Chapter Twenty-one
Emma watched through the window as snow continued to fall more than twenty-four hours after she’d knocked at Finbarr’s door. Snowstorms were sometimes like this in Hope Springs. Snow would fall for days, building up to significant heights all around.
How long would this one last? It wasn’t merely a matter of wanting to get Eimear home where Papa and Katie could look after her.
Emma also knew that winter reached a point when getting out of the Hope Springs Valley was difficult, and returning to the train depot was impossible.
It didn’t usually reach that point this early in the year, but it wasn’t impossible.
She wasn’t as panicked at the thought of staying as she would have been days earlier.
Being here, in Finbarr’s home, talking about things that they struggled with, hearing him say that he cared what happened to her had been comforting and reassuring.
And when he held her . . . she was still too unsure of things to put a name to that feeling, but she liked it.
She turned away from the window and looked back at Finbarr, sitting on the bench with Eimear asleep in his arms. In the years following the fire, so much about Finbarr had changed.
He’d grown more distant and less affectionate.
He’d been very clearly unhappy and had often felt unreachable.
Emma had missed the tender, compassionate Finbarr she had known.
But here he was. Loving and kind. He was Finbarr again.
Perhaps the choices she had made that fateful night ten years ago wouldn’t exact a price on him forever. And if he could heal from what had happened, perhaps she eventually could as well.
“Is it still snowing?” Finbarr asked.
“How did you know I was checking?”
“I heard you walk over to the window. And standing where you are, you make a shadow.”
Emma walked over to him. “I confess, I have a difficult time wrapping my mind around what you can see and what you can’t.”
“That isn’t surprising. I have a difficult time explaining it.
The best I can think of is like viewing the world through a cup that has very muddy water in it.
I can see some things, vague shapes, but I can’t make out details of them.
And, if they’re far enough away or there’s not very much light, I can’t see it at all. ”
“And if things are close and it’s bright?”
“With effort, I can see some details when the thing I’m looking at and a lit candle are both very nearly touching my face.”
“Is that how you do your carving?” She sat on the bench next to him. “You whittle very close to your face?”
Surprise flickered over his expression.
“There are unfinished carvings and more than one whittling knife on the mantel shelf,” she said. “It wasn’t difficult to piece together.”
“Well you’re the first person who has, and I’ve been at it for four years now.”
“Have you not told anyone?”
He shook his head. “I enjoy doing it, so I don’t need the praise. And the mercantile at the train depot has been able to sell things, which brings in a little extra money, which is helpful since I can’t work fields as large as everyone else, and therefore don’t have extra crops to sell.”
“But why haven’t you at least told your family?”
“They would panic. I guarantee you most if not all of them would beg me not to keep at it, insisting I’ll cut myself because I can’t see and I’ll be injured and that would be a terrible thing.”
“Everyone who whittles cuts themselves one time or another. You could have the most precise eyesight in the world and that would still happen.”
He smiled. “‘Everyone cuts themselves.’ ‘No one could see in this blizzard.’ You might be the only person in this whole world who never treats me like I’m broken.”
“Because you aren’t,” she insisted.
His smile turned a little sad. “My eyes are decidedly broken. Though I’ve learned to live with that, sometimes I think it’s the only thing people see when they look at me.”
“I’m looking at you right now,” she said.
“I see someone who’s kind and loves my sister as much as I do.
Who managed to rig up a system for reaching a barn that everyone in this entire valley ought to be copying.
I see someone who’s forgiving and kind. And, clearly, a talented whittler.
The rattle you made for Finn is gorgeous.
And some of the other little items you’ve been working on are beautiful. ”
A hint of a blush touched his cheeks. He used to blush a lot when they were all quite a bit younger. She’d liked that about him. It made him feel more human back at a time when she’d rather idolized him.
“I have gotten better at feeling my progress with the carvings,” he said. “I can be more precise than I used to be.”
“The rattle you made for Finn reminds me of a Welsh love spoon. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of those.
A friend of my grandmother’s back in Baltimore told me about them.
They’re a tradition in Wales. A man carves a spoon for his intended and includes symbols and things in the handle of it that represent their connection and what he loves about her.
Apparently, some of them are very intricately detailed. ”
“If there were any Welshmen in Hope Springs valley I might be willing to spill this little secret to them if it meant helping them win over the ladies they love.”
