Conor's Way (42 page)

Unexpectedly, she smiled at him, then she
took a kettle of boiling water from the stove and went upstairs.
Conor went to his room and took a cigar from his pack, then pulled
one of the chairs from the kitchen out onto the back porch and sat
down.

The night was still and warm, and the full
moon cast a glow over the yard. Fireflies—"lightning bugs," the
girls called them—occasionally flickered past. Crickets chirped,
and frogs croaked, a once-hated chorus that he must be getting used
to, since he hardly noticed it anymore.

Through the open window above, he could hear
Carrie and Miranda arguing over the soap again. It wouldn't be bath
night without that, he supposed.

He leaned his head back against the wall
behind his chair and closed his eyes, smiling as he listened.
Olivia put up with their fight for about ten seconds.

"Another peep out of either of you," she
finally said, "and it's straight to bed. No bedtime story from
Conor."

The argument instantly stopped. Conor hadn't
realized his stories rated that high.

Miranda was the first one back down, barefoot
and dressed for bed, her hair damp from her bath. Chester, her
shadow, was right behind her.

She crawled up onto Conor's lap and curled
one arm around his neck, studying him with a solemn expression.
After a moment, a tiny frown knit her brow as if she were thinking
about something very important.

"What's rattling around in
that head of yours,
mó
paisté
?" he asked, brushing back a damp
lock of hair from her forehead.

She tilted her head to one side. "Since you
and Mama are married, does that mean we can call you Daddy
now?"

His hand fell away from her hair and
everything inside him seemed to explode in a rush of panic. The
marriage was a farce, and he wasn't their daddy, but he looked into
the child's eyes and could not have refused her if he had tried.
"If you want to."

She smiled, pleased, and tucked her head
beneath his chin. "Tell me another story," she ordered. "About
leprechauns."

"We ought to wait for your sisters, I'm
thinking," he said, but the words were barely out of his mouth
before Carrie appeared. She saw that Miranda had beaten her to what
he assumed by her disappointed face must be the coveted seat of
honor, and he shifted Miranda to one knee with a resigned sigh.
"C'mon."

Carrie settled herself happily on his other
knee, and that was how Olivia found them. She paused beside the
door, eyeing them in some amusement.

Conor was reminded of the night she'd come
home to find her daughters piled over him, sound asleep, but this
time it didn't seem quite as embarrassing. "Becky's not coming
down?" he asked.

Olivia's smile widened. "I have been informed
that she's fourteen now and much too old for bedtime stories." She
brought a chair from the kitchen out onto the porch and placed it
beside Conor's. "I, however, am not. You may begin."

This time Conor was able to tell the story of
"Cuchulain and the Courtship of Emer" without finding that his
audience had fallen asleep, wrapping up the tale with the words,
"So, Emer was finally courted as she had desired to be, and that
was how Cuchulain won her fair hand and made her his queen. They
lived happily ever after," he added. That wasn't quite true, but
he didn't think Cuchulain's legendary infidelities were really
appropriate for the bedtime stories of little girls.

They wanted another story, of course, but
Olivia negated that idea. "It's bedtime," she said firmly, and rose
to her feet. "First day of school tomorrow. C'mon."

The girls reluctantly slid down from Conor's
lap, and followed their mother into the house.

Carrie's frustrated voice floated back to
him. "I don't see why we have to go to bed so early. I'm not even
sleepy yet. I'll just lie there and lie there, wide awake, when I
could be hearing a great story."

He grinned. Trust Carrie to come up with
sound, logical reasons to get her way. It never worked with her
mother, but she did keep trying.

Suddenly, he heard the pad of quick
footsteps, and Miranda came running back through the doorway. She
skidded to a halt beside his chair. "I forgot to say goodnight,"
she told him breathlessly. "Good night, Daddy."

