A Bride for Donnigan (25 page)

“Do you believe in God?”

Donnigan’s question caught Kathleen totally off guard. Where had his thoughts been wandering to produce such a query?

“Of course,” she replied without hesitation. She didn’t see how anyone could
not
believe in a God.

Donnigan remained silent.

“Don’t you?” asked Kathleen, having sudden, frightening doubts about her husband.

Donnigan thought before answering. When he did speak it was with honesty. “I’ve never really given it much thought,” he said truthfully. “Not until Taryn died. Then—then I—I really wanted to believe.”

Kathleen nodded. Vivid in her own mind was her response to the sight of her small daughter. Her statement that there had to be a God in heaven. Such a tiny little miracle could not just have happened on its own.

Kathleen was still willing to concede the fact. Of course there was a God—somewhere.

But that very admission did not bring her comfort. In fact, it filled her with anger. He was there—somewhere—and if there—then powerful. A God wouldn’t be a God unless He had some power. Some authority. So why hadn’t He done something? Why had He let the lightning strike the haystack. Why hadn’t He brought the rain sooner so that she would not have had to fight so long—and so hard? No. Kathleen was annoyed with God. She wouldn’t have dared to admit it—not even to Donnigan—lest she be smitten down and made to pay for her sin. But she felt the anger, regardless.

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately,” Donnigan went on.

Kathleen waited, but when he didn’t say anything further she prompted, “About?”

“About Sean—mostly.”

Again, silence. Kathleen felt fear tugging at her. What was wrong with Sean?

“It seems—well, it seems if there really is a God—then we ought to be learning about Him—so we can teach Sean,” said Donnigan.

Kathleen let out the breath she had been holding.

“What do you think?” asked Donnigan.

It was a direct question that Kathleen could not avoid.

“I—I suppose,” she said without really wishing to commit herself.

She knit a few more stitches. She heard the rattle of the newspaper as Donnigan laid it aside.

“I think—the next time I’m in town I’ll just check out that little church where we were married,” said Donnigan, causing Kathleen’s brows to lift in surprise. “Maybe we should start taking in some of the meetings.”

Kathleen only nodded. She would not argue—but she really didn’t feel ready to go to church, and besides, she saw no advantages in the idea.

Then she looked at her young son.

“Yes—yes,” she admitted to herself. “If there really is a God—and there must be—there must be—then I want Sean to know all about Him.”

But the next time Donnigan came home from town he looked disappointed.

“They closed the church,” he told her.

“What?”

“They closed it. Weren’t enough people interested.”

“What’s the preacher doing now?” asked Kathleen. “Would he open it again?”

“He left. Went off to some other town. No one seems to really know much about it. Weren’t that many people attending.”

Kathleen felt two emotions at the same time. Disappointment for Donnigan’s sake and unexplained fear for the small Sean. She didn’t know which feeling was the most intense.

“So what do we do now?” she asked simply.

“Not much we
can
do, I guess,” said Donnigan. He hung his stained Stetson on the peg by the door and reached to lift his young son from the floor.

The arrival of Erma’s baby was a grim reminder to Kathleen of the baby she had lost. Little Taryn should have been joining the family about the same time—not four and a half months earlier. Kathleen had a hard time fighting renewed sorrow. But she was happy for Erma.

Lucas was having a bit of a struggle. He had definitely ordered a son. Erma had presented him with a daughter. Blond and dimpled and looking just like her mother. Erma was thrilled, but Lucas seemed confused. For the first time in his life he was dealing with something totally out of his control. First he had lost the child he wanted—then someone had mixed up his order. Poor Lucas. His grip on his world seemed to be slipping from his fingers.

Kathleen was expecting another baby. Sean, now two, was quickly becoming more and more like his father. Kathleen smiled as she watched the child follow his father around the farm, trying hard to copy everything he saw Donnigan do.

He enjoyed the farm animals, and Kathleen often took him for rides on Shee. He loved the horse and grinned his delight as soon as Kathleen placed him in the saddle.

