Chapter Thirty-Three
Joseph sat on a chair beside his bed, listening to the clock tick and the sound of Katie struggling to breathe. His precious girls slept on the floor, wrapped in blankets. They’d refused to leave despite his insistence. He’d not said anything about it, but they seemed to sense that Katie’s life was hanging in the balance.
He held her broken hand between both of his, the pain in his heart only growing. She needed a doctor, but the closest one was a two-day drive away and the roads leading to the depot wouldn’t be passable until winter was over.
He gently kissed the tips of her fingers, the only part of her hand he hadn’t wrapped in bandages. So many bones were broken, but he didn’t know how to set them or how to piece the rest of her back together.
The sound of her struggling for air had been his constant companion for hours. She likely had broken ribs and lungs full of smoke and ash. The girls coughed a lot as well, though they’d not been crushed by the falling barn as Katie had. They were already sounding better. Katie only looked worse.
“I don’t know how to make her well again.” He didn’t know if it was a prayer or if he was simply so out of his mind with fear that he was talking to himself. “I can’t breathe for her. I can’t give her my hand.”
Her hand. If she lived through this, her hand would still be as broken and disfigured as her feet. More so, in many ways. How much tragedy would life require her to endure?
“How is she, Joseph?” Reverend Ford asked from the doorway.
“She needs a doctor,” Joseph said.
“I’m afraid I don’t have one of those.” His footsteps drew closer.
“Then she’ll need a miracle—or are you fresh out of those as well?”
Reverend Ford stood at the foot of the bed, watching Katie with a somber expression. Did the preacher see death hovering in her features as clearly as Joseph did?
Mrs. Smith came inside, carrying a steaming teapot. They had established a familiar pattern over the night’s watch: Mrs. Smith would make a concoction of herbs and water, then bring the teapot up to fill the air with soothing steam. It did seem to help, if only a little. His opinion of his housekeeper was not generally high, but he was grateful for her that night.
“The young lady’s coloring seems a little better, Mr. Archer.” He knew enough of Mrs. Smith’s bluntness to know she meant what she said.
He didn’t see any change, but took some comfort in the possibility that Katie’s condition had improved at all.
“Now you men step outside the room. I’ve a poultice to replace.”
Joseph kissed Katie’s fingers one more time before laying her bandaged hand on the bed beside her. He didn’t know exactly what Mrs. Smith’s poultice contained, but if there was any chance it would help, he would happily be thrown from his room again and again for days on end.
He waited for Reverend Ford to step out before closing the door behind them both. He leaned against the wall, letting it hold his weight. The strength to stand on his own had disappeared in the dark of early morning, many hours ago.
Joseph rubbed his face, fighting angry, exhausted, desperate tears. He had to hold himself together. His girls would be awake soon. They would need him. And Katie had no one to care for her but him. The Irish were still trapped across the river.
“I would be happy to sit up with Miss Macauley. You need to sleep.”
“I can’t.”
“Your housekeeper and I can tend to—”
“It isn’t that. I can’t sleep. I have tried, and I can’t.” He tipped his head back, taking in a deep breath. “It is there in my mind. Every time I close my eyes, I see it again. I hear it. The sound of the barn giving way. The sight of Emma not quite outside and me knowing I couldn’t possibly get to her in time.”
That moment would likely haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Then, suddenly, Katie was there, pushing Emma clear.”
“Miss Macauley was your miracle tonight, Joseph. No one even knows how she got across the river.”
Or how she knew the girls were in the barn.
“For just that moment, I was so relieved.” His heart dropped at the memory. “Then I watched as the walls fell and she was trapped. And I thought, as we were digging her out, that if we could just get her clear, everything would be fine. But when we found her, she was so broken. She was hardly breathing. I thought—for a few terrible seconds, I was certain she was dead.”
His entire world had ended in that moment.
He could only just push the smallest of breaths past the lump in his throat. He paced away. His mind had struggled all night to comprehend the enormity of what had happened.
“You said people would die if this feud was left unchecked.” Reverend Ford’s voice was soft and heavy. “I confess I dismissed your words as irrational and angry. I should have done more.”
If the preacher was looking for words of comfort or assurance that he had done enough, he wouldn’t be hearing them from him. Joseph had spent years trying to warn the town against the path they were treading. He’d given up friendships and companionships trying to save them from themselves.
Now this.
“Has anyone confessed to setting the fire?” he asked.
The preacher looked uncomfortable. “No.”
“How very typical.” He paced away, unable to keep still. “An innocent child is dead. A sixteen-year-old boy is hovering near that precipice as well. A warmhearted and loving woman lies in that room fighting for her very life. All because someone set a fire in the name of a senseless feud. A child is dead, Reverend. Dead, and still they cling to their loyalties.”
