Conor's Way (11 page)

He thought of Olivia's drab dresses and
chipped teapot, her dilapidated wagon and her sorry-looking mule,
and he realized that the war must have taken just about everything
she had. But he also knew the wealth that had once been here had
been built on the backs of slaves.

He couldn't help comparing it to Ireland; he
couldn't help remembering all the blood and sweat his own people
had spilled so that rich British landlords could have velvet
carpets and curving staircases. He found it hard to mourn the loss,
but he understood how difficult it must have been for Olivia to
watch her way of life disintegrate around her.

But his way of life had disintegrated long
ago, and Conor forced away his memories of home. Let it alone, he
thought, and carefully put the wooden ball back in its place.

In the distance, he could hear voices, and he
followed the sound to the back of the house. Olivia and the girls
were in the kitchen, seated around a table, having their evening
meal. Chester lay in a nearby corner, obviously waiting for his
share.

"Are you going to make me a cake for my
birthday, Mama?" Miranda asked, as Conor paused in the doorway to
the kitchen, inhaling the delicious scent of fresh bread and fried
chicken.

His gaze caught on Olivia and lingered there,
watching as she reached out to brush back a lock of Miranda's hair
with a soft and loving gesture. "Of course I am, sweetie."

They were a family. Something stirred inside
him, something long-buried and half-forgotten that constricted his
throat and twisted his guts. Instinctively, he moved as if to turn
away.

Chester lifted his head and let out a low
growl. The talking suddenly stopped and all of them looked up to
find him in the doorway.

"Mr. Branigan, you're on your feet again."
Olivia rose from her place at the head of the table and gestured
to the food. "We were just sitting down to supper. I was going to
take you in a tray, but since you're up, maybe you'd like to join
us?"

A chorus of enthusiastic agreement from the
girls followed.

Olivia turned to her oldest daughter. "Becky,
would you set a place for Mr. Branigan, please?"

Conor did not step forward. He hesitated in
the doorway, uncomfortable. He didn't belong here, he was the
stranger, the outsider who looked in.

But then Carrie jumped up and came over to
him. She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the table. "You can
sit next to me," she announced, gesturing to the empty chair beside
her own with all the majesty of a queen bestowing a favor upon her
favorite knight.

Left without a choice, Conor pulled out the
offered chair as Becky left the table to fetch him a plate.

"I see the clothes fit," Olivia
commented.

Conor turned so that she could see where both
shoulder seams of the shirt had ripped apart. "They do now."

He turned back around in time to see her
smile. It caught him by surprise, and he realized that he'd not
seen her smile before. He had thought her to be passably pretty at
best, but when Olivia Maitland smiled, some indefinable shift of
light and shadow occurred, some subtle rearrangement of her
features took place, and she became suddenly beautiful. It was an
unexpected and magical transformation.

He was staring at her. He quickly looked
away, and realized Becky was standing beside him with a place
setting. He sat down, and Becky put a plate and utensils before
him. Once she had returned to her chair, Olivia spoke again.
"Becky, it's your turn. Would you say the blessing?"

"Perhaps Mr. Conor would like to do it?"
Becky suggested, smiling at him across the table.

Conor froze in his chair,
staring at the laden table. Memories of a girl's grateful,
whispered blessing flashed vividly across his mind, and he felt
suddenly suffocated.
Thank God for
food
? He wouldn't do it. He couldn't. The
words would choke him.

"I'm not really hungry." He rose to his feet
so abruptly it hurt. "I think I'll go outside and get some fresh
air." He turned his back and walked out of the kitchen as fast as
his battered body would take him, leaving Olivia and the girls
staring after him in bewilderment.

Ocr
á
s

Derry, Ireland, 1847

"
Tá ocrás orm
, Conor," Megan
murmured.

"I know. I'm hungry, too." Conor sat down
beside his little sister and wrapped her emaciated body in the
ragged blanket he'd stolen, glad he'd found it, not caring that
he'd taken it off a body still warm. He was long past caring about
things like that.

She leaned back against the brick wall of the
alley with her head on his shoulder. "Did you find anything?"

He hesitated, his hand at the pocket of his
coat, unwilling to bring out what he'd found in the fish market.
But Megan looked up at him, and the moonlight plainly showed the
ravaged hollows in her once-round cheeks. He pulled out the fish
scraps and held out the largest piece to her.

Megan lifted her eyes to heaven and whispered
a grateful blessing on the food, made the sign of the cross, then
stuffed the fish into her mouth.

But her stomach was unable to tolerate the
putrid fish after a week of nothing at all. She turned her head to
the side and vomited what had taken Conor hours to find. Too weak
to sit up any longer, she curled into a ball beside him with her
head in his lap. "I'm sorry," she whispered miserably.

Conor swallowed hard. "It's all right. Just
go to sleep. I'll find something better tomorrow."

But there wasn't anything better, and both of
them knew it. Conor ate slowly, fighting back his own nausea with
every bite, and thought about the ships he'd seen sailing out of
Lough Foyle that afternoon—ships bound for England, ships he knew
were loaded with Irish butter, grain, pigs, and poultry that would
soon grace the tables of rich British households.