“That boy needs a pony of his own,” observed Donnigan and promptly set about seeing to it.

“Don’t hurry him too fast,” cautioned Kathleen. She wasn’t yet ready to give up her baby.

But with each passing month, and the new baby on the way, Kathleen was more and more glad for the time that Sean spent with Donnigan. She didn’t tell Donnigan about it, for fear she would trouble him unduly, but she did not feel at all well with this pregnancy. She wondered if it was just concern after having lost Taryn.

Slowly the months ticked by and Kathleen began to feel a bit better and breathe a little easier.

“I hope we can have a doctor on hand this time,” observed Donnigan as he unlaced his heavy work boots one night.

“Why,” teased Kathleen gently. “You did just fine.”

“I was scared to death,” said Donnigan firmly. “I never want to go through that again.”

But he did. Just a few weeks later. There hadn’t been time to send for a doctor. Kathleen was early again.

A baby girl was placed in Kathleen’s arms. Her first thought had been,
This can’t be mine. There must be a mix-up.
But her own good sense told her that a mix-up was not a possibility.

“She’s so—so different than Sean,” she said to Donnigan.

“Wasn’t that what you said—what you expected?” replied Donnigan. He still looked to be a bundle of nerves, even though it was all over.

“But not
this
different,” protested Kathleen. The baby she held was dark. With lots of black hair, round full cheeks, and a face that was already screwed up in protest.

They had decided—or rather Kathleen had decided—on the name Fiona if they had a girl. Now the mother smiled at her daughter. “Hello, Fiona,” she said. Then to Donnigan, “Fiona suits her, don’t you think?”

“It’s going to be fun having a daughter,” said Donnigan, and he moved closer to Kathleen and his new baby girl.

But it was not fun. Not for the first five months. It seemed to Kathleen that Fiona fussed without stopping. Their days, their evenings, their nights were all filled with a crying baby. Donnigan tried to share the duties, but even with the two of them, it was a full-time chore.

Kathleen thought that surely Sean must resent his new baby sister, but Sean seemed to accept her just as she was. “Baby cry,” he would say without rancor, just as though the small boy accepted that was what babies did.

But there were days when Kathleen wondered how much more she could take.

They took the baby off breast milk and tried a bottle. Still Fiona curled into a ball and screamed her protest.

“Her little tummy must be hurting something awful,” observed her patient father. There were times when Kathleen wished the infant were big enough to spank. But even at times of greatest distress and weariness, Kathleen knew that was not the solution. There was something wrong with the child and no one seemed to be able to do anything about it.

One day Donnigan surprised Kathleen with a goat.

“Whatever are we to do with that?” asked Kathleen, thinking that Donnigan had likely brought the animal as a pet for Sean. His own “wee” cow. But to the weary Kathleen, the nanny looked like just another chore.

“Milk her,” said Donnigan.

“Milk her? We scarcely have time to milk the cow.”

“For Fiona,” went on Donnigan. “I’ve heard that sometimes it works.”

And it did. After being switched to goat’s milk, Fiona settled down and became a laughing, bubbling, good-humored baby. Kathleen even got to sleep nights. The household returned to a normal pattern.

“Bless that nanny,” Kathleen said to Donnigan one night as she carefully tucked the covers up to the chin of the sleeping Fiona. Then she lifted her head and smiled at her husband. “And bless you for finding the solution.”

“I had to,” said Donnigan with a teasing grin. “It was either that—or move out.”

Fiona grew quickly. Even Sean enjoyed her sunny disposition—as long as she didn’t interfere with his time with his father.

But Sean did take care of her. Bringing her things that she should not have—things like his bread crusts, Kathleen’s sewing scissors, and wiggling worms from the garden. Kathleen had to ever be on guard to intercept Sean’s “gifts” to his baby sister.

Kathleen was pleased with her little family. As she became rested again, she was able to really enjoy the two children in spite of the amount of work that had come with them. She almost got to the place where she could forgive God. That is, until she looked at the little grave with its white picket fence and tiny wooden cross.