Conor's Way (7 page)

Prison. Why? What had he done? Robbery?
Murder? She shivered, remembering the cold, defiant blue eyes that
had challenged her with that one word. A dangerous man, with eyes
that told her he was capable of anything.

I got exactly what I
deserved
.

Olivia turned away from the door. She walked
down the hall and headed for the kitchen, trying to banish her
apprehension. Right now, the man couldn't even stand up. Whatever
he'd done, he wasn't in any condition to do it now, and by the time
he was, she'd make certain he was far away from here.

When she entered the kitchen, Becky was
there. She took one look at Olivia's face and walked to her side.
"What's wrong, Mama?"

Olivia came out of her reverie with a start.
"Nothing," she answered and took a deep breath, gathering her
thoughts. "Where are the girls?"

"Miranda's in the parlor, playing with her
dolls. Chester's with her, of course. Carrie wanted to go see Mr.
Branigan, but when I told her she couldn't, she took a book and
went down to the orchard in a huff."

She gestured to a tray on the counter and the
teapot that rested beside it. "I was just going to take Mr.
Branigan some tea and something to eat." She smiled. "He said he
wanted real tea, not that awful green stuff."

Olivia did not return her daughter's smile.
"Thank you, honey, but I'll take him his meals. I don't want you
going in there."

"But why not?"

She looked into Becky's innocent face and
could find no way to explain her fear. "I just don't want you
around him. Why don't you set the table for dinner? I'll go find
Carrie."

"But it's noon. Shouldn't we take Mr.
Branigan something to eat?"

"I'll do that when I get back," Olivia
answered, and walked out the back door. She walked down the path to
the orchard in search of Carrie, but her thoughts were not on her
daughter.

She wanted him gone. When she'd found him in
the road, she'd been certain God had answered her prayer—sent her
someone to help with the harvest, someone who might stick around
long enough to repair a few fences or fix her roof, someone strong,
steady, and reliable. Instead, He'd sent her Conor Branigan:
prizefighter, gambler, sinner. Criminal.

In the lane leading down to the orchard, she
stopped and leaned against a huge oak tree. "Why?" she asked aloud.
"Why have You sent this man to me?"

She usually found comfort in speaking to God
this way. Some people may have thought it odd, even presumptuous,
to talk to God as if He were a friend, but Olivia had never thought
of God as a gray-bearded wise man floating on a heavenly cloud.
She'd always imagined God to be much closer than that.

But He didn't seem close now. Her question
hung in the air, unanswered, and Olivia sank down to the soft earth
beneath the tree, afraid and bereft.

Even as she wondered what she was going to do
with him, Olivia knew there was nothing she could do. The man was
seriously injured. Regardless of who he was or what he had done,
she couldn't just dump him back in the road.

In her mind, she could still see the scars
that marked him. She could not even begin to imagine how or why,
but it didn't take imagination to know he was a man who had endured
great pain, both of body and spirit. Dear God, what had happened to
him in prison?

Olivia wondered why she should care. He was a
criminal. He thought prayers were a waste of breath and gambling
was something to be proud of. He probably drank, too.

I got exactly what I
deserved
.

"Why?" she asked again with a touch of
desperation. "The man's been in prison. Why did You send him to
me?"

It was not God who answered.

"Mr. Conor's been in prison?"

Olivia looked up and found Carrie staring
down at her from between the branches of the tree. She should have
known. Carrie had a knack for being where she wasn't supposed to be
and hearing what she wasn't supposed to hear. "Carrie, for heaven's
sake!" she cried. "What are you doing up there?"

Carrie held up the book in her hand as an
explanation, but she refused to be diverted from the fascinating
news. "Mr. Conor was in prison?" she asked again. "How come?"

Olivia didn't like her daughter's fascination
with their dangerous guest. Nor did she like the fact that Carrie
climbed trees. "I don't want to talk about it. Please come down
from there."

