by Karen Booth
Eamon pecked Fiona on the cheek, but saved a real kiss for me, right on the lips. “You lasses have fun. Be safe.”
“We will. Don't let my dad drive you crazy. Maybe you and Luke can watch TV or something.”
“No way. This is my chance to pepper your dad with questions you never want to answer.”
Great. “Try to keep things light. He doesn't do well with serious.”
Eamon nodded and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Something tells me we'll be fine.”
If only I could be so certain. Out Fiona and I went into the cold. It was a beautiful day—clear and bright with not much wind, but this was not typical Thanksgiving weather. “God, it's freezing,” I said.
Fiona grabbed my hand. “That's why we need to go exploring. It'll keep us warm. Come on.” She let go of me and ran ahead, Tilly and Sadie following her and leaving paw prints in the snow.
Amy and I brought up the rear, keeping tabs on Fiona. “Stay on the path,” Amy shouted.
Fiona tossed back her head and yelled, “Okay!”
“She's so great,” Amy said. “She makes me want to have kids. Like right away. That wasn't even on my radar, to be honest. Marriage seemed like enough for right now, but she's so sweet and fun.”
“I know. She makes me want to have kids, too. Or maybe just spend more time with her.”
“How are things with her mom? Is it awkward?”
“Surprisingly, it’s not that weird. I mean, I’m pretty sure Rachel still has a thing for Eamon, but maybe that's me being paranoid. And it’s not like it’s a problem. She seems happily married.”
“It'd be hard not to carry a torch for a guy like Eamon. I don't know how you walk around without your tongue dragging on the floor.”
“Very funny. I manage.” Fiona was into the woods now, but was doing a good job staying on the path. The snow we rarely had at Thanksgiving was ankle-deep, and with the sun on its afternoon fall, the shadows of the thousands of trees around us began to shift and swell. It was like being in a carnival fun house. Your eyes could deceive you. The dogs were bounding, nipping at each other, darting off into the trees and rolling in the snow.
“Just stay on the path,” I called to Fiona.
She turned and flashed her bright blue eyes at me. “I’ll be fine.”
And your father will kill me if anything happens to you. “Let's catch up to her,” I said to Amy. “It makes me nervous when she's so far ahead.”
Amy agreed and we walked double-time to close the gap. “What do you think, Fiona? Is this anything like Ireland?”
“There are woods next to Dad's house. I like to explore them, but he doesn't let me go by myself and we don't have any dogs.” Tilly stopped and rounded back to her, endeavoring to stick her nose right in Fiona's face. “I wish Dad would let me get a dog.”
“I always wanted one when I was your age, Fiona, but Grandpa Mark wouldn’t let us get one, either,” I said. “Too much work, apparently.”
The path narrowed, and Fiona led the way, the dogs flanking her on each side and trudging through the snow-covered underbrush. “How could a dog be too much work? That makes no sense,” she proclaimed.
“I agree.” I was next in line in our little parade through the woods. The cold was getting to my face so that I could hardly feel my cheeks, but the rest of my body was warming up.
“What were you like as a girl, Katherine? When you were my age?”
I wasn't quite sure how to answer that question. If any adult had spent too much time analyzing their childhood self, it was me.
“Katherine was bossy.” Amy had apparently decided to chime in.
“I can see that.” Fiona came to a stop where the path forked. “Which way?”
“Left!” Amy and I answered in unison. We never went right. Not any more.
“No one ever says that boys are bossy.” I was desperate to redirect our conversation. Luckily, Fiona hadn't seemed to take issue with us barking orders at her.
Fiona turned around and planted her hands on her hips. “Why is that?”
The dogs stopped and looked at her. Apparently they didn't know the reason either.
“Because men don’t like to think of women as leaders,” Amy said.
“Well, I don’t like them being so stupid. Well, not all men. Dad isn't stupid. Or Luke. Or Grandpa Mark.” Fiona returned to the trail, matter-of-fact.
“I really wasn't that bossy, anyway. The oldest child always seems like that, but it's only because they're older and know more.” I had to stick up for myself.
