Longing for Home (6 page)

“She doesn’t even speak English, Papa,” the older girl said.

Why was it Americans had such trouble understanding her? She’d had to repeat herself to more people than she could count since coming across the ocean. “I’m wanting to talk with you just a bit before your meal, sir.”

Her words surprised him. “Is that really what you just said?”

“Aye, it is.”

“Hmm.”

She hadn’t the slightest idea what to make of that.

“Would you grant me a moment of your time?” Katie asked once more. “Alone, if you please.”

He motioned in the direction of the back door. Katie hadn’t expected a conversation out in the weather, but she’d not argue. The difficulty had to be seen to. She simply couldn’t be left in charge of children.

They stopped beneath the roof of the back porch. Mr. Archer pulled the door shut behind them. Katie studied his face a moment, wishing to know his state of mind. The man’s feelings, however, were impossible to decipher. He’d been that way from the first moment she’d met him. His mouth pulled in a stern line, his eyes watching her closely. His posture was rigid and unbending.

She’d best hit at the heart of the matter and resolve things quickly. “I was only wanting to know why it is you didn’t think to mention your daughters in the wires you sent.”

That brought confusion to his expression. “I did most certainly mention them. I was quite thorough, in fact, including in my description their names, ages, temperaments.”

He spoke very formally, his accent as refined as any of the fine ladies and gentlemen she’d served in the hotel in Baltimore. Her confidence flagged a moment. Clearly this man was no simple farmer.

Rally yourself, Katie. This difficulty must be seen to.

“No.” Katie shook her head. She’d listened quite closely as Mrs. Hendricks, the housekeeper at the hotel where she’d worked, read the telegram explaining the job opportunity. “I remember clearly what you wrote of this position. Cooking, mending, laundering, cleaning. You said it was a small town in the middle of nothing. You gave instructions on trains and stations. But there was no mention of children nor needing to look after them.”

“Does it seem likely to you that I would hire someone to tend my children without mentioning them at the very least?” His tone rang with impatience.

It didn’t seem at all likely, and yet Katie knew she’d been told nothing of children.

“Perhaps you should reread my wires, in case there’s anything else you missed.”

He was talking slowly, as though he doubted her intelligence. Her throat tightened as embarrassment tiptoed over her. She was not stupid, no matter her lack of education.

“Have you any other children, sir?”

A tight sigh escaped him. “Mr. Archer or Joseph but not sir.”

Katie nodded. “I’ll try to remember, Mr. Archer.”

“The two girls are my only children.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “Have they names?”

“No, I opted not to name them.” His voice was dry as a hot summer day. “It simplifies things.”

He meant to become sarcastic, did he? “No need to sharpen your tongue on my back, Mr. Archer. I’m only trying to sort this all out.”

He offered no apology and didn’t look repentant. Behind him rain fell hard and steady in the yard, the view appropriately bleak.

“The older one is Emma and the younger one is Ivy,” he said. “They are nine and five, respectively. Shall I itemize their personalities next?”

He obviously was reciting the very information he’d written to her. Confessing she hadn’t read the telegrams, couldn’t read them, would only further convince him she was not very bright.

“I’ve no experience with children, Mr. Archer. I wouldn’t have the first idea how to see to them or meet their needs. I’d be as turned about as a ship in a gale.”

That admission hung heavy in the air between them. Katie’s hair and skirts whipped around her, more than a few drops of rain wetting the side of her face.

“Didn’t you grow up with any siblings to look after?” he asked, his gaze still boring into her.

Katie shook her head. “Only older brothers, sir.” The familiarity of the lie didn’t make it easier to hear. A lie was a lie, no matter how necessary. Telling the truth meant confessing her only sister had died and that she bore the guilt of that. She’d never once admitted to anything related to her sister in the years since she’d died, not even her very existence.

“And you don’t think yourself capable of keeping an eye on two relatively quiet, sweet-tempered girls?”

Quiet and sweet-tempered. Would the similarities never cease? Katie couldn’t bear it. Though she felt she’d changed in the years since Eimear’s death, Katie nearly panicked at the idea of the girls left solely in her charge.

“I don’t know that it would be the best arrangement.”

“Very well.” Had he no intention of trying to talk her round? “I said earlier you couldn’t stay. It seems that is more true than ever.”

The man meant to let her go. Katie hadn’t expected that. A change of duties, perhaps, but not dismissal.

“Mr. Archer?”

“I have offered a large salary because I expect a great deal of work. That includes looking after the girls. If you feel yourself unequal to that task or unwilling to take it on, then I will simply have to keep looking.”

He actually looked relieved. Suspicious, that. Had he been hoping for a reason to fire her again?

What a day she was having. A rather horrid and awful day.

If Mr. Archer truly let her go, she’d be without a job, without a roof over her head, without a means of earning her way back home. Katie grasped the sides of her skirts in her fists, a heavy weight settling in her chest.

Mr. Archer left her on the porch. She stood, attempting to choose a path. After twenty years of working, she’d have the money she needed in a year at the salary he’d offered her. She’d have what she needed to go home at last. How could she turn away from that opportunity?

“One question remains, Katie,” she whispered to herself. “Can you be trusted?”

Trouble was, she didn’t know the answer. Surely she could see to it that the girls didn’t come to any harm. Katie closed her eyes and breathed slowly, forcing back the memory of her sister’s lifeless body. The situation was different, she told herself. She was only a child herself the day she killed her sister. With age had come some bit of wisdom. Further, Mr. Archer would be nearby. And the girls would look out for each other.

She needed the job. But to accept a position she felt herself unequal to, one that involved the welfare of innocents . . .

“A selfish person you are, Katie Macauley,” she scolded herself. “You know full well you’re about to march into that kitchen and insist on keeping the job.”

