Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Katie?”
A small voice was whispering her name.
“Katie?”
There was no urgency to it, no fear or worry. ’Twas as if someone simply wanted to get her attention.
She tried to open her eyes, but they fought her. A general ache filled her as though she’d worked herself too hard the day before and her body was protesting the effort.
“Katie?” Little hands touched her face; she could make out the feel of each tiny finger. In a flash of understanding she knew who was speaking to her: Ivy.
She worked to move her arm enough to feel about for the girl. Her fingers brushed what felt like a leg next to her.
“Are you awake, Katie?”
Not particularly.
“Ivy, come down from there. Katie needs to rest. And it is your bedtime as well.” Joseph.
A sudden, almost desperate, need grabbed her. She wanted to see him. She wanted him to come sit by her. Though she couldn’t explain the near panic she felt, she couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving her there.
Her voice refused to cooperate. She pried one eye open, struggling with the other. Ivy’s sweet, angel face hovered just above her.
“She’s looking at me, Pompah!”
“Truly?”
Immediate relief filled Katie’s mind. She could hear Joseph’s footsteps approaching. He wasn’t leaving her. She had both eyes open and nearly focused by the time he came within sight.
“How are you, Katie?” he asked. “Do you need anything?”
With effort, she shook her head. All she needed was him, and he was there.
“I’ve been practicing my loop and loops,” Ivy said eagerly. Loop and loops. That was the phrase Ivy used to mean the crocheting Granny had taught her. “Do you want to see?”
Katie smiled and nodded. Ivy all but jumped off the bed and ran from the room. Joseph took Katie’s hand, pulling her gaze back to him. Dark circles shadowed his eyes. Weary lines weighed down his face.
“You look tired.” Her voice was scratchy, her throat sore.
Joseph only smiled. “It is so good to hear your voice again.” He spoke little louder than a whisper.
She was awakening more by the minute, her surroundings growing clearer. Why was she in Joseph’s room? She hurt too much for it to be anything but a lingering illness or rather extensive injuries.
“I am very confused.”
Joseph ran his hand along her cheek. He looked at her as though she were some great treasure. Katie couldn’t recall anyone looking at her in just that way. She wanted to enjoy it, but flashes of something—memories or lingering nightmares, she couldn’t say which—kept pulling her from the moment. Smoke. Fire. Hay.
“There was smoke,” she muttered.
“Don’t think on it now. There’ll be time—”
Her mind filled with the roaring sound of fire consuming everything in its path. She could see the flames. Taste the smoke in her mouth once more. The girls were there. Afraid. In danger.
“Fire.” She heard the fear in her voice.
“No, Katie. The fire’s out. You’re safe.”
She shook her head, but it wouldn’t clear. She didn’t feel safe. “The girls.” Ivy had been there a moment before, safe. But not Emma. “Joseph!” Panic swept over her. “Where’s Emma?” She tried to sit up, but the effort sent scorching pain up her left arm. Even as she dropped back down in agony, her heart raced with fear. “Emma?”
“Emma is fine,” Joseph said. “She’s with Finbarr.”
“Was she hurt? Is she—?” Her voice quivered. She didn’t finish the thought.
Joseph seemed to grasp what she couldn’t quite say. “Emma and Ivy are both whole and unharmed. You saved them both, Katie. They are fine.”
Katie could remember the fire, but not where it had been or when or how it had started. She had clearly not escaped injury, but that was unimportant. The girls were safe. The thought brought immediate relief.
Finbarr had been in the fire too. She remembered him there, but no details beyond that. “Finbarr is well? He wasn’t hurt?”
Joseph hesitated. A knot formed in Katie’s stomach.
“He was injured,” Joseph said after a moment. “But he is recovering.”
There was more he wasn’t saying, she could sense it. She felt at a disadvantage, lying there like an invalid. The same terrible pain shot through her arm when she tried to sit up again.
“My arm hurts.” She groaned out the words.
He nodded. “Let me help you.”