“What in the world are you talking about?” Amy asked from behind me. “You always set the rules if we were playing a game. You always overruled me when it came to TV. You were always blaming me for things if we got in trouble.”
That brought Fiona to a dead stop. She whipped around, her hair splaying out from under her hat. “What sort of trouble?”
“We broke a neighbor's birdbath once.” Amy was once again lightning fast with her response. She loved telling this story. “We were goofing around in their backyard and we weren't supposed to be back there. Katherine told our mom that we were both responsible, when the truth is that it was all her idea.”
“Now who can't remember things right? It was not my idea. You were obsessed with that red squirrel that used to sit in her back yard. That's why we went over there. So you could try to catch it. I was just the dummy who agreed to it.”
Fiona stood there, looking back and forth at us as we argued about quite literally the stupidest thing ever, something that had happened twenty-five years ago. “Did you ever do anything really bad?” she asked.
Amy and I both gawked at her then we stared at each other, neither of us coming forth with an answer. Had it been really bad? What we did? Our intentions had been good. We were trying to keep our family together.
“Every kid does bad things.” Amy didn't take her eyes off me. There was so much forgiveness on her face every time we talked about this. That was undoubtedly a huge part of why I was attached to her. She understood I'd never meant for things to go so wrong. “It's all about whether or not you're willing to own up to it later. And apologize if necessary.”
“I always say I'm sorry,” Fiona said.
“That's a very good idea,” I said.
“Now let's talk about something fun,” Amy added. I was so relieved. “Fiona, do you know about Katherine's special eyesight?” She pointed down at the snow.
“What kind of special?” Fiona’s eyes were wide with wonder. I loved that about her. She was so open to any idea, no prejudice or prejudgment. Just curiosity.
I crouched down and scooped up a small handful. “Snow comes in all different colors, not just white. There's red and green and orange. Even black. Most people see some slight color variation, especially later in the winter, but I can see it right away.”
“She can see something like a million more colors than you or I can,” Amy added.
Fiona took some of the snow in her hand and held it right in front of her face, seeming perplexed. “Did something happen to you to make your eyes like that?”
I’d wondered that same thing a few times, but I shook my head. “It's the way I was born. Most people have three cones in their eyes for seeing colors. I have four.”
“Pretty cool, huh?” Amy asked.
“It is. But how do I know you aren't fibbing us?”
She sounded a bit like Miles. “A doctor had me tested. He told me that.”
“I can see special things, too.”
“You can?” I asked.
“Yeah. Dad says so. He says I can see hearts.”
I crouched down and looked into her sweet eyes. “You mean people's hearts?”
She pushed aside a strand of her red hair that had peeked out from beneath her hat. “He says I can see when people are bad and people are good. I once told my mum that the gardener had an ugly heart and then they found him peeping in people's windows a few weeks later.”
I loo
ked up at Amy, who bugged her eyes at me. “Huh. Well, maybe you really can see hearts.”
“I can see Amy's. It's purple with yellow and white swirls.” She patted Amy's jacket and then turned to me. “Daddy's is dark red with black stripes.”
“Oh, my. That sounds very colorful. What about mine? What does mine look like?”
Fiona's eyebrows drew together tightly and she stared right into the center of my chest. Her lips were pursed, like she was trying very hard at something. “I can't see yours. I've looked for it, but I can't see it.”
I glanced over at Amy again, who now seemed bewildered. “Katherine sent her heart to the shop for some mending,” she said.
“My heart ran off to the circus. To train lions and elephants.”
“Or maybe it’s hiding.” Fiona cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hello! Katherine’s heart, are you in there?”
I laughed. Fiona was being clever and cute, after all. But on the inside, I felt so helpless, like being here was always going to drag me back into the past. I wanted to look ahead, but everything around me—the house, the cold, the woods—was telling me that it didn’t matter how hard I tried to ignore history. It was always going to be here. Whether I could accept it or not.
