She wasn’t alone now.
Damn, but Sully was proud of Persy.
Nettie looked away for a few moments, then checked her watch—a nice watch, Sully noticed, with a diamond face.
“I must leave. I have another appointment that simply cannot be missed. I’m pleased to hear you won’t be staying much longer. I’m sure the rest of the village feels the same.”
Nettie turned to go, but Theresa spoke up. “That’s where you’re wrong. The rest of the village realized long ago that they were in the wrong. They’ll no doubt be here in the morning, once they learn Persy’s here, begging her forgiveness. Then it’ll be you who’s left holding a grudge for no good reason. This is your chance, Nettie. You won’t get another. Not even if Persy comes back to visit, because I’ll never let you step foot near her again.”
Silence, thick and heavy, filled the room. It was quiet; just the ticking of the clock over the fireplace, and Nettie’s staggered breaths.
Nettie lifted her chin up and rolled back her shoulders. “Perfectly fine with me. If everyone else chooses to be blind, there’s little I can do about it. Good evening.” She strode out of the room, Bill following as close as he could on crutches. Eventually, the front door opened and closed, and he returned.
“She’s gone.”
Persy and Theresa let out a sigh, and they all sat down again.
“I’m sorry, Persy, but she’s not likely to change.”
“I know, Ma. I’d hoped but I can’t say I’m surprised.” Persy turned to Sully. “Thank you. For everything.”
He brushed her hair back. He’d wanted to do more and didn’t know how. He hoped that wasn’t a bad sign for his ability to be in a relationship. “Didn’t do much, honey, but I wish I could have done more.”
“Your ‘not much’ was still a whole lot. In fact, it was everything. When you got in her face and threatened her, I can’t tell you what that meant to me.” She pressed a quick kiss to his lips and he snuggled her tighter against him.
Theresa hid a smile behind her hand. “Yes. Though I don’t condone bullying, I was glad to see it myself. Every time I’ve seen her in the village since you left, she’s been just the same. I hope this is the end of that.”
For all their sakes, Sully hoped so, too. “Do you really think that the whole village will come ’round in the morning?”
Theresa nodded. “Nettie never could keep her mouth shut. No doubt she’ll be on the phone to anyone who’ll listen about what happened here. Oh!”
Persy shifted slightly in his arms in order to reach out to her ma. “What is it, Ma?”
“I haven’t got enough biscuits in the house for all those people to come calling.” She burst up from her seat, grabbing Persy by the arm and dragging her up with her.
“You’ll have to help me. We’ll be up all night baking at this rate.”
“Ma!”
“Theresa, shouldn’t we eat dinner first?”
“Oh! Dinner. I’d completely forgotten.” She rushed to the kitchen, Persy giving Sully an resigned look before she was dragged away.
Sully turned to Bill. “How early will people come to visit?”
Bill relaxed in his chair and sighed. “Too early. And I say that as a farmer used to getting up well before dawn.”
That’s what he’d figured.
They had indeed come early, Persy mused as she took another tray of biscuits from the oven, and deftly swung in another tray in to be baked. Thus far, twenty had come by, which meant she’d had to have tea and biscuits with all of them.
She never thought it could happen, but she may never eat another biscuit again after this.
The bright side was that everyone had been kind, not like Nettie. They’d asked for forgiveness, and she had granted it, whether or not she’d meant it. Maybe it was small of her, but it was hard to forget the hurtful words they’d all hurled at her. Maybe she just needed more time before she could forgive.
Or maybe she should just accept the past for what it was, and not worry about forgiving at all.
“Another batch?” Sully sauntered in and popped one off the hot tray.
“How can you eat another? It might be years before I eat one after today.”
He smiled. “That’s too bad because these are the best biscuits I’ve ever had. It’d be a shame if I didn’t get to enjoy them in the future.”
“Oh.” She’d never thought herself a particularly good baker or cook in general. She was oddly pleased by the compliment. “Thank you. They’re my ma’s recipe.”
He leaned in closer. “But it was your hands that made them.”
She flushed. “Yes.”
“Do me a favor. When we meet my ma, don’t tell her what I said about the biscuits. She might not like me as much if I told her I prefer another mother’s biscuit recipe—and another woman’s hands making them—to hers.”
She smiled back. “I won’t.”
“Good.” He rubbed a hand down her back. “How are you doing?”
She went back to the tray and started shifting the biscuits onto a cooling rack. “Okay. I’ll be glad when lunchtime comes around, though.”
“Hungry?”
She shook her head. “They’ll leave us alone for lunch. The people, I mean. They’ll be back afterwards, though, for more tea and biscuits.” She grimaced.
“We could leave, if you wanted. Take a drive, or even take a walk. Get a break from all this.”
“No, it’s not right to leave it all to my parents to deal with. No, I’ll stay. I like that idea, though. Maybe we could go for walk later.”
“Did you want to stay another day? Will you need to, that is?”
She looked up, startled. “Oh. Did you need to get back to Valleria? I can—”
“No, nothing like that. I just wanted to give my ma a call, let her know when we’d be coming by.”
