He breathed through the pain stabbing at his heart. “She was buried in it.”
Cecily rose from her seat. She slowly crossed to him. Dredging up these memories ought to have left him wishing her to Hades, wishing himself alone. Instead, his arms reached for her. He pulled her into his embrace. She, in turn, wrapped her arms around him.
Neither spoke. Neither pulled away. He closed his eyes and let himself breathe for what felt like the first time in six years. He’d not been strong enough to examine his pain alone, but he’d found in Cecily Attwater an ally to stand with him as he felt the anguish and offer strength to him as he faced that chapter of his life again.
Speaking of Bridget hadn’t brought sudden healing or forgetfulness. He didn’t for a moment believe that all his grief and pain were behind him. He simply felt, finally, as if he might at last be able to face it, if only he knew how.
“I’ve spent the past year trying to help my family face their losses, but I haven’t the first idea how to do that myself.” He managed a tense and difficult breath. “I’ve never been to her grave. I attend church every Sunday, painfully aware that the churchyard where she’s buried lies mere steps away. I’ve tried to make that journey any number of times, but I can’t do it.”
“Because if you do, it becomes real.” How she understood that so instinctively, he didn’t know.
He nodded. “I think I need to go, though.” His stomach twisted at the thought. “And Finbarr needs to go, to let himself weep for little Marianne Johnson.”
“Perhaps knowing that you’ve managed that difficult journey will help him feel safe enough to make his own,” she said. “He may not be ready for some time yet, but he’ll need to go, eventually. And when that time comes, he’ll have you, who understands that struggle better than anyone. You can help him conquer it.”
But only if he, himself, managed to conquer it first.
That Sunday, Cecily’s heart felt heavy all through services, the first she’d attended since arriving in Hope Springs. Reverend Ford’s sermon wasn’t lacking in any way. She simply knew that Tavish had to be hurting fiercely; after the service, he would finally be making the pilgrimage to Bridget Claire’s grave. Cecily had witnessed enough mourning over the years to know that the journey, and even the anticipation of it, would likely be excruciating.
After the service, she waited for him at the far corner of the churchyard, the cane he’d fashioned for her held firmly in her hand. When he’d promised her a cane, she’d thought it had been in jest. She ought not to have doubted his thoughtfulness.
The bright light of day illuminated the church steps and a mass of colors and shapes she knew to be people. Her vision was not entirely gone, but had diminished to the point she couldn’t make out individuals. She recognized the rhythm of Tavish’s steps ap-proaching the spot where she stood.
The breeze brought her the familiar scent of him—his soap mingled with something that was his and his alone.
“Do you still want to do this, Tavish?” she asked gently.
“It’s a little unnerving the way you do that. I’d not said a word yet.” His next breath shook a little. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous.”
“I do. You are about to face a ghost of your past, face pain and heartache. That would make the stoutest of hearts nervous.”
“Are you saying I’m ‘the stoutest of heart’? A regular knight on a charger? A conquering hero?”
“What you are is stalling.” She tempered the words with a smile. “You don’t have to do this if you’re not ready.”
“I’ll never be ready,” he said. “But I’m willing, and that’ll be enough.”
“Well, then, Sir Tavish, Knight of the Realm, go slay your dragon.”
“Would—will you go with me?” He made a sound of distaste. “Some hero I’m proving to be, needing someone to hold m’ hand.”
She held her arm up, fingers outstretched, not entirely sure where his was, and felt his warm hand wrap around hers.
“Needing people is not a weakness,” she said. “In fact, letting yourself acknowledge that need takes a great deal of strength. You keep people at a distance, my friend. It is time to let them in.”
He tugged her next to him and threaded her arm through his. Though she’d not told him specifically, he’d come to realize that holding his arm in that way helped her navigate. She held the cane in her other hand, high enough to not bump the ground. With him beside her, she didn’t need it to guide her.
“Here we go then.” He spoke with tremendous uncertainty.
“Tell me more about her,” Cecily requested. A little distraction might help him take those arduous steps.
“What would you like to know?”
She thought on it a moment. Something light would be better than something sad. “What was her favorite dish at the céilís?”
“Bread pudding,” he answered without hesitation. “I’ve never known anyone with such a love of bread pudding. She was a tiny thing, but I swear to you, she ate it by the pound.”
“I am the same way with berry pie—any kind of berry, it doesn’t matter,” Cecily confessed. “I haven’t so much as an ounce of restraint.”
“Come this summer when my berries are ripe, I will bake—no, I will have someone who actually knows how to—bake you a pie with my berries. They are the best in the entire territory.”
“I have heard something along those lines,” she said. It seemed best not to remind him that she would be leaving in the spring. She’d rather not think on it herself.
He took a step forward. Only one, but a significant one. Then he took another. Theirs was a halting, painstaking progress, but progress just the same.
“Did she have a favorite song or tune?” Cecily thought it best to keep him talking so his mind could focus on something other than a quickly approaching headstone.
“Oddly enough,” he said, “‘The Parting Glass.’”