Finbarr was still a romantic at heart it seemed.
When they were younger and one of his siblings would be making up sweet to a spouse or someone they were courting, Finbarr had always been the first to cheer them on and wish them well.
He’d always been very excited at the céilís when someone would dance with a person who’d stolen their heart.
She’d not seen that in him in a long time. More healing. More hope.
Emma set a hand lightly on Eimear’s cheek, careful not to wake her. “She is still very feverish.”
“How do her eyes look?” Finbarr asked. “It’s frustrating that I can’t see them. And I don’t dare touch them because I don’t know how painful they might be.”
“Her eyes look the same. But she hasn’t been fussing with them as much since we started with the cool cloth.
So that must be helping at least a little bit.
” She alternately watched him and her sleeping sister.
“This reminds me of how you would hold Ivy when she was tiny and didn’t feel well or was sad or needed reassurance.
Eimear and Sean and Finn are very fortunate to be growing up with that, to always have you nearby so they don’t feel neglected or lost.”
A flicker of hesitancy that looked almost like guilt showed on his face. She hadn’t been expecting that at all.
“Finbarr?”
“I’ve been thinking about your telegram.
” He was obviously undertaking a change of topic, which only added to her wonder at his response to such an innocent observation.
“Dr. Jones has sent telegrams to colleagues all over the country hoping to learn more about Eimear’s fevers.
And he cares so much about his patients, especially the children.
It’s not difficult to imagine him sending a telegram to you, knowing that having another family member here to look after her would be comforting.
And having you here would also be a weight off the hearts of your family. ”
“I hadn’t thought of Dr. Jones. It does seem possible, though, doesn’t it?”
“Who else have you suspected?”
“My papa sends me telegrams, but he always signs them. I couldn’t imagine he would suddenly send one anonymously.
And while Katie might have sent it, I also don’t think she’d do so in this mysterious way.
I thought it might be Ivy asking me to come back because she needed me here.
But it was very clear upon my arrival that, while she isn’t unhappy that I’ve come back, she wasn’t excited or relieved in the way she would have been if she had sent for me. ”
“You’ve eliminated a lot of possibilities.”
“Perhaps not eliminated, but realized they were unlikely. I also thought, for the briefest moments, when I first received the telegram that it might have been from you, that you had found your way back into the Archer family and that you wanted me to return.”
“I would never have guessed you wanted me to write to you these past years.”
“You are part of what once made Hope Springs feel like home to me. I don’t know that I could have returned until I thought there was at least a chance that you would want me to be here, or at least wouldn’t be upset that I was.
” It was likely one reason why his dismissal on the river had hurt so much.
“Knowing you were here when I returned was important to me.”
Again, that hesitant guilt flickered over his face.
“What is it you aren’t telling me?” she asked. “I can see it in your expression. I can see that you’re not saying something.”
“If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone else.”
She set her hand on his arm. “I promise.”
“I was offered a job at the Missouri School for the Blind. They want me to come oversee their library and their book shipping.”
“Cecily’s school in St. Louis?”
He nodded. Emma held her breath. A feeling of encroaching panic began tiptoeing over her. “The school wants you to move there? Live there?”
Again, he nodded. A thickness started in her throat. Her heart dropped to her feet.
“I have been thinking more and more about accepting it. They don’t need an answer until spring.
That gives me time to decide and, if needed, make arrangements and sort everything out.
” His voice had grown quieter but not uncertain.
“And I probably need every minute of those months to figure out how to tell my family.”
For a moment, she couldn’t respond. She wasn’t even sure how.
“So, if I come back to visit Hope Springs again, you won’t be here?” If he accepted this job, she’d likely never see him again.
“I suppose you could stop in St. Louis on the way. The train you’d take would pass through there.”
I suppose you could . . . Not an invitation. Not an eager hope. Almost an offhand suggestion.
It wasn’t unkind. It wasn’t even truly dismissive.
She didn’t think he was still angry with her.
And, while she didn’t know if he had actually forgiven her for all of the many things that had happened between them over the years, she realized, contemplating the very real possibility that he was well and truly leaving her behind, that there was so much more woven into the pain she felt than the possibility of losing contact with a friend.
In all her foolishness, Emma had let herself begin falling in love with him.