“Of course.” She frowned and finished with the tray. She lined it with a fresh sheet of parchment and began placing some more biscuit dough, which had already been cut out and was ready for the oven.
“Honey? You can take as long as you need. My ma will understand if we can’t spend a lot of time with her. Even if it’s only an hour, she’ll understand.”
She placed another piece of dough on the tray, then wiped her hands on her apron. “It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“I wanted to see Molly before we left.”
He stepped closer. “Honey.”
“That was a silly thing to say, wasn’t it? That I wanted to ‘see’ Molly? I’ll never see her again, I know—”
“There’s not a damn thing silly about it. Like I said, take all the time you need.”
She looked down at the dining table, covered with bowls and flour and trays of baked and unbaked biscuits. “It’s just, with all these people coming ’round, I can’t…I don’t want to see her and then face them, too. Does that make sense?”
“Of course it does. You want some time alone after you see her. Hard to do that with everyone coming ’round for tea.”
She sighed in relief. Thank God he’d understood. “That’s almost right, except for the bit about being alone.” She rubbed her lips together for a moment. “Will you go with me? To see Molly?”
He stepped even closer and tucked her hair behind her ear; she loved it when he did that. It was such a simple gesture, but it made her feel loved and cherished.
“Of course, honey.”
“Well, if most everyone visits today, we could probably go tomorrow, before lunch.”
“All right.”
“And then leave for your ma’s the day after?”
“Two days, three days—it doesn’t matter. Take your time. When you know, you’ll know.”
He made everything so easy. She’d forgotten what that was like. She’d forgotten what it meant to have someone there to help and care, someone else vested in her happiness.
It felt good. It felt right.
He felt right.
; She still had some random splashes of flour and dough on her, but she moved to him, into him; she knew he wouldn’t care. She lifted up on her toes and wound her arms around his neck, her hands away from his head as she tried her best not to smear his gorgeous dark hair with flour.
“Thank you.” She leaned in to kiss him, slow and sweet. She forgot she was in her parent’s kitchen. She forgot she was entertaining a constant stream of people, who’d no doubt established a schedule amongst themselves as to when to visit. She forgot everything but him.
Persy vaguely heard the sound of low-heeled shoes hitting the kitchen floor, followed by a hissed, “Persy!”
Persy blinked and turned her head. She caught her mother’s exasperated expression and blushed.
“No point in feeling shame now, Persephone Norton.”
“Theresa?”
Theresa spun around and ducked her head out of the kitchen. “Oh, just sit back down, Tara. No need to get up. We’ll have the tea ready in just a minute.”
Theresa spun around again, the smile she’d plastered on her face fading into annoyance. “Get a move on, Persy. You don’t want her to come in and catch you two snogging.”
“We were just—”
“I know what you were just, but now is not the time for that sort of thing.”
Persy vaguely wondered when would be the time, since they were both constantly surrounded by people and had supposedly slept apart. Her mother hadn’t allowed her and Sully to sleep in the same bed, though Sully had snuck into her room just the same. They’d only held each other, but that had been exactly what she’d needed after such an emotional day.
She sighed. “I’ll get the tea, Ma.”
“Good. Sully, won’t you be a dear and find Bill for me? He always disappears on ‘farm business’ whenever Tara comes around, but tell him she’s brought her husband this time, and I’m sure as not going to be entertaining him on my own. Try the barn first, if you will.”
Sully smiled. “Of course.” He gave Persy a kiss on the head, then headed out through the back door towards the barn.
“How do you know Da’s in the barn?”
Her mother snorted, a sound she didn’t think she’d ever heard from her ma. “That’s where he always goes. He’s always buying broken down equipment, thinking he can fix it and sell it for a few dollars more. Thing is, he never does fix anything much less sell it; all he does is end up pouring more money into trying. It’s throwing good money down the drain, if you ask me. He knows I don’t approve, so he started hiding them in the barn.”
She blinked. She couldn’t believe she’d never known this about her father. He’d never wanted her to help on the farm, always said that ‘girls help their mothers’ and if he had a son, he’d be the one to learn the farm. She’d helped out here and there, of course, but had rarely gone into the barn. “I never knew.”
“That’s because we had a right row about it when you were still a babe, and after that he learned to keep it a secret, though he was never very good at that, either.”
“But I’ve been in the barn before. I don’t remember seeing useless equipment everywhere.”
“He does hide it well. Smaller pieces are up in the loft, along with his tools. The rest are in a stall, well covered.”
She kind of wanted to go to the barn, too, and take a look.
“Uh-uh-uh.” Her mother was waving a finger. “Tea. Biscuits. Now, if you please.” She sighed. “Maybe we’ll make some soda bread for the afternoon callers. I don’t think I can manage a whole afternoon of biscuits.”
As she turned and walked out, Persy smiled wide.
If she couldn’t spend the day with Sully, at the very least, she much preferred some soda bread to another tray of biscuits.
Chapter Eleven
The gravestone was more weathered than she’d expected to find it. A simple slab of gray stone on the ground, now worn by time and the earth. It had changed, and she hadn’t been here to see it.
She felt as though she’d let Molly down again.