She wasn’t familiar with the tune. “Why is that odd?”
“It is a song honoring the memory of those who’ve passed on before us.”
“Is it a sad song?”
Their progress slowed noticeably. “No, actually. It’s rather celebratory.”
“And it was her favorite.” How Cecily hoped what she was about to say was not overstepping herself, but Tavish needed permission to be honestly happy again, deeply and truly, not merely a facade that didn’t quite reach the innermost bits of his heart. “If that was a favorite, then she must have prescribed to that school of thought. She preferred happy memories and celebrations of a life rather than endless mourning and regrets.”
“I think—” His thick voice broke. He cleared his throat. “I think that is one of the hardest parts. If she had seen how broken I’ve been since she—since then, she would be sorely disappointed in me. I hate the thought of her being disappointed in me.”
Cecily could hear tears in his voice. Though she hated the idea of him hurting, he needed to finally feel the grief. “From what I know of her, she would simply want you be happy again. I don’t think she would begrudge you the time it took to find that happiness.”
They stopped walking altogether. Had she said too much? Had he lost his nerve? A number of voices floated on the breeze. Perhaps he had too much of an audience.
“This is her,” he whispered.
Her breath caught even as her pulse pounded in her head. “What would you like me to do?”
She heard him swallow. “Just don’t leave me.”
She slipped her arm from his and wrapped it around his middle, offering what support she could. Each breath shook from him. Here was a man trying desperately to be stalwart in the face of more than a half-decade of pain.
He broke his silence, not with spoken word, but with a broken, quiet song.
“Since it fell unto my lot,
that I should rise and you should not.”
The note cracked with emotion, but he pushed on.
“I’ll gently rise and softly
call,
‘Goodnight and joy be to you all.’”
A sniff. Then another.
“So fill to me the parting glass—”
His voice broke again. Now she understood. This was his Bridget’s song. A song offered to those who have passed on. Tears formed hot in her eyes as he tried valiantly once more.
“So fill to me the parting—”
Again the lyrics stopped.
“The parting—”
She couldn’t help; she didn’t know the song. She simply held him as the cold wind pounded against them.
“I can’t do this, Cecee,” he whispered.
But from behind them, a woman’s voice began to sing, strong and determined.
“So fill to me the parting glass,
and drink a health whate’er befalls.”
More voices joined the first.
“Then gently rise and softly call,
‘Goodnight, and joy be to you all.’”
The song continued, with voices joining from all around, but at a distance. They must have all stood at the fence of the graveyard, singing to Tavish, and to their own loved ones buried here.
Tavish had stopped singing, and he seemed to have stopped weeping as well. The strength of his neighbors was buoying him up.
“I miss her,” he said quietly, emotion still heavy in his words, as the song continued around them.
“I know you do.” She still missed her parents, though they’d been gone for years and years as well. “You always will. But perhaps now you can find a way to honor the life she lived and begin living yours as you were meant to do.”
His arms settled more firmly around her, pulling her close. “It’s going to hurt more before it hurts less, isn’t it?”
“I believe so.”
“But . . . I’m realizing that it’s a pain I needn’t face alone.” He pushed out a breath and turned them both around. “Can you see them, Cecee?”
“The people singing?”
“Aye.”
She leaned against him, thankful for his strength and his presence. “I’m not at all certain if the shapes I see are people or trees or simply flaws in my vision. But I can hear them. And I can feel them.”
“It’s all my Irish neighbors.” He spoke in a tone of amazement. “Some didn’t even know my Bridget.”
“But they know you. And they care about you.”
His arms wrapped around her. “My family’s here as well.”
“Of course they are.”
“’Twas Ciara who took up the song when I couldn’t continue.” Pain, worry, and gratitude all filled his words. “She’s singing yet, though she’s crying something fierce.”
Ciara Fulton was mourning her own loss, Cecily would wager, something her own family didn’t see or wasn’t aware of.
The chorus continued around them.
“Fill to me the parting glass,
and drink a health whate’er befalls.
Then gently rise, and softly call,
‘Goodnight, and joy be to you all.’”
Such poignant words, tender and heartbreaking all at the same time.
A breath shook from Tavish. “This is every bit as difficult as I feared it would be. More so, truth be told.”
“And you are every bit as strong in the face of it as I knew you would be.”
“I’d not expected anyone to join me,” Tavish said, “standing there like battlements, fortified against the coming onslaught. A man could feel safe conquering anything with such a force at his side.”
His family, his neighbors, were his strength and his support. They would be the same for Finbarr.
While Cecily would miss him terribly after she left, there was some solace in knowing he would not be alone.
Chapter Thirty-one
When Tavish arrived at his parents’ home that night for the weekly O’Connor Sunday supper, Ma threw her arms around him and didn’t let go for what felt like hours. Da looked on, his expression both tender and amused.
“Have I contracted a fatal disease no one’s told me about?” Tavish asked.
“I just love you, m’ boy. You do know that, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” He set his hands at her waist and pulled her a bit away from him. “Has something happened?”