Katie gave a firm nod and turned back toward the house. She needed the job and the money and a roof over her head. She vowed to be very careful in her interactions with the Archer girls. They’d not come to harm at her hands. If time showed she was as incapable as she’d been with Eimear, Katie would resign her post. She’d return to Baltimore and look for something that suited her limitations, though the cut in pay would set her back by several years.

’Twas an acceptable arrangement, she told herself. Trouble was, she didn’t entirely believe it.

She pulled open the door. Mr. Archer stood glancing doubtfully at the pot of boiling potatoes. The girls were nowhere to be seen. Katie hated feeling that their absence was a relief. If ever anyone was unsuited to the task of tending children, she was.

“Dinner will be ready in a trice, Mr. Archer.” She’d do well to keep to areas she knew.

He poked at her boiling potatoes with the wooden spoon, not even glancing in her direction. “You seem to have forgotten you were just let go.”

“About that, Mr. Archer. I know I had some misgivings, but—”

“Misgivings?” His was not an empathetic expression in the least. “You told me that putting you in charge of my daughters was not a good idea.”

She hadn’t said that exactly. “I said it wasn’t the
best
idea. Only because I haven’t any experience, not because I can’t be trusted to look after them.” The lie sat thick in her throat. She didn’t entirely trust herself, so why on earth should he?

“Katie.” He held himself with a confident air Katie could not help finding intimidating. “You have been quite clear in admitting you are not qualified. That, to any father who cares at all for his children—and I assure you I care a great deal for mine—is completely unacceptable. I will find someone else who is capable of looking after this house and my girls.”

Though her first thought was to insist she could do both, the words died on Katie’s tongue unspoken. Her history wouldn’t support her claim. And she’d done far more lying already that day than she could be comfortable with.

What could she say in her own defense that wouldn’t be completely untrue? Perhaps she could call upon his sympathies. “I’ve nowhere to go, no family hereabout.”

“I made my requirements very clear in my telegrams. That you have arrived unsuited for this position is not my fault.”

“Aye, that’s a truth, sir.” Neither was it her fault she hadn’t been read his messages in their entirety. But arguing the fact seemed pointless.

“Then you will understand why there is nothing more to discuss. The O’Connors said you could seek them out if this didn’t work.” He nodded his head in the direction of the back door. “Theirs is the fifth house down the left side of the Irish Road, over the bridge. It is about three miles.”

Could circumstances possibly grow worse? “You’re in earnest, sir?”

“I am always in earnest.”

She could see by the determined set of his chin that he’d hear no more appeals from her. She’d lost enough battles to know how to accept defeat with dignity.

“The soda bread will be ready to come out of the oven in another minute or so.” She didn’t allow her shoulders to stoop or her voice to shake in the least. “The praties should be boiled nicely not long after that. ’Tis a humble meal, but it’ll fill you.”

She moved swiftly to the far side of the room where Mr. Archer had set her bag and fiddle. She picked up the bag and held it firm in her grip. The fiddle case was old and worn clear through in places. She’d no desire to see the fiddle ruined by the rain. She would simply have to come back in the morning.

The wafting smell of bread filled the kitchen as Mr. Archer pulled the soda bread from the oven. Katie told her stomach to hush its begging. She wasn’t sure when or from where her next meal would come. She’d do well to push ahead and not think on it.

The sound of something heavy toppling over in another room pulled Mr. Archer’s attention away from the oven. He set the pan, steam rising from the bread, atop a dish towel on the table and left to investigate.

Katie stepped to the back door. A person couldn’t leave behind the smell of warm bread without some regret. How often her stomach had sat empty during The Hunger. She’d come out of that terrible time strong and determined to survive, but she’d also emerged scarred. She knew too well the gnawing pain of hunger. The mere thought of facing it again frightened her, tensed her from head to toe.

She took her heavy wool shawl from her carpetbag and pulled it over her head, the only protection she had against the rain that continued to fall. How she hoped the O’Connors really would take her in, at least for the night.

“The fifth house down the left of side of the Irish Road,” she repeated aloud. That was the road that ran over the bridge.

She left behind the porch and the respite it offered from the elements. Before she’d even walked around the side of the house, rain had left her skirts heavy and wet. She pushed against the continual gusts back toward the road. Did the wind always blow so fierce in Wyoming?

By the time she reached the bridge, Katie was shivering. Damp hair was plastered to her face. The smell of wet wool filled the air around her. Everything she owned must have been soaked through in her secondhand carpetbag.

She’d considered Mr. Archer’s telegram a miracle when it arrived. The salary was more than she’d ever hoped to make, and, at least as she’d understood it, he was looking for someone with her particular qualifications. She’d even rejoiced at the rarity of finding such a position in a home without children. Her fortunes had changed, she’d confidently declared. What an utter fool she’d been.

For two months she’d sought this job. Two months of dictating her qualifications and sending them off, hoping to be chosen, then planning the journey and undertaking it. She would have had enough money to go home, not just to Ireland but to the very place she’d grown up, where life had, at one time, been good and hopeful. She could have put so many things right with the money she would have earned at the Archer home. Her family might even have welcomed her back after seeing what she’d made of herself.

She’d been let go after less than an hour on the job. Two months for one single hour.

Katie stood on the bridge, too overwhelmed to take another step. She turned her face toward the heavens, rain pelting her mercilessly.

“Another failure?” she called out. “I have been trying to make this right since I was eight years old. Why can nothing I do ever be enough? Why must every day be a punishment?”

Even as her bold words faded to silence, Katie knew the answer. She’d always known. Her sister was dead, and it was her fault. Forgiveness for such a thing did not come without suffering.