Chapter Eighteen
My invisible, quite possibly non-existent heart and I were the last ones inside the house after our hike through the woods. I was doing my best to dig in my heels and prevent a downward spiral, but when a sweet, adorable kid tells you she isn’t sure you have a heart, it sticks to you like glue. It wasn't that I believed Fiona could truly see hearts, but she was an intuitive kid, an old soul. Maybe she saw things in me that no one else could see. The things no one else wanted to see. The parts I’d been desperate to hide. The parts that made it so unbelievable to my sister that Eamon ever saw me as Sunny Girl.
“I’m bloody freezing,” Fiona said, working her spindly legs out of her boots.
Amy hung Fiona’s jacket on the hook. “How about some hot cocoa?”
“Yes, please.” Fiona bounced on her toes in her many layers of socks.
I followed them into the kitchen. Eamon and Dad were sitting at the table, talking and laughing. “What'd I miss?” I asked.
Eamon practically sprang out of his chair and pulled me into his arms. “I missed you.”
“We weren’t gone too long, were we?” I wanted to ask him exactly how certain he was about Fiona’s ability to see the good and bad in a person, but I knew how ridiculous it would sound the instant I said the words.
Eamon shook his head and pressed the back of his warm hand against my icy cheek. “Nah.”
I leaned into his touch, drinking in his body heat. “That feels so good.”
“Cocoa coming up.” Amy ripped open a paper packet and dumped it into a mug.
“Did you and Dad have fun?” I asked Eamon.
“We talked about you the whole time.” He turned and cast my father a conspiratorial look, which made me all kinds of nervous. Once you got my dad talking, he didn’t tend to stop.
“You've got quite a guy here, Katie-boo. Hold on to him.”
“I’ll do my best.” I looked into Eamon's eyes, trying to decipher what in the heck was going on. He and my dad were so happy it was like they'd been huffing helium while Amy, Fiona, and I were gone. But maybe I was seeing things, too stuck on Fiona’s appraisal of the state of my heart.
“Amy, we'll be a few minutes late for cocoa if that's alright.” Eamon was speaking to my sister, but looked at me the whole time. “Katherine and I have something to talk about.”
“We do?”
He took my hand. “Yes. Come on. It won’t take long.”
I nearly stumbled out of the kitchen as Eamon led me through the living room and up the stairs to my room. He ushered me inside and closed the door behind us.
“Eamon, we can't have sex in the middle of the day when everyone is downstairs. The walls are paper-thin and the floors creak like crazy. Everyone will hear us.”
He grinned and took both of my hands. “Had a wonderful talk with your father.” His voice was soft, with a leading inflection. When he spoke to me like that, he could have anything he wanted. Anything.
“Good. I'm glad.” I could only assume they hadn't talked about anything of consequence. He was being so goofy.
“And now that I've asked him a very important question, it's time for me to ask you. Properly.” Eamon dropped to one knee and gazed up at me, still holding on to my hands. “Katherine, I love you. I love you with every bone in my body. Every thought I have is of you. Will you marry me?”
Oh no no no no no. This was not the time for this. Marriage? I wasn’t even sure I had a heart. Plus, I hadn’t told him everything. Not just the details about my mom and the accident, either. That had to come first. If I was going to marry him and spend the rest of my life with him, he needed to know everything. He needed to know the things I hadn’t told Amy. The thing that haunted me every time I looked at my sister, the possible explanation for why my heart was in hiding.
“Oh, Eamon. This really isn’t the right time for this. Not here. Not in this house. Not now.” What I really wanted to say was that this wasn’t the way this should be going. He was supposed to wait for me to find the perfect time to spill my guts.
“You're doing this to me twice? You're turning me down a second time?” His face fell and that made me sink down onto the bed, if only to bridge the gap between us. Every minute he spent kneeling was sheer torture.
“That's not fair. I didn't know you were serious the first time. We've talked about this.”
“Well, I'm absolutely serious right now. There's no pub. No drinking. I asked your father for your hand, Katherine. I’ve never been more serious in my entire life.”
