Conor's Way (43 page)

She was filled with desolation at the idea of
spending all the days of her life loving him, knowing he did not
love her, knowing he did not want her, knowing he might even hate
her for what he had been forced to do, knowing that one day she
could wake up and find him gone.

She glanced up at the ceiling, confessing her
deepest fear aloud to the only one she knew was listening. "How do
I make him forget the past?" she whispered. "I love him so, and I'm
so afraid it isn't enough."

But Olivia knew the only thing she could do
was keep right on loving him and hope for the best. She was not
going to walk on eggshells, or worry about what might not happen,
or indulge in any self-pity. She rose from the table and went back
to work.

By midday, the laundry was hanging on the
clothesline, the garden was weeded, and a pot of vegetable soup
was simmering on the stove. She put a pan of corn bread in the
oven, and went in search of Conor to tell him dinner was ready. But
she did not find him in the yard, or in any of the outbuildings,
and she wondered where he had gone.

But she did not go searching for him any
farther. When he felt crowded, he retreated to a safe and solitary
distance. It was his way, and she wasn't going to go chasing after
him. She ate her dinner alone; she did the ironing; and she tried
not to think about how quiet and empty the house seemed.

But by midafternoon, she couldn't stand the
quiet any longer. She went in search of Conor again. This time, he
proved much easier to find. She found him in the old toolshed,
sorting through Nate's junk. He glanced up as she entered the dim
and dusty shed.

"You missed dinner," she said, striving to
sound casual. She wondered where he had gone, how he had spent his
day, but she did not ask him. Instead, she asked, "Are you
hungry?"

He shook his head. "Thanks, but it's getting
too late. I'll wait for supper." He tossed a rusty bucket aside and
gestured to a stack of unused lumber in the corner. "Do you mind if
I use some of this?"

"Of course not. You don't have to ask my
permission, Conor," she said in a quiet voice. "This is your home
now, too."

His lips tightened. He turned away and knelt
down to rummage through a crate of tools. "Yes, I suppose it
is."

He didn't sound happy about that, but what
else could she expect? To avoid the painful direction her thoughts
were taking, she changed the subject. "What are you going to do
with the lumber?"

"I don't really know," he said. "But it seems
a shame to let it sit here waiting for the termites to get it." He
paused, then looked up at her and added, "When I was fixing the
roof, I was thinking how good it felt to hold a hammer again. I
haven't done carpentry for a long time."

"Is that what you did back in Ireland?"

He nodded. "I began as an apprentice to a
furniture maker when I was sixteen."

She leaned back against Nate's dust-covered
work bench, which stood beside the door, as Conor continued to
sort through the contents of the crate. "Did you give it up to
become a prizefighter?"

"No." He rose to his feet and lifted the
crate, then moved to her side to set the crate on the workbench. "I
gave it up to become a rebel," he said, taking a router out of the
crate to examine it more closely. "A Fenian. A thorn in the side of
the British Empire."

She remembered his bitter, drunken words of
two nights before, and she knew by the ironic glance he gave her,
he remembered them, too. But she was determined not to become a nag
about spirits, or any other subject, for that matter.

"Fenian," she repeated the strange-sounding
word thoughtfully. "Does that mean some sort of secret
society?"

"Aye. The Irish Republican Brotherhood." He
set the router back in the crate. "Your man had some fine
tools."

His words sounded so funny, she couldn't help
it— she burst out laughing.

Conor shot her a puzzled glance. "Did I say
something funny?"

She clamped one hand over her mouth and shook
her head, still laughing, unable to speak. "Nate was about seventy
years old," she finally managed. "Black as coal, with a long,
scraggly, white beard and teeth yellow from chewing tobacco." She
made a wry face. "Nasty habit. He was a sweet old dear, but he
wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, 'my man,' as you put
it."

"It's a figure of speech, love. In Ireland,
we say 'your man' to mean someone you know, or someone you've just
met, or even a stranger who approaches you. Actually," he added as
her smile widened, "now that I think about it, the term could refer
to just about anybody."

"It's odd the way different people say
things, isn't it? Down here, we say, 'I reckon,' and you say, 'I'm
thinking,' but it means the same thing, doesn't it? 'It's going to
rain, I reckon.' 'It's going to rain, I'm thinking.'"

"Well, the Irish are known to say things in a
way other people find amusing."

"Such as?"

"If I run into a man I haven't seen for a
while, I'd probably say something like, 'Why, Daniel O'Shea, is
that yourself?'"

She smiled. "Well, down here, we say things
that the Yankees find odd, that's for sure."

"That's one of them."

"What?"

"In Ireland, any American is a Yankee."

She lifted her chin. "I
am
not
a Yankee.
Calling me one is a good way to start a fight."

He grinned at her. "I'll remember that. Or
I'll just have to keep ducking when you throw eggs at me."

Suddenly, they were laughing together. She
looked at him and remembered what had happened after the eggs.
Slowly, their laughter faded into silence.

Olivia felt a tingling awareness radiating
through her body. When he moved a hairsbreadth closer, she
realized wildly that he was going to kiss her. She swayed toward
him.

"Daddy! Mama! Where are you?"

Miranda's voice had both of them jerking back
at once. But neither of them looked away. She licked her dry lips,
watched his gaze catch on the nervous movement. "The girls are
home," she said.

"So they are," he answered dryly.

"Daddy? Mama? Where are you?"

Feeling almost vexed at the interruption,
when she'd been missing her girls like crazy all day, Olivia
stepped back through the doorway of the shed and glanced toward the
house. Becky and Carrie were coming down the porch steps, but
Miranda was much closer. "We're in here!" she called, beckoning to
them with a wave of her hand. She also waved to Oren and his four
school-age children as he turned the wagon around and headed for
home.