He saw heartache in her expression, but he also saw hope. “You were there, Tavish. You were what happened.”
The graveyard. He managed a fleeting smile, one that felt a bit pulled. “Thank you for standing in support of me. All of you.” He eyed the rest of the room. “’Twas time and past I began making my peace with Bridget’s passing. She’d not have wanted me to be unhappy for so long.”
“Have you been unhappy?” Ma asked quietly. “Truly unhappy?”
“No,” he reassured her. “But I’ve not let myself grieve, and that’s left me hurting more than it needed to. Cecee was right about that.”
Her pinch-browed gaze hadn’t left his face. “You’ve been crying,” she whispered.
“Here and there.” He felt a little foolish admitting that, but there was no point lying. Apparently, the truth of it was clear enough. “Oddly enough, I feel better for it.”
Ma put her arm around him as she walked with him farther into the room. She motioned to the corner, where Finbarr sat with Ian and Biddy’s tiny one on his lap.
“I think your brother needs a cry himself,” she said, keeping the comment between the two of them. “He’s not grieved for his losses, either. This morning is the closest I’ve seen him come to it.”
“I’d imagine it’ll come for him in time.” Tavish only hoped the lad didn’t push it away for years on end. He knew all too well how doing so magnified the burden.
“Ciara’s here,” Ma said.
That stopped him in his tracks, and Ma with him. “She’s come for Sunday supper?”
Ma nodded. “Hugged us all in turn, she did. Said nothing explaining the last months, but I think she’s coming back to us.”
Relief bubbled in his heart. He’d worried for her. “Do you think she’d welcome a hug from her blubbering older brother?”
“I believe she would.” Ma slipped her arm away and gave him a tiny nudge toward the small lean-to that served as the family kitchen.
Ciara was inside, along with Mary, the two gabbing up a storm as they’d once done regularly.
“Thomas spoke of staying,” Mary said as she mashed a bowl of boiled potatoes. “Not in sure terms or like one convinced, but I think he may at least be considering it. Seeing the strength of this town and family today touched him as none of my words managed these past months.”
Tavish kept silent, not wishing to interrupt nor to miss a word. Mary and Thomas, it seemed, might not be leaving Hope Springs. There was at least the possibility.
“I hope you’ll stay,” Ciara said. “We’d miss you if you left.”
Mary didn’t look at her sister, but Tavish felt certain that all her attention was on Ciara. “We’ve missed you these past months. ’Tis a good thing to have you here tonight.”
Ciara turned away but didn’t leave. “It is good to be here.” Her eyes met Tavish’s. He gave her a smile he hoped was welcoming. “I’m wanting to give Tavish a hug,” Ciara said, as if still speaking to Mary though her gaze was on him. “And I couldn’t hug him if I wasn’t here.”
He hooked an eyebrow upward. “Why is it the women in this family are all wishing to hug me tonight? Makes me wonder if you’ve all gone mad.”
Mary looked up from her mashing. Her eyes pulled wide. “Tavish.”
She crossed the room and reached him just as Ciara did. They embraced him, one on either side. He wrapped an arm around each of his sisters. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re rather fond of me.”
Mary stepped away first, rolling her eyes at him. “We love you, you difficult man.”
Tavish looked down at Ciara still holding on to him. “Is that true, Baby Sister?”
“Thank you for singing today
.” Her whisper wavered with emotion.
He gave Mary a quick look. She nodded, understanding without explanation that he meant to slip out with Ciara for a bit of privacy.
He guided her to a near corner far enough from the rest of the family for some degree of quiet. “It’s I who ought to thank you,” he said, keeping a supportive arm around her. “I faltered. I couldn’t push through those words. ’Twas you who took them up in m’ place, who helped me over that barricade.”
“I thought back on our time in New York, to those late nights you spoke of a few weeks ago, when we walked home from the factory together.” Ciara hadn’t spoken of New York in ages. She’d been so young when they’d left, only a few years older than Emma Archer was now. “You sang to me then, whenever I needed comfort and reassurance.”
She had needed more than mere comfort and reassurance, though he hadn’t realized it at the time. Only in a few discussions since coming west had she told him of the misery inflicted on her by some of the other factory girls or the leering and suggestive comments she’d endured from young men on the streets during the last few months they’d lived there. He hoped he had managed to offer her some support.
“I wanted to give you some of that today,” Ciara went on, “a little hope, a little strength. You needed it.” She took a deep breath. “I needed it.”
“And I’ve needed you, Ciara. You’ve been far away these last months.”
She adjusted her position so her arm threaded through his rather than wrapped around him. “I’ve had grief of my own to walk through, but I’m coming out the other side. The singing today helped a bit. ’Twas a good start.”
“It helped me as well.” How he wanted to ask what burden she was carrying so he could ease some of it. He knew instinctively that voicing the question would push her away again. She was choosing to address her troubles without his direct assistance, and he would respect that. “Perhaps we could get together now and then and sing a spell. ’Twould be a welcome release for us both, I’d wager.”
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