her and she shivered. Finbarr flinched a bit as well.
“You’d best head home,” he said. “It feels more and more like snow, and that isn’t something a person ought to be caught in.”
“Will you have time to get home?”
He nodded.
“Thank you for talking with me,” she said. “I feel a little better.”
“I’m glad.” He gave a quick, low whistle, and Madra perked right up, nudging him in the direction of his home. As he walked away he said, “I hope to cross paths with you here again. Maybe I’ll talk a little too.”
“I would like that.”
He wanted to see her again. He liked spending time with her.
For all the years after the fire until she’d finally fled Hope Springs altogether, she had longed for him to feel that way.
She’d once loved him so entirely. The honorary big brother he’d been had given way, in her young heart, to a tender sort of love. And he’d broken that heart.
Perhaps he wouldn’t do so again. Perhaps he was even growing a little fond of her.
No. Letting her thoughts wander in that direction would open her up to rejection and disappointment again. There was so much pain in their history that she didn’t dare let herself believe there was anything but distance in their future.
And, yet, she felt an undeniable flicker of hope.