She stood up on her toes and planted a kiss
on his cheek, then turned and ran back into the house, leaving
Conor reeling under the impact of that simple word. It carried with
it a host of responsibilities that he was not prepared for. What he
had told Olivia two nights before had been the plain and simple
truth. He just didn't know how to be a father.

Suddenly restless, he rose and left the
porch. He pulled out his cigar and lit it, then crossed the yard
and walked amid the dilapidated outbuildings that were silvery
gray in the moonlight.

Daddy
.

Another man might have been flattered, even
delighted, at the prospect. Conor was not. He was just plain
scared. How ironic that a child's word could strike more fear in
him than all the bullets, prisons, and pain he had ever faced. The
desperate need to run came over him, but he could not run. It was
too late for that. He was a daddy now.

Perhaps he ought to start thinking about the
future, but he could not. He could not think about the endless
stretch of days, months, and years that lay ahead. He couldn't
accept the idea that he was here for good, that he could never
leave, could never find peace. All he could do was what he had
always done. Get through the days, one at a time.

When he returned to the house, Olivia was
there. She watched him as he came toward her across the yard. He
stopped at the bottom of the steps and dropped the end of the cigar
into the dirt. He crushed it beneath his boot. "I went for a
walk."

"It's a nice night for it." She gestured to
the chair beside her own. "Sit with me a spell."

He didn't want to, but he found himself
moving toward her instead of away. He sat down. He felt he should
say something, but he did not know what to say. He did not know
what she expected. He leaned forward in his chair, then leaned
back. He shifted, trying to find a comfortable position, but he
could not relax.

"Pity we don't have the porch swing anymore,"
she said. "It would be a sight more comfortable than these
chairs."

It wasn't the chair that made him restless.
"Porch swing?"

She nodded. "There used to be one out here.
My daddy gave it to my mama as a gift. I think, of all the gifts he
ever gave her, that was her favorite. It was painted white, I
remember, and it had chintz cushions. Mama and Daddy used to sit
out here on summer nights, rocking back and forth and holding hands
as if it were still their courtin' days."

She smiled. "One night, I sneaked downstairs
to get some cookies after I was supposed to be in bed and I saw
them out here. They were—" She broke off and smoothed her skirt,
looking suddenly flustered. "Mama was sitting on Daddy's lap and
they were kissing. It was quite a shock to me. I never dreamed my
folks did things like that."

Conor had never really thought about what
husbands and wives did on summer evenings, but if they were in
love, they probably sat out on porch swings after their children
were asleep and kissed. "What happened to it?"

She took a moment to answer. "After Mama
died, it was so hard for Daddy to look at the swing every day and
know she wasn't ever going to sit in it again. One night, I came
out here and found him with his head in his hands, crying. The next
day, I took the swing down and gave it away. Perhaps that was wrong
of me, but I couldn't bear to watch him suffer like that."

That was love, too. Pain and loss. He turned
away and stared out at the moonlit yard. He thought of all the
people he had loved. All of them were gone, and the pain of losing
them was something he never wanted to feel again.

The silence fell again, but she made no
attempt to break it. He realized that he wasn't expected to make
conversation, and some of the tenseness began to ease from him. It
occurred to him that perhaps she just wanted exactly what they were
doing, to sit in the stillness and share it with him. Somehow, as
the silence lengthened, it became almost comfortable.

"It's getting late."

Her soft voice shattered the companionable
silence. He did not move, but every muscle in his body tensed. He
knew what she was saying; from the corner of his eye, he could see
her hand pluck nervously at her skirt, pleat the faded blue
fabric.

"It's time for bed," she added, and rose.

He was not prepared for the onslaught those
words evoked, the sudden, overwhelming need for her, and the need
for the aftermath—to hold her, cradle her against him, protect her
from every danger there was in the world; but when the dreams came
again, who would protect her from him?

"Good night," he said evenly, without looking
at her. "Sleep well."

She hesitated, hovering beside his chair.
"You aren't coming up?"

