Conor's Way (30 page)

Carrie was the first to reach him. "You're
back!" she cried, as she hurled herself at him. "I knew you'd come
back! I knew it!" She looked up at him, her eyes shining with
absolute trust.

"Did you, now?" he murmured, stunned by the
child's unshakable faith in him. If only she knew how little he
deserved it.

Miranda followed her sister's lead, wrapping
her arms around him with a cry of delight. "You came back! We were
scared you'd left us."

"I wasn't scared!" Carrie said and grabbed
his hand. "I knew you wouldn't leave us."

Oh,
Christ
. A sudden wrenching twisted his
insides, and he felt like a heartless dog. His hand tightened
around Carrie's much smaller one.

"Where'd you go?" Carrie asked.

"I went for a walk. I got lost," he lied.

"Next time, we'll go with you," Miranda said,
her arms tightening around his legs. "You won't get lost if we go
along. 'Specially Becky. She never gets lost."

"That's right," another voice added, and he
looked up to find Becky standing in front of him. She smiled shyly.
"I never get lost."

He glanced from her to the other two faces
that looked up at him. All he'd done was help birth a calf, play a
few games of checkers, fix a roof, and tell a few stories—nothing
to get excited about. But these girls insisted on looking at him
like he was some kind of hero. They had missed him.

So how are they going to
feel, boyo, when you hit the road again
?
When you don't come
back
?

Abandoned, probably. Betrayed. Terribly hurt.
He felt that irritating prick of conscience again, and he didn't
like it one bit. He'd fancied himself a hero once; he'd had a cause
to fight for; he'd felt courageous, noble, and all that rot. But it
had all been a sham; his courage had crumbled at the crucial
moment, and Conor knew he was no hero at all.

This was not his home. These girls were not
his daughters. Olivia was not his wife. They were not his
responsibility. He had his own life, and there was no room in it
for them. He wasn't going to feel guilty about leaving them here on
their own. He wasn't.

But he did. He felt guilty as hell.

***

Conor said nothing more about Olivia's little
war. During breakfast, he barely spoke at all; and right after the
meal, he began working on her roof. He spent the entire day up
there, coming down only for dinner, then again for supper. Right
after supper, he went for a walk. Alone.

He had not returned by the time she put the
girls to bed. Olivia searched the first floor of the house, but she
did not find him. She walked out onto the back porch and noticed
light spilling through the open doorway of the barn.

What on earth was he doing out there? She
walked down to the barn and paused in the doorway, staring at Conor
and the sack of oats that he had hung from a rafter with a length
of rope. Stripped to the waist, he was standing in front of the
sack, punching it with his fists.

She watched, fascinated. His days of working
outside had darkened his skin, and the scars that crisscrossed
his back stood out in stark contrast, vivid white against nut
brown. The muscles of his arm bunched tight, then stretched taut
with fluid, powerful grace as he hit the sack and sent it swinging
away.

A vision of the night before flashed through
her mind, of how he had lashed out at Joshua with lightning-quick
strength, and of how, only moments later, his arms had wrapped
around her like a shield, to keep her safe. She thought about that
afternoon in her kitchen and the way he had touched her, with hands
strong enough to break her in half and tender enough to caress her;
and she wondered at the extraordinary dichotomy that made a
man.

He caught the sack as it came back toward
him. Wrapping his arms around it, he clung to the sack as if too
weary to stand on his own and caught sight of her in the doorway.
He straightened with a stiff, abrupt movement. His rasping breaths
mingled with the rhythmic chirp of crickets that floated through
the open door of the barn. "What are you doing out here?"

"I saw the light, and I didn't know ... I
didn't realize it was you."

He shot her a pointed glance. "I came out
here to be alone."

She saw the fierceness in his expression; she
heard the clear dismissal in his blunt words. "I didn't mean to
intrude."

Olivia knew she should leave, but her feet
seemed rooted to the spot. She looked at him, one hand toying
nervously with the high collar of her dress, and she yearned for
him to hold her again.

He exhaled sharply. "Olivia."

He took a step toward her, then another, then
another, until he was standing a foot away from her. She watched
his eyes turn smoky. His lashes lowered. Instinctively, she swayed
toward him, willing him to kiss her.

But he made no move. The sound of the
crickets ticked away the seconds as they looked at each other.

"I'll stay until those peaches are in,
because I promised

I would," he said, breaking the silence
between them, his voice suddenly harsh as a whip. "After that, I'm
leaving."

His words sliced through her, laid her open,
and left pain in their wake—because they were nothing less than the
truth. She reached up and touched the hard, uncompromising line of
his mouth. "I know."

He stepped back as if her touch burned him.
"Go away, Olivia," he said, and she imagined that there was the
tiny hint of a plea in his voice. "Just go away."

She watched him walk back over to the sack.
He slammed his fist into it with enough force to send it banging
against the wall. Olivia turned and fled.

His honest words followed
her back to the house.
I'm
leaving
.

He'd said those words several times before.
Why did it hurt to hear them now?

Olivia stopped halfway across the yard and
stared back over her shoulder at the light spilling through the
open doorway of the barn. It hurt because she was in love with
him.

She wanted him to stop his wandering and stay
with her. She wanted him to be there every morning when she woke
and every night when she fell asleep. She wanted to hear him tell
stories to the girls. She wanted him to touch her again, kiss her
again. She wanted him to find solace here in her Louisiana hills,
without wondering what was over the next one.

