Longing for Home (45 page)

“Katie—” He reached for her hand again, but she pulled back.

She rose so quickly her chair toppled to the ground. She shook her head, unable and unwilling to accept what she’d heard. With a sob, she spun and ran out the back door, straight for her clump of trees.

Her father was dying, and she might never have a chance to tell him she was sorry for all she’d done. In that moment, her very world was crashing down around her.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Father is dying.
Katie pressed her hand to her mouth, trying in vain to hold back her sobs. Her father. Her papa.

Katie couldn’t stop the memories. No amount of pulling her thoughts kept them from going directly back to that time so long ago, before their eviction, before Eimear’s death, before the loneliness of a cold floor to lie on under a table in Derry.

William and Danny and Brennan had all left for Manchester. Each departure had kept the family from ruin. Fewer mouths to feed meant their meager provisions stretched further, leaving more money to pay their rent. ’Twas how they’d managed to survive five years of The Hunger without a death and without losing their home. No one had been condemned to the workhouse. The boys’ leaving was necessary, but in the end it wasn’t enough.

Even at only eight years old she’d heard of the factories in the north of England. She’d heard of the enormous machines that filled wide, tall rooms. She’d known of the noise they made, of thick air that caught in the lungs, of workers growing ill and sickly.

She knew from Brennan, the last to leave, that the smallest of children in the factories were sent inside those machines when they stopped working. The children climbed inside with tools, assigned the task of unstopping the gears so the great monsters would run again. Those who were swift could slip out again before the great cogs and wheels crushed their tiny hands and arms and bodies.

Father sat Katie down at the start of winter the year she was eight years old to tell her he meant to send her to Manchester with her brothers. All she could think of was crawling into the belly of a dark, grinding machine, of being crushed, maimed, killed. She’d felt her lungs tighten at the thought of air so full of weaving waste that it seemed to be a fog indoors. She quaked at the picture that had long since formed in her mind of what the heartless, cold factories must have been like.

“Please don’t send me there, Father,” she’d pleaded. “Please don’t send me.”

“It isn’t happy this makes me,” he’d said. “And it’s no pleasure I take from sending you away. But, Katie child, if you stay, there’ll not be enough food for your sister and yourself both. There’ll not be enough money for buying more nor paying our rents. You must be thinking on that, of what must be done to help everyone.”

She’d begged for days on end. He told her clearly again and again that if she stayed with them in Ireland, there’d not be enough money or food for them all. The Famine had begun to wane but hadn’t yet released its grip on the country. Her family had suffered much and continued to live daily in want and a breath away from disaster.

Katie halted her walk along the riverbank. She pushed air in and out of her lungs. Even breathing hurt. These were not easy memories. She looked over Joseph’s fields and the abundance there. Three months in Wyoming had shown her how very hard the farmers worked for their crops. The rains were few; the soil was hard. Yet, the fields were healthy.

The sight kept her memories flowing as swift as the river she stood beside. The fields in Ireland those years ago had grown every bit as strong and lush as these, more so, even. There had been grains and crops in abundance, all of which had been harvested and gathered and shipped out of Ireland whilst the people starved to death by the millions.

Dark times, they’d been. Dark and desperate.

She could only just see the Archer home so far had she walked. Turning back seemed wise. ’Twouldn’t do to wander so far afield she couldn’t find her way home.

Now why was it that thought brought a lump of sadness to her throat? Cornagillagh was still home in her heart, but so was Hope Springs. It had become home, and the people there were like family.

“You disappoint me, Katie. You full disappoint me.” Of all the things her father had ever said to her, those were the words she heard most often in her thoughts.

He’d spoken that reprimand as they dug about looking for any praties yet left in the ground, hoping to find some that were edible. Father had held up a potato obviously taken by the blight and reminded her again, in terms that left no room for argument, that they hadn’t food enough for all four of them.

“You know Eimear is sickly. She was born in the midst of this Hunger, and she’s never been strong. She’ll not survive long if the food runs out, more especially without protection from the cold. Leaving home is a sacrifice for you, I know it. But you must think of her. She’ll die if you stay. She’ll die, Katie.”

But Katie had been entirely certain she’d die herself if she went to the factories; she’d be crushed to death inside an enormous machine. If one of them had to die, Katie didn’t want that someone to be her. So she’d shaken her head quite firmly and told him again. “I don’t want to go, and I won’t unless you make me. Not unless you tie me up and toss me on the boat screaming all the way. I’ll not go.”

Father’s expression hardened. His shoulders grew tense beneath his ragged coat. “You disappoint me, Katie. You full disappoint me.”

The passage of more than eighteen years hadn’t dimmed the pain of that moment. Katie looked out at the silhouette of the distant mountains but saw in her mind that pitiful plot of land with its rotten potatoes. She saw her father’s disheartened face.

She brushed at her wet cheeks with the palm of her hand. Her thoughts didn’t stray far from those weeks of arguing with her father. That was the beginning of the darkest time of her life. She’d discovered a selfish part of herself she could only look back on with shame and regret. She’d worked hard to overcome that failing in the years since. Every wish and want she’d had from that time forward came up against rigorous evaluation. She hadn’t so much as purchased thread for mending without asking herself if she did so out of selfishness or pride.

She’d lived her whole life attempting to clear her heart of her father’s disappointment in her. How she wanted him to know she had become a better person, for him to tell her he was no longer disappointed in her.

She wanted that so badly it ached inside her. But he was dying. Her father was dying.

“Katie?”