He thought about that night in Monroe, and
how he had fallen asleep holding her in his arms, a dreamless sleep
with no ghosts from the past, no demons to taunt him. But they
would come, and he could not be with her when they did. "No."

Still, she did not move away. "Conor, I wish
you would come upstairs with me."

She laid a hand on his shoulder, and he
stiffened beneath her touch. "I can't," he said. "I'm sorry."

He closed his eyes, breathing deeply,
waiting. It seemed an eternity before her hand tightened briefly on
his shoulder then fell away, and she walked back into the
house.

That night in Monroe was still vivid in his
memory, every button he unfastened, every curve of her body, every
pleasured gasp she gave, every ounce of his control lost. He
remembered drifting into sleep, waking up to the scent of her, the
feel of her—all of that almost as pleasurable as the lovemaking
itself had been. The peace of it, peace he hadn't known since he
was a child, peace he'd never thought to find again.

But peace was an illusion, and it would not
last. His dreams would come back when the dark side of him emerged
without warning—enraged and snarling, bathed in sweat and
screaming, or worse, begging for mercy, pathetic and broken. She'd
seen glimmers of that other man, and he knew that man frightened
her. He might even hurt her—strike out at her in the dark when he
did not know where he was, when he could not recognize her, when he
could not separate what was now from what was past.

He imagined her upstairs in her room, lying
in bed with her hair spread across the pillow, that nightgown with
the pearl buttons down the front tangled around her legs, nothing
beneath the delicate fabric but her softness and warmth. Desire
pulsed through his body, hungry and hot and needy.

It was unbearable to want her with such
intensity, unthinkable to need her with such desperate longing,
dangerous to believe that she could somehow keep the demons away.
He did not want to need her, for in need, there was dependence. He
could not trust, for in trust, there was betrayal. Better never to
see heaven at all than to catch a glimpse of it, grab for it, and
lose it.

He went to his room. He slept with his
demons, and he woke alone.

***

Monday was the first day of
school, and like all the mornings of all the first days of school
that had come before, this morning was proving to be a trial for
Olivia. Carrie rebelled at the idea of having silly ribbons in her
hair and hated her school dress because it now had a ruffle.
Miranda was in tears, her excitement about school dissolving into
terror when she realized Mama was not going with her. Becky whined
that it wasn't fitting to give Miss Sheridan three jars of spiced
peaches
again
this year for her first-day gift. Conor proved to be no help
whatsoever. He ducked out the back door halfway through breakfast,
just about the time Miranda threw up. Obviously, domestic bliss
was still an alien concept to him. Olivia watched him go, and she
wondered if it always would be.

By the time Oren came to take the girls into
town with his own children, Olivia was heartily glad to see them
go. She walked back into the kitchen, which looked as if the Union
Army had marched through it, rolled up her sleeves, and began
cleaning up the mess.

It took about thirty minutes, just long
enough to do the breakfast dishes, for her to realize that, for the
first time in years, she was completely alone in the house. Miranda
had always been at home with her, and that had somehow made it
easier to send Becky and Carrie off for the first day of school.
But now Miranda was at school with them, she wasn't at home getting
underfoot and demanding attention.

Olivia sank down in one of the kitchen
chairs, suddenly feeling incredibly lonely. The house was so
quiet. She missed her baby.

Chester ambled over to her side. He nuzzled
her hand with a whine, as if to say he missed Miranda, too. She
patted the dog's head, brushed away a solitary tear with an
impatient swipe of her hand, and told herself not to be silly. She
had piles of laundry to do, and sitting here wasn't getting it
done.

But instead of getting to work as she knew
she ought, Olivia rested her elbow on the table and her cheek in
her hand, staring dismally at the empty kitchen.

She wondered what Conor was doing. Avoiding
her, probably. She couldn't blame him for that. He hadn't wanted to
be tied to a farm and a ready-made family. He had only married her
out of a sense of obligation. She thought wistfully of that night
in Monroe, of how for one brief moment he had let her into his
solitary life, and the price he had paid for it.