His mouth watered. He
closed his eyes, picturing those ships, and he forced himself to
stop thinking about
ocrás
. He focused his thoughts on
only one emotion, the one emotion that had kept him alive this
long.
Fuathaím
.

"I can't see." Megan's frantic whisper
interrupted his thoughts, and she groped for his hand. "Conor, I
can't see."

Fear gripped him. "I can't see either," he
lied. "'Tis black as pitch out here."

"No. There was a moon, but I can't see it
now. I think I'm dying."

"No, you're not. You're only nine. How would
you know if you was dying?"

"You'll be all alone now. I'm sorry."

"You're not dying," he answered roughly,
jerking the blanket up around her shoulders. "Stop blathering on
about it like a peahen."

"I'm scared, Conor. There's no priest for
confession." Her voice became weaker with every word she spoke.
"If I don't confess my sins, I could go to hell."

Conor didn't tell her both of them were
already there. "You haven't committed any sins, and you'll not go
to hell, Megan. I promise. I've never broken a promise to you, have
I?"

"No."

"Well, then. You're not going to die, and if
you was to die, sure and the angels'd be waiting at the gates of
heaven to greet you."

"That would be nice." Her fingers entwined
with his, then tightened with a strength he didn't know she
possessed. "Make me another promise."

"What?" He looked down into her pale face,
watched with frantic denial as her eyes slowly closed. He suddenly
wished he'd told her about the ships. He wanted to grab her and
shake her, he wanted to shout at her to think about the house
wreckers, her sisters, and Michael. Anything that would make her
hate as he did, make her want to live for vengeance as he did.

But Megan wasn't like him. She couldn't hate
anybody. It just wasn't in her.

"Please don't let the rats have me," she
whispered, letting go of his hand. "Or the dogs. Find a graveyard
and bury me proper in the ground. Promise."

He felt as if hands had closed around his
throat, choking him. "I promise."

Megan died that night. Conor decided he hated
God almost as much as he hated the British, and it was hate alone
that gave him the strength to keep his promise.

Olivia found him on the front veranda,
sitting on a bench and staring into the twilight. Lost in thought,
he didn't seem aware of her presence, and she took a moment to
observe him unnoticed.

He was such an unpredictable man, with moods
that could change quicker than the weather. She recalled how he'd
jumped up from the table and hightailed it out of there when Becky
had asked him to give the blessing, and she could find no
explanation for his abrupt exit.

She walked toward him, and he glanced up as
she approached, but his expressionless face gave her no clue to
what he was thinking. "I saved a plate for you," she said. "When
you want it, just let me know."

He didn't reply.

She sat down on the bench beside him. "I'll
get a few more of my brother's shirts out tonight and see if I
can't piece them together into a shirt that'll fit you."

That caught his attention. "These clothes
belonged to your brother?"

She nodded. "Stuart. He died in the war." She
paused, then added, "So did my brother Charles. Both of them were
killed at Gettysburg."

A long silence fell between them, and she was
surprised when he spoke. "I'm sorry about your brothers," he said,
without looking at her.

She was surprised. Sympathy was the last
thing she would have expected from this man. "Well, that was eight
years ago," she murmured.

Leaning back, she studied the gnarled oak
trees, gardens, and lawns that had once made Peachtree a place of
beauty and grace. The oak trees were shapeless now, the gardens
overgrown, the lawns unkempt. "You know, when I was a little girl,
my brothers and I used to sleep out here on summer nights.
Sometimes, I find myself thinking about those days, and I get to
missing my brothers, and I come out here with my pillow."

She looked over at Conor. "Sounds silly,
doesn't it?"

"No." His lips tightened slightly, and he
looked away, staring out at the gardens. "It isn't silly at
all."

He fell silent, and she wondered if perhaps
she ought to just go back in the house and leave him be. But then
he spoke again. "When I was a lad, my brother, my sisters, and I
all slept in the hayloft."

He'd never mentioned his family before. In
fact, when she asked him, he'd said he had no family. Curious, she
turned toward him, wanting to know more. "In the loft? You didn't
sleep in the house?"

"Well, an Irish cottage isn't like what
you've over here. At home, the barn is part of the house, with the
loft over the top." He glanced over at her and grinned. "Hay makes
for great pillow fights."

She laughed, noting the mischief in that
smile. "Most of them started by you, I reckon."

"I never did. It was my brother, Michael,
who always started it." He laughed softly. "He was my older
brother, and I wanted so much to be like him. Everything he did, I
had to do. The result was that we were always in trouble, the pair
of us. He taught me how to box when I was barely eleven."

She caught the yearning in his voice. "You
must miss him very much."

His smile vanished, and he looked away. "I
miss him every single day."

Olivia knew he was a private man, but she was
unable to stop herself from asking questions. "Where is he now?
Still back in Ireland?"

He stiffened, and she thought he wasn't going
to answer her question. When he finally spoke, his voice was so
low, it was almost a whisper. "The famine hit Ireland when I was
eleven. When I was twelve, I watched a British landlord's men beat
my brother to death with sticks." He paused, then added, "For
stealing one of their cows."