I sucked in a breath, feeling like I would never get enough oxygen. “Eamon, there are things you don't know. Things I need to tell you. About my past. I won't feel right about us moving forward if I don't tell you first.”
He shook his head. “No. Nothing in anyone’s past matters. Either you love me and want to be with me or you don’t.”
“It's not as simple as that. I do love you. And I do want to be with you.” I couldn't take my eyes off him, no matter how hard it was to see his face with such pain across it. Still, I was hyper aware of where I was, and the way my mother's presence made me feel like everything was closing in on me. It was if she was glowering over my shoulder, shaking her head at me.
“I’m starting to think I'm the reason you’re so bloody terrified of marriage. That it's not marriage, but it's marriage to me.”
“No. No. That’s not true.”
“Then what is true, Katherine? Help me understand.”
“I need to tell you something first. About my mom and me.”
“Katherine, your mother is gone. Nothing you say to me will change my mind. I love you. You are the sweetest, most generous, kindest woman in the world and my life isn’t going to be right without you.”
Tears started to leak from the corners of my eyes. “Don’t put me on a pedestal, Eamon. I don’t belong there.”
“Enough.” He ran his hands through his hair. The instant he looked at the door, I knew he was leaving. “I have to get some air.” He rose to his feet, turned the squeaky knob and stormed out. I'd never seen him so hurt. Not even the day we first parted.
Fiona flew into the room. “Where's Dad going? Are we going with him?” She bounced on the edge of the bed.
I crouched down in front of her and took her two tiny hands in mine. “You know I love you, Fiona. Don't you?”
She nodded eagerly, blowing her curly hair from her forehead. “I love you, too.”
“Good. I love your dad, too. I love him a lot. But he and I have to talk. And it might take a while. Are you okay to stay with Aunt Amy?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
I straightened and sucked in a deep breath. “Okay, great. We'll be back as quick as we can.”
Fiona flopped back on the
bed in dramatic fashion. “I’ll be fine.”
I thundered down the stairs, nearly going sideways in the narrow stairwell. Out on the porch, Eamon's motorcycle boots were missing from the line of shoes. Cold hung in the air from his departure. I needed to hustle up. I worked my feet into my boots and grabbed my coat from the old wood tree. “Ames, I need to run out for a bit. Keep an eye on Fiona for me, okay?” I called.
“Got it,” Amy yelled in response.
I hardly had both arms in the sleeves when I burst through the door and slammed it behind me. The cold pinched my cheeks as I zipped up my jacket and coiled a scarf around my neck. I'd just started to warm up and now I was back out in the cold. I followed Eamon's tracks around and behind the house. His strides were ridiculously long. Of course, he was mad, so that might have been part of it. As I looked ahead, I could see that his trail disappeared into the woods. Of course he’d gone that way. Nothing about this could be easy.
I walked double-time hoping to catch a glimpse of him. The sun was dropping down so fast it was like we were having a race. The deep evening chill was settling in. The sky overhead was still clear, but steadily darkening. What was left of the day's rays took the trees in the woods and turned them into spindly blue shadows on the snow. I had such a love/hate relationship with these woods. Amy and I had played for a million hours in them. But the farthest reaches held our darkest memory.
“Eamon,” I called. “Where are you? Wait for me.” My breath came in gasping puffs of white, such a shock to the cold that it hung in the air, not disappearing. No answer from Eamon. He was angry, and I couldn’t blame him.
I headed between the trees, now nearly running on the path. My mind had too much to process, so it all came in a deluge. I love him. Of course I love him. But are we ready for marriage? What if it didn't work? It would kill Fiona. It would kill me. It might kill Eamon. He knows there's something big between us and he doesn’t care, but I have to tell him. I'll feel so much better when I do.
I reached the point where the path split and of course, Eamon had taken the path I hadn't wanted him to. He'd gone right. This one was not well traveled and had tons of rocks, as well as downed trees across it and tangles of dead poison ivy. But at least there were only his tracks in the snow to follow. I would take what I could get right now.