Reverend Ford paled, his eyes growing more red-rimmed.
“One of their own killed one of their children, and it’s not enough to change a single thing.” He spun about. “How many of this town’s children will they bury before they’ve finally had enough?”
He left Reverend Ford standing alone in the hallway. His emotions were in such turmoil, he didn’t trust himself not to lash out with more than words. The man didn’t deserve it, not entirely. He had been there the night before trying to talk sense into them. The preacher had taken a stand, late though it was. Perhaps nothing could have prevented that night’s tragedy.
Joseph rapped lightly on the guest room door and heard a muffled invitation to enter. The room was as dim and cheerless as his own, the poor soul on the bed as still as Katie.
“How is Finbarr?”
Matthew Scott, his own head still bandaged from the blow he’d taken only a week earlier, sat near the bed. “He’s breathing, but that’s about all I can say for him.”
Joseph stood at the head of the bed, looking down at the boy. He was almost unrecognizable, his face swollen and bruised and burned. They’d treated his injuries as best they could, but they could only do so much.
“How is our Katie?” Matthew asked.
“Not any better.”
“I should’ve gone with him,” Matthew said. “While the Reds were here chewing your ear off about this feud, Finbarr told me he saw Bob Archibald sneaking in through the back of the house, looking guilty as sin, but he didn’t know what about. He said he meant to go have a look around.” Matthew shook his head, mouth pulled tight. “I should’ve gone looking with him. It’s too much to ask of a lad.”
Bob Archibald. Joseph had suspected him all along. Fire was the man’s weapon of choice. Everyone knew that.
“You couldn’t have known about the fire,” he said.
“They were nearly out,” Matthew said. “Katie was but a step from safety. Finbarr was right on her heels with the poor little Johnson girl. They were so close.”
Joseph leaned his forehead against the tall post of the headboard as images flooded over him again, unbidden and unwelcome. They’d found Finbarr practically touching Katie, he was so near her. He had Marianne in his arms, shielding her tiny body. He’d clearly tried to save her from the weight of the falling walls and vicious flames, but they’d tumbled to the ground wrong. Marianne’s neck was broken. She was dead, likely in the very instant the barn fell on them.
They were so close.
Marianne was Emma’s dearest and closest friend. They were little peas in a pod, oftentimes giggling outside school or church. Only by chance had Emma escaped with her life when her friend had not. That chance would eat away at him; he knew it would. And it would plague his sensitive little Emma. Would she blame herself the way Katie did for her sister’s death? The thought weighed on him.
“I wish Finbarr’s parents could be here,” Matthew said.
Joseph knew the details of the night’s tragedy had been shouted across the river to the Irish families who had come when they saw flames licking the sky. The O’Connors would know the graveness of Finbarr’s injuries. He couldn’t imagine being separated from either of his daughters in the aftermath of all that had happened.
Joseph set himself to the task of changing the bandages on the side of Finbarr’s face. He knew little about treating burns beyond the absolute necessity of keeping them clean. The boy didn’t even wince as the bandages tugged at his wounds.
Matthew followed his lead and checked the bandaging on Finbarr’s chest and arm. They worked in heavy silence. There seemed no sufficient words for that night’s suffering.
“Papa?”
He spun on the instant, determined to shield Emma from the sight of Finbarr’s injuries. She was too sensitive, too attached to the boy. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart. In your own bed or back in the room with Katie, either one, but you need to go to sleep.”
She walked directly to the opposite side of the bed, not giving him a chance to reach her first. Her sweet angel face paled as she looked at Finbarr. She reached out her hand to touch the boy’s face.
“Very gently, Emma,” he instructed. “You must be very, very gentle.”
She brushed her fingers ever so softly along his right cheek. His left side had taken the brunt of the falling building and the fire.
She coughed but never looked away from Finbarr. “Is he going to die, Papa?”
Joseph took a sharp breath in through his nose, trying to maintain his composure. “I don’t know, Emma.”
She kept her fingers on Finbarr’s cheek. The boy was such an odd combination of friend and brother to her, the first boy to touch her heart. She must hurt to see him so injured.
“Katie sounds like she is dying,” Emma whispered. “Like her body won’t let her breathe.”
“I know.” He blinked back a tear. If he broke down, Emma would be even more frightened than she already was. “We’re doing everything we can for her, I promise you.”
She looked up at him for the first time since seeing Finbarr. “Where is Marianne, Papa?”
He hadn’t expected to have this conversation with her yet. He hadn’t decided what to say. She watched him with those hurting and painfully hopeful eyes as he moved to her side. He knelt on the floor, looking directly at her and searching for the right words.