She didn't want him to stay because of her
battle with Vernon. She didn't want him to stay because he felt
obligated by a promise.

She wanted him to stay because he loved her.
But he did not. Perhaps he felt a bit of affection for her, but no
more. That realization was what hurt her the most.

Conor began avoiding her. During the two
weeks that followed, he found any number of excuses to stay as far
away from her as possible. He finished with her roof and started
making repairs to her porch, spending all his time on the task.
When he finished that, he cut down all the underbrush that choked
the gardens around the house, then he began making repairs to the
outbuildings.

Their nightly reading lessons stopped. He
knew how to read well enough now to manage on his own, but she
missed their nightly lessons; she missed the companionship of
sitting with him at the kitchen table, sipping tea, and
talking.

There wasn't much time left before he would
leave, and she wanted nothing more than to spend the few precious
days that remained with him. She wanted just to look at him, listen
to his voice, be near him, until he was burned into her memory;
for, after he left, the memory of him would be all she had. But he
didn't want her company. The only time she saw him was at meals, or
when she could watch him unobserved as he worked.

Olivia set the iron on the stove and walked
over to the kitchen window. She pressed her nose to the pane of
glass and stared out at the lamplight that came from the doorway of
the barn. He went out there every night, but she never followed him
again. He had made it very clear that he wanted to be left alone.
Nonetheless, she found excuses to stay awake, working on those
dresses for the harvest dance, doing ironing, or cleaning out
cupboards—anything to keep her in the kitchen until he came in. She
never went to bed until he did, but he always walked past her with
a murmured good-night and went straight to his room without another
word.

Olivia stared down at the shirt she was
ironing for him, a shirt that had belonged to Stuart, who had also
gone away. Mama. Stuart, Charles, Daddy. All gone.

In a different way, Conor was going to leave
her, too. She thought of all the days that lay ahead, and they
seemed very empty. The thought of his departure filled her with a
loneliness that made her chest ache. A tear rolled down her cheek
and plopped on the white linen.

She heard the sound of his step on the back
porch and she brushed away her useless tears with a hasty swipe of
her hand. She grabbed the iron and she did not look up when he
walked in. She kept her back straight and her eyes on her task.

"Good night, Olivia," he said as he
passed.

"Good night, Conor."

But tears blurred her eyes again as she
watched him walk out of the kitchen. He rejected all that she held
dear, he carried wounds she could never heal.

Make him stay. Please find
a way to make him stay
.

It was a futile prayer. There was nothing
here that could make him stay. Nothing at all.

***

When Olivia went to fetch the water the
following morning, she found a dead cat beside the well. She stared
down at the poor creature, which had obviously been shot and placed
there deliberately. Another message from Vernon, a very clear one.
He could have had his boys drop the dead animal in her well, he
could have poisoned her water, but he had not. Instead, he had
simply let her know how easy it would be to do so, should she
continue being so stubborn.

Olivia's lips tightened to a thin line as she
stared down at the stiff, bloody carcass of the dead cat, and she
was furious. She thought of Joshua's threat to burn down her
orchard and his swaggering attempts at intimidation. She wondered
how many other people had given up their land to Vernon because of
threats such as these.

Olivia went to the barn to get a shovel and
her long, thick leather gloves. She buried the cat in the woods
then went back to the house. She marched up the stairs to the attic
and rummaged through the trunks until she found the one that
contained all the rifles, pistols, and ammunition of her father and
brothers. She chose Stuart's army rifle, thinking that it looked
more intimidating than any of the others, then she slammed down
the lid on the trunk and took the rifle downstairs.

When Conor awakened and went out to the
kitchen, he found Olivia standing on the back porch with the rifle
in her hands. She turned at the sound of his footsteps across the
kitchen and looked at him through the open doorway. He saw her
resolute face, and he knew something had happened.

"I found a dead cat beside the well," she
said, as if she could hear his unspoken question. "It was
shot."

"Jaysus." Conor knew what that meant, and he
could tell that Olivia knew it, too. He glanced at the rifle in her
hands. "So, it's to be a war, then, Olivia?"

"I'm just taking precautions, that's
all."

"Do you know how to use that thing?" he
asked.

She shook her head. "Do you?"

He stared at the gun, thinking of Sean and
his American rifles. "Aye," he said heavily. "I know."

"Will you teach me how to shoot?"

"Why don't you just sell them the land? It's
not worth a fight, Olivia. It's just not worth it."

She set her jaw. "If you don't teach me, I'll
just have to teach myself."

He watched as she turned her back to him and
hefted the rifle experimentally in her hands, then lifted it as if
to take aim. It was plain as a pikestaff she didn't know the first
thing about guns. If he didn't teach her how to handle the thing,
she'd probably end up hurting herself.

"Bloody hell," he muttered, and walked out
onto the porch. He reached over her shoulder and wrapped his hand
over the rifle, pushing down until the barrel pointed toward the
plank floor.

She turned her head to give him an inquiring
glance.

"Are you prepared to shoot somebody, maybe
kill him?" he asked. "Do you think you can?"

"If I have to."

He studied her serious face for a moment,
then he nodded. "All right, then. You'd best learn how it's
done."

He pulled the rifle from her hands and
studied it. It was a Henry .44, not the best for long-distance
shooting, and a bit heavy for a woman to use, but a fine weapon
nonetheless. "When's the last time this rifle was used?"