Carrie pulled off her reading spectacles and
put them in the pocket of her dress. She then tucked her book under
one arm and climbed down from the tree, moving with the agility of
long practice. Olivia stood up and watched nervously, but she knew
Carrie wasn't nervous. Unlike her mother, the child wasn't afraid
of heights. Her blue calico dress went flying up as she jumped to
the ground, revealing her white cotton drawers.

Olivia drew a deep breath of relief. "Carrie,
if you're going to climb trees, try not to show your drawers," she
scolded. "It isn't ladylike."

"I'm not a lady, I'm a little girl," Carrie
answered smugly, and brushed bits of bark from the backside of her
skirt. "What'd he do?"

"I don't know, and I don't care." Olivia took
her daughter's hand in hers, and they started back to the house. "I
want you to stay away from him."

"You don't like Mr. Conor, do you, Mama?"

"No."

"Why not? Because he was in prison?"

Because he has the coldest
eyes I've ever seen
. "Yes."

"But you don't know why he was in prison.
Maybe he didn't do anything wrong. Maybe it was all a mistake."

"You're so young," Olivia murmured.

Carrie didn't understand that comment, but it
didn't matter. "Maybe he's like that man in the book you read to
us. Remember? Edmond Dantes. He got put in prison, and he didn't do
anything wrong. He—"

"Carrie, that will be enough!" Olivia said
sharply, her patience at an end. She stopped walking. Turning to
the child, she said, "That was just a story. In real life, men who
have been in prison are not nice men."

"But Mama, you're always saying a good
Christian doesn't judge," Carrie replied. "A good Christian always
tries to find the good in others."

Olivia didn't like her own lectures thrown
back in her face, especially by her nine-year-old daughter. "It's
not that simple."

"Why not?" Carrie looked up at her. "Aren't
we good Christians, Mama?"

Olivia looked into her daughter's eyes and
sighed, not fooled by the deceptive innocence in their depths.
Sometimes, Carrie was just too clever for her peace of mind.

***

Carrie, of course, wasted no time in
announcing the news to her sisters the moment she walked into the
house, and Olivia found herself inundated with their questions and
comments. Was she going to let him stay? Was he really a bad man?
Maybe he was a train robber. Did he know Jesse James? Did they let
him out of prison, or did he escape? Maybe he was wanted.

Olivia put a halt to their speculations.
"He's going to stay until his ribs are healed, then he'll be on his
way. Until then, I want all of you to stay away from him." With
that, she dished out soup and bread to them, and when they were
finished eating, she sent them out to weed the garden.

Olivia dumped out the now cold tea Becky had
made and set the kettle of water on the stove to make a fresh pot.
Conor Branigan continued to invade her thoughts as she waited for
the water to boil, his mocking voice and bitter words reminding her
that he was not what she'd prayed for.

Carrie was so fascinated by him, and that
disturbed her greatly. He wouldn't be in any condition to leave for
at least six weeks. She couldn't keep the girls away from him for
that long, especially Carrie.

Olivia looked up. Through the window, she
could see the girls in the garden. Becky was doing exactly what
she'd been asked to do, industriously pulling weeds. She was such a
good girl, she tried so hard to help.

Olivia could see Miranda's head over the tops
of the tomatoes. She was staring at one of the plants, probably
watching some grasshopper devour the crop. She couldn't have killed
it—she got upset watching Olivia swat a fly.

As for Carrie...Olivia watched her picking
strawberries, eating about half of them as she went. She'd try to
deny it later—with red juice all over her face. Olivia smiled.
Carrie really was the most precocious child.

Aren't we good Christians,
Mama
?

Her smile faded. She'd always tried to be.
She'd always believed herself to be charitable and fair-minded. But
now, when her lofty principles were put to the test, she found that
it wasn't so easy.

The kettle whistled, and Olivia turned away
from the window. Carrie was right. She should find out the whole
truth before she started making judgments. She ladled out a bowl of
soup and poured a cup of tea, then set both on the tray along with
a slab of corn bread, and took the tray to his room.

She found him sleeping peacefully when she
entered his room, undisturbed by nightmares. She moved toward him,
uncertain how to proceed. Now that she'd decided to confront him,
she was loathe to postpone it.