Even in her distraction, she instantly knew the sound of Tavish’s voice. Slowly she let her thoughts return to the present and focus once more. She’d reached the clump of trees where she often went to play her music and think. Tavish stood at the river’s edge, watching her.

Katie swiped the tears from her eyes.

She fully intended to offer a simple hello. But what emerged was, “My father’s dying, Tavish.” Her voice broke with the quiet words.

“I know, darlin’.” He stepped closer to her. “And I’m sorry.”

“I was supposed to fix things with him. I was supposed to make things right. But I’ve run out of time.”

Tavish stepped around her so they stood facing one another. “Your mother seems to think you’d have enough time to get there.”

Katie shook her head. “But he won’t want me there. Not yet.”

“Katie.” He cupped her face with his hand. “Of course he would want you there. You’re his daughter.”

“I have a debt I need to pay, a terribly heavy debt. He’d not want me back until I pay it.”

“You owe him money?”

She turned to face the water, her heart tearing inside. “I need to buy back his land, Tavish. The land he lost in The Famine. I can’t face him again until I can give him back his land.”

“A lot of people lost land in The Hunger,” Tavish said. “He’d not blame
you
for that.”

“No. It was
my
fault. It was entirely my fault.”

He only sounded more confused. “What was your fault? I don’t understand.”

She felt torn between wanting him to know and fearing what he’d think of her if he had the whole truth. Perhaps losing his regard was part of her penance.

“I’ve done some things I’m not proud of, things I’ve not told to another soul.”

“You told me about your father’s fiddle. Surely you can trust me with this, as well.”

Katie wrapped her arms about herself. “This is different. You’ll hate me when you hear what I’ve done. You’ll walk away from me and never look back.”

He set his hands on her shoulders from behind. “I never would, Katie.”

She stepped away. In her tension and regret and guilt, his touch was nearly unbearable.

“Trust me this far. See if I can’t bear some of this burden with you.”

Katie looked back at him, uncertain. ’Twas almost as if the words came to her mind fully formed. She needed to tell him. If he despised her for her past, she’d know her guilt had not yet been washed away.

He held a hand out to her. “Trust me, Katie? Please?”

She’d told him of stealing her father’s fiddle, and he’d not scolded nor condemned her. If she could trust anyone with the rest of her story, she could trust him.

She took his hand and allowed him to lead her to the canopy of trees. They sat side by side on the cool grass.

She took a moment to collect her thoughts and calm her nerves. “When first we met,” she said at last, “I told you of my older brothers.”

He nodded.

“I didn’t tell you I had a sister.”

“No, you didn’t. You said you only had older brothers. You were very specific about that.”

Katie dropped her gaze to her hands, her fingers fussing with each other. “I lied,” she whispered. “I’ve been lyin’ about her for years.”

Tavish’s silence didn’t bode well for the much larger confession she had yet to make.

She pressed on, knowing the tale needed to be told regardless of the outcome. “Eimear was born during the earliest years of The Famine. She was always small and frail. My parents worried over her a great deal, spending what little money we had keeping her fed as much as they could. Each of my brothers left home for Manchester and jobs in the factories there in order to save the family the cost of feeding them, allowing more to be spent keeping Eimear alive.”

“Aye,” Tavish said quietly, “such things happened a lot during The Bad Times.”

Katie nodded. “It wasn’t enough. The praties were rotting in the ground again, and years of scarcity had driven high the price of what little food could be bought. The family either needed fewer mouths or more money, and we all knew we’d never manage the latter.”

She clasped her hands tightly, pushing herself on. “There was nothing for it but to send me to Manchester as well, only I didn’t want to go. I was afraid. Afraid of being killed in the factories, of growing ill as I heard so many did. I was frightened of being away from my family, away from Ireland. I couldn’t imagine being happy anywhere but at home.”

“I think that is understandable.” Tavish spoke hesitantly, as if he could sense the history was growing worse.

“I refused to go,” Katie said. “I argued over and over and over with my father. He’d have to force me to go, I said. He’d need to drag me there, I said. He told me again and again, in words I understood plainly, that if I stayed, the food would run out and the money would run out. I’d seen us come close before with my brothers. And I’d watched other families we knew lose their homes. I knew people who’d died of hunger because their food ran out. I understood exactly what he meant.”

For a moment her thoughts were filled with the memory of sunken eyes and swollen bellies, of tiny frames shrunken to nothing but bones. How well she’d known the fate of those left to starve.

“If I stayed, we’d be destitute. There’d be no chance of payin’ rent; we’d lose our home and land. Without food, we’d suffer greatly. But Eimear wouldn’t merely be miserable, she’d die. She was too frail to survive such suffering. I knew that. I knew it as surely as I knew the sun rose in the east every morning.

“A good-hearted child would have thought of her sister first, would have endured the worry and the work and the separation for the sake of her sister’s life.” She shook her head in firm disappointment with herself. “I knew just the arguments that would pierce my father’s heart. I knew just what to say to burden him with such guilt he’d not send me away. Staying would cost us our home and put my sister’s very life in danger, but I refused to go.”

Katie rose swiftly to her feet. She couldn’t keep still while recounting those days. “He finally relented. ’Twasn’t long after that the food ran out. Father took what little money we had and bought more. But the rents came due, and he couldn’t pay. He begged the land agent for time and received his answer in the darkest hours of night.”

“When your house was burned down?” Tavish asked.

Katie nodded. “We lost our home and the land Father’s family had worked for six generations. If I had gone to Manchester, we wouldn’t have lost our home. He’d be there still. I need to give that back to him, but I don’t have the money yet. I hardly have enough for . . . for Eimear’s . . .”