She brushed away some leaves and grass clippings, then glanced over at Sully, sitting nearby. She’d asked him for some time and he’d easily given it.
She sat down and took a few minutes to trace the etching of her baby’s name, and the year of her life. She took longer to trace ‘Beloved Daughter’.
She didn’t know when the tears started. Slow and soft, like the rain around her, then they became more steady and began to drip onto the hard stone and the ground around it.
Her baby.
Her baby.
Her fault.
She still thought it. Even though her heart knew it wasn’t true, her head still sent her down that path of despair.
She sat back, her legs tucked under her, covered her face with her hands, and cried. Her soul heavy, her heart crushed.
Molly, Molly, Molly.
God, Molly.
She remembered the way Molly would smile, toothless and sweet. Her russet curls—God, they’d been so soft—had just started growing in when it had happened.
But some things were getting harder to remember, and the guilt for that lay heavy within her, too. She could recall her pale little fingers, but not the curve of her fingernails; were they square or round or oval? She could remember the color of her eyes, but not the exact shape. She’d even hidden all her pictures away, which would be the only way she could confirm now. But a photograph couldn’t take the place of a memory.
She was the only one left to really remember, and she felt as though she were letting Molly down.
“Perse.”
She gasped and fell back as she twisted towards the voice, her palms resting on the damp grass behind her. “T-Tom.”
She looked up, up, up into his almond-shaped eyes.
She gasped again. Molly. Molly’d had almond-shaped eyes, she remembered now. She’d had the shape of her father’s eyes.
He held out a hand. “Can I help you up, Perse?”
A pair of strong arms—Sully’s, she knew—came from behind to lift her up.
Sully then shifted her behind him. “Can we help you?”
“It’s Tom,” she whispered.
Sully relaxed, but only slightly. “Officer Ronan Sullivan. I’m in love with Persy.” He held out his hand.
She sucked in a breath. He loved her?
Wait a minute. He loved her, and he told her ex as part of some pissing contest before telling her?
Hell no.
She shoved him aside. “Did you think about telling me that first?”
Sully’s eyes stayed on Tom. “You knew.”
“Did you ever say those words to me?”
“You knew.”
“Sully.”
His eyes turned down to her, and they were more intense than she’d ever seen before. “You knew, honey. I’ll say it to you every day for the rest of our lives if you need me to, but you should know it down to your bones. Get me?”
She swallowed. “Yes, Sully.”
He nodded once, then turned back to Tom. “Good. Tom, you came here to find Persy, didn’t you?”
Her mouth popped open. “You did?”
Tom’s eyes flicked between her and Sully. “Yeah, Perse, I did. Could we talk?”
She put a hand on Sully’s arm just as he opened his mouth to speak. “It’s all right, Sully.”
“Persy—”
“Please? I think I should.”
He pursed his lips but nodded.
“Thanks. Tom, why don’t we go over to that bench? Sully, would you keep Molly company?”
Sully’s gaze softened, and he reached for her hand, giving it a squeeze. “Sure, honey.”
She squeezed back. “Thanks.”
She and Tom walked over to a black, wrought iron bench. It was wet from the rain, but that didn’t bother her and it didn’t seem to bother him, either.
They sat in quiet for a minute, next to each other but not touching, each looking anywhere but at each other.
To
m spoke first, still looking away. “You look good, Perse, but then you always did.”
She glanced at him, really taking him in for the first time. He still had his long, lean build. His hair—the shape and color just like Molly’s, she remembered—was longer, but it suited him. She noticed he was wearing a suit. For her?
“You’re looking well yourself. I heard you’d left the village.”
He frowned. “Yes, that’s true. Listen, I want to apologize for what my ma said to you.”
The words still felt like a cut that hadn’t healed. “It’s all right.”
He looked at her, his eyes fierce. “It’s not. It’s not all right. You shouldn’t be spoken to that way. I told her as much myself.”
“I didn’t mean to come between you and your mother.”
“You didn’t. It’s my fault she’s like this, that she treated you this way.”
“Tom—”
“No! It’s true.” He stood up and started pacing, his shiny shoes squishing in the wet grass. One of his hands wove erratically through his hair, while the other fisted on his hip.
He whirled around to her. “She blames you because I blamed you.”
It was still a punch to the gut, even after all this time. “I know you blame me. I understand.”
He shook his head and started pacing again. “I did blame you. After it happened…after it happened I was such a fucking mess. I needed something, someone to blame and you were closest. After you left me…”
He stopped, slumped onto the bench, and sighed. “Christ, I was an ass. You were right to leave me, leave the village. I knew everyone was blaming you, just like I was. I shouldn’t have done. More than that, I should’ve stood up for you and told them all to go to hell.”
Her throat had gone dry. He didn’t blame her anymore? “That means a lot to me, that you’d say that.”
“I should’ve said it years ago.”
She looked down at her damp hands. It was still raining, but she hadn’t noticed. “I felt like I was all alone. Everyone was grieving yet no one was grieving with me, they were grieving at me, if you catch my meaning. They were acting just like you: needing to blame someone and I was handy. I know that. Then, when we divorced, another layer of shame was put on me. My ma realized that. We’ve made up.”
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