Miranda came flying toward the shed, and
Olivia smiled, holding out her arms. But the child raced past her
into the shed with a perfunctory, "Hello, Mama," and ran straight
to Conor.

Olivia turned and watched through the
doorway, astonished and somewhat bemused as Conor lifted the child
into his arms.

"Look, Daddy!" she said excitedly, holding up
a sheet of paper with one hand and wrapping her free arm around his
neck. "Look what I drew at school. It's a kangaroo. They have them
in Australia. Miss Sheridan told us."

Daddy? Olivia was too astonished to be hurt
by the lack of attention. Miranda had called him Daddy, and he
didn't seem to mind. In fact, he didn't even seem surprised.

He studied the drawing. "Sure, and it is,
lass. A kangaroo. It's a wonderful picture. I think we'll have to
frame it and hang it in the house somewhere." He glanced at Olivia.
"Don't you think?"

"Of course," she choked, averting her head to
blink back another sudden onslaught of tears. But they were not
tears of melancholy this time.

Carrie was the next one through the door, and
she immediately demanded Daddy's attention as well, showing him her
sketch of a castle and explaining to him what a parapet was used
for.

Becky came last. She showed Conor the
intricate map of Ireland she'd drawn with all the counties and
major cities written on it, and Conor read the unfamiliar names
aloud for her. "Sligo, Leitrim, Donegal..."

Through a blurry haze, Olivia watched her
daughters clamoring for Conor's attention, and for the first time,
she felt hope for her marriage.

She walked over to stand beside him and have
a look at the drawings her daughters had made. After she'd made a
great deal of fuss over them, she said, "There's cookies in the
kitchen," and watched them race out of the shed. She called after
them, "Only two apiece, or you'll ruin your supper! And put your
dinner pails away."

She turned her attention to Conor, who was
studying Miranda's sketch, still in his hand. He glanced at her. "A
kangaroo?" he asked dubiously.

She leaned closer to have another look at the
drawing, then she turned it right-side up for him. "Definitely a
kangaroo."

***

The following morning, Conor was awakened by
the sound of hurried footsteps overhead, as the girls got ready for
school. After he dressed, he went out to chop the wood for Olivia,
carried it into the kitchen, and built a fire in the stove. He then
took the pail from its hook on the wall and went out to milk the
cow for her, knowing she was busy trying to get the girls ready,
and thinking she might need a bit of help with the chores.

That was where she found him. He glanced up
as she entered the barn, not missing her astonished expression.

"You're milking the cow," she said.

"You don't have to sound so surprised. I do
know how." He pulled the filled pail out from beneath Princess,
rose to his feet, and pushed aside the milking stool, then turned
and handed the pail of milk to her. She took it, but she continued
to eye him as if this were the last thing in the world she would
have expected. He watched that radiant smile light her face.

He suddenly felt uncomfortable. He didn't
want her thinking this was anything to make a fuss about. "I just
thought you might need some help in the mornings now that the girls
are in school," he explained, looking away. He pointed to the sack
of chicken feed in the corner. "I'll take over feeding the
chickens, too, if you like."

"Thank you," she said and started for the
door, the pail of milk in her hand. In the doorway, she stopped and
turned back. "Conor?"

"Hmm?"

"If you'll bring in the eggs, I'll make
breakfast. I've got fresh bread in the oven this morning."

She disappeared through the door before he
could reply, but her words eased the tension inside him, and a
sense of satisfaction slowly took its place.

***

That morning created a new routine in the
house. While Olivia got the girls ready for school, Conor did the
morning chores. After he'd brought in the milk and the eggs, Olivia
made breakfast, while he took the water she'd heated for him to his
room, where he bathed and shaved. After breakfast, the girls went
off to school, and Conor and Olivia went about their own work. By
tacit agreement, they divided work into two distinct halves, with
Olivia handling the household tasks, and leaving the outdoor work
to Conor, along with anything that required the use of a
ladder.

To his surprise, Conor found the routine that
defined his days did not feel stifling. He was able to choose how
to spend his day. He could do whatever work he felt like doing, and
that had an appeal of its own. Instead of feeling suffocated, he
began to find a certain satisfaction in the hard work that kept him
busy until late in the day, when the girls came home and told him
what they'd learned that day, when he sat at the supper table and
listened to them say grace, when in the cool of evening he sat
beside Olivia in an uncomfortable chair on the back porch and
enjoyed the quiet and the serenity.

Something deep within him turned toward those
moments with her, like a plant turning toward the sunlight. But he
could not believe that it would last. And even as part of him began
to anticipate it, actually hunger for it, another part of him
remained uneasy and tense, waiting for it all to end, to crash down
around him in pieces.

He continued to sleep alone, and Olivia made
no further attempts to change the arrangement. He knew she did not
understand his reasons, and he could not explain them to her. He'd
spent the better part of his life on his own; he'd never felt the
desire to confide in anyone. He couldn't do it now. But there were
times, when they sat on the porch side by side, when he watched her
bent over her sewing, her face soft in lamplight through the
kitchen window, that he felt the overpowering desire to confide in
her. But shame kept him silent.

There were times, too, when all he wanted was
to grab her, carry her up those stairs, and make love to her. Just
the sight of her hair in the sunlight or the sound of her voice
when she said his name were enough to arouse him. But he thought of
all the women he'd had who'd woken in the morning to find him gone,
and he could not treat Olivia that way. She deserved a man who
would sleep by her side when it was over, and he could not.

He still had dreams, and late at night, while
the rest of the house slept, Conor would often go out to the
toolshed with a lamp and work until the wee small hours, keeping
his demons at bay with hammer and saw instead of a punching bag. He
was making something special, and he did not want to think about
why he was making it.