“Finbarr tried very hard to get Marianne from the barn.” He swallowed against the painful thickness in his throat. “The fire spread very fast, and the walls couldn’t keep standing after being burned so much. They—”
Emma put her hand over his mouth. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Her voice broke and, with it, his heart. She had lost too many people in her short life.
“Tell me when you do want to talk, sweetheart.”
She nodded, then turned away from him, facing the bed again. “I want to help Finbarr.”
Joseph took her hand. “Emma, darling, there is nothing you can do.”
Her expression only grew more determined. “I want to help him.”
The stubbornness of her declaration only made the hopelessness of the situation all the more poignant. If only there was a task he could give her, anything to make her feel less helpless.
“Can I hug him?” She turned her eyes to Joseph, clearly expecting to be denied.
“His body is very broken, dear. A hug might hurt.”
She shook her head. “I can be careful. I won’t hurt him, I promise. I wouldn’t ever hurt him.” A tear escaped the corner of her eye. “I love him, Papa.”
Joseph wiped the moisture from her cheek with his thumb. “I know, Emma.”
“I’ll be very soft,” she promised.
He couldn’t deny her this small thing. It couldn’t possibly make Finbarr’s condition worse. Joseph lifted her up so she could sit on the edge of the bed. With utmost care, Emma scooted across. She slowly lowered herself to Finbarr’s side. She tucked herself in the cradle of his arm, resting next to him with one of her arms across his chest.
“Let her stay with the lad a moment,” Matthew whispered, having come around the bed to Joseph’s side. “It might give him a bit of comfort, and her as well.”
Joseph’s heart broke for his poor girl.
“I’ll keep a watch over them both,” Matthew added. “You go sit with your Katie again.”
“My Katie?”
Matthew didn’t explain. He just motioned Joseph toward the door and retook his seat beside the bed.
He’d only just reached the doorway when Emma started to hum, the effort marred now and then with the need to clear more ash from her lungs. Joseph stood, listening. It was Katie’s tune, the one her father had always played for her, the one Katie so often played for the girls to help them sleep. In her pain, Emma had once again turned to Katie for comfort.
She needs Katie. I need Katie. If I can’t help her, how will I live without her?
Reverend Ford had left. The hallway was empty. Joseph stood at his bedroom door, watching Katie lying still on his bed. If only something would change, anything to give him a reason to hope.
Mrs. Smith noticed him after a moment. “Did Emma find you?”
He nodded. In the short silence that followed, he listened to Katie breathe. Hers was not the occasional cough that plagued Emma and Ivy. Every breath Katie took was a struggle. “She doesn’t sound any better.”
“Nor any worse,” Mrs. Smith said. “She’s as tough as nails.”
“In some ways, yes.” But Katie was also fragile at times. She’d been hurt too often and too deeply not to carry scars inside and outside.
Mrs. Smith vacated her seat, allowing him to resume his post. He scooted the chair close enough so he could hold Katie’s hand again. Ivy still slept in a ball on the floor nearby, wrapped tightly in a quilt.
“I’ll confess, Mr. Archer, I didn’t much care for Miss Macauley when I first arrived. It seemed everywhere I turned I was met with reminders of how she’d done things here and how perfect she’d been.” Mrs. Smith’s tone had lost much of its usual sternness, taking any insult from her words. “I resented her for that and, though it shames to me admit it, I took that frustration out on the girls, speaking to them more sharply than I ought to have spoken. But I’ve come to realize something. She really was perfect for your family in ways I never could be. The family I’d worked for the past years was not a loving one, and I was ill-prepared to fit into a household like yours. She stood as a constant reminder that I wasn’t fitting in here, and I disliked her for it.”
Joseph looked down at Katie. “She scolded the preacher on her very first week in Hope Springs. And Seamus Kelly. And Bob Archibald. And Jeremiah Johnson. I have been informed of the error of my ways as well.” He managed the tiniest of smiles at the memories. “She sets us straight when we need it. She has something of an iron will at times.”
“But with a heart soft as warm butter, it would seem.” Mrs. Smith left on those very insightful words, leaving Joseph alone with his thoughts.
He moved to the bed, sitting on the very edge. He brushed a hand over her hair. “You do know, Katie, that you aren’t allowed to give up, don’t you? Even if you choose Tavish, even if you decide to go back to Ireland after all, you have to pull through this.”
Her next breath seemed to catch a moment. Her expression hadn’t changed in all the hours she’d been lying on the bed, but it did in that instant. Her brow creased and her eyes scrunched tight. The color drained even more from her lips. The look was one of sheer, unrelieved pain.
“I’m here, Katie.” He brushed his thumb over the lines of agony etched in her face. A tear escaped her eyes. Joseph kissed it away. “I’m here, Katie. I won’t leave you.”