She set the tray on the table and hesitated
by the bed, studying him. His cuts were healing and his bruises
were fading. He needed a shave, she realized, noting the black
shadow across his jaw. It made him look even more disreputable, and
yet, sleeping quietly like this, he didn't seem like a criminal. He
seemed like a tired man who had traveled far and suffered much and
had finally found a place to rest. Suddenly, she wished he could
have been the kind of man she needed.

"Why?" she whispered. "Why were you in
prison?"

Almost as if he'd heard, his eyes opened, and
he saw her standing there.

Flustered, she took a quick step back and
gestured to the tray. "I've brought you something to eat."

"If it's that foul green tay you've brought
me, take it back," he murmured, his voice sleepy and definitely
sulky. "I'll not have it. If you had a bit of whiskey, now, that
would be different."

Whiskey. She was right. He drank, too.

"This isn't a hotel, Mr. Branigan," she
reminded him tartly as she fetched a pillow from the armoire in the
corner. "You take what you get around here. And you'll find no
spirits in this house."

"That doesn't surprise me. And you don't have
to call me Mr. Branigan, you know. I have a first name."

Olivia had no intention of using it. She came
back to the bed. "Can you sit up?"

He did. He gritted his teeth and sweat broke
out on his forehead as he pushed himself to a sitting position. She
shoved the pillow behind him.

She reached for the cup and pressed it to his
lips. "Drink it slow," she ordered. "No sense having it come right
back up again."

He flashed her a rebellious glance over the
cup, not liking the reminder of yesterday. But he obeyed her,
sipping slowly until the tea was gone.

She set aside the cup. Then she picked up the
tray and sat down carefully on the edge of the bed to feed him the
soup.

Conor hated this. He watched her dip the
spoon into the bowl, her other hand cupped beneath it to catch any
dribbles as she brought it to his lips. He hated being fed as if he
were a helpless baby, but he knew he was too weak even to grab the
spoon from her hand. He swallowed the soup, feeling his body
respond to the nourishment even as his mind rebelled against his
own weakness.

As she continued to spoon soup into his
mouth, a long-buried memory suddenly surfaced, and he was back in
Derry. He was a boy again, and the Quaker lady from the Religious
Society of Friends was feeding him Soyer's Soup, that watery,
meatless concoction declared by the government to be adequate for
the starving masses. She'd had brown eyes, too, he remembered, eyes
that apologized for the lack of real food, eyes soft with
compassion. Pity.

He fought back, struggling against the
memory, trying to send Soyer's Soup and that scared, hungry lad
back to the past where they belonged.

"I think you and I should have a little
talk."

If Olivia had suddenly drenched him with a
bucket of water, she couldn't have pulled him out of the past more
effectively. Conor eased his aching body back down to a prone
position and donned his armor of pretended indifference.
"Weather's fine today. A bit hot, I'm thinking, but not too
bad."

She set the spoon in the empty bowl and
studied him thoughtfully. He knew she was trying to read what was
beneath the surface.

"Why were you in prison?" she asked. "What
did you do?"

But Conor was very good at hiding what he
didn't want people to see. He'd been doing it for so long that
sometimes he could even fool himself. He smiled at her. "None of
your bloody business," he said politely.

"You're in my house, Mr. Branigan, and that
makes it my business."

"Not for long. The minute I'm able to walk
out of here, I will."

That did not seem to appease her. She glared
at him. "That's at least six weeks away. Until then, you're in my
house and in my care. I think I have the right to know what sort of
man I've got under my roof."

She'd taken him into her home. She'd nursed
him and fed him, and he ought to be grateful. Guilt assailed him
and he took refuge. "What do you want me to say—that I was wrongly
imprisoned, that I was an innocent man, that I am lily-white and
pure?" His voice mocked her, mocked himself.

"Tell me the truth."

He almost laughed. Was she really so naive?
He opened his mouth to give her a lie, a lie plausible enough to
end her damnable probing into his dark, shadowed corners. The truth
wouldn't satisfy her anyway.