Slowly and carefully, they managed to get her sitting more upright, pillows stacked behind her. The searing pain in her arm continued. She glanced down, but her arm was wrapped so thickly in bandages she could make out nothing but a lump of fabric in the basic shape and length of her arm. The anguish of her injuries was so great she couldn’t tell where the pain ended and where it began.
Joseph gently turned her face toward him with the lightest touch of his fingers. “Can I get you anything? A drink of water? Something to eat? We have medicinal powders to help with the pain.”
“I hope you didn’t pay the Irish price for the powders, Joseph. It’s too dear.”
He smiled a tiny bit. “You have missed quite a lot while you’ve been sleeping. Jeremiah Johnson has renounced the practice of charging an Irish price.”
She was too shocked to even speak, almost unable to think.
“Furthermore, he brought the medicine here free of charge with instructions that his store is entirely at your disposal should you need anything else.”
“I don’t understand.”
Joseph sat on the bed, facing her. “Your efforts at teaching them to be better have paid off.”
If tensions in town were improving, something Joseph had wanted since long before she’d met him, why wasn’t he happy? Her left arm hurt too much to move, so she raised her right hand, brushing her thumb along the dark smudge beneath his eye. “You look so tired.”
He took her hand in both of his and kissed her fingers. She didn’t know what had inspired this affectionate side of him but found she liked it very much.
“This has been a terrible week,” he said. “I don’t think there is a person in all of Hope Springs who isn’t exhausted.”
Again she saw something in his face that told her more had happened than he’d let on, that the past week had held greater difficulties than her injuries and Finbarr’s.
“Look, Katie! Look!” Ivy rushed back inside, a knotted mess of yarn held high in her fist.
She climbed up onto the bed, pushing against her father as she did. Joseph moved to make room for her. He sat with his back against the headboard, directly beside Katie. He only released her hand for a fraction of a moment. Even in her pain and confusion, Katie smiled.
“Mrs. Claire says I’m getting better and better,” Ivy declared, holding up her crocheting for Katie to inspect. “We stayed at her house while you were sleeping. She told me to do my loop and loops so I would stop bothering Emma while she was crying.”
“Emma was crying?”
Ivy paused only long enough for a quick nod. “And I saw Finbarr crying, and Pompah, and Marianne’s mama and papa. Everyone. Mrs. Claire and I did loop and loops, and—”
Ivy rambled on, but Katie didn’t really hear her. Marianne’s name sparked a memory, one as clear as a cloudless morning. She could hear Marianne’s voice. Don’t leave me here. She could hear each word and with it the sound of crackling fire. Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me.
Where was Marianne? Joseph hadn’t said anything about her.
Emotion blurred Katie’s eyes, pricking at her heart. She’d never been one to really believe in premonitions, but in that moment she knew. Without asking. She simply knew.
“Katie?” Joseph whispered as Ivy chattered on.
Katie slowly lifted her eyes. She silently mouthed Marianne’s name.
In a movement so miniscule she almost missed it, he shook his head.
The tears came without warning. Sweet little Marianne.
She’d pleaded not to be left behind. Katie could still hear her frightened voice. Don’t leave me here.
The memory of Marianne’s words mixed with the echo of poor Eimear’s voice from so many years earlier.
Katie, I’m cold.
Don’t leave me.
I’m cold.
Two little girls she was supposed to protect. Two sweet children who had depended on her. Trusted her. Both were dead. Both of them. It was her fault. Again. It was all her fault.
Her breath shuddered through her. She ignored the pain, simply allowing the grief to crash over her like a punishing wave. Joseph put his arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Tears rolled over her cheeks and down her chin.
“Ivy,” Joseph interrupted her chattering, “would you go ask Mrs. Smith to bring Katie something to eat?”
Katie buried her face further into Joseph’s sleeve, hoping Ivy wouldn’t see her tears. The child had clearly witnessed too much crying over the past days. She heard Ivy climb off the bed, her footsteps fading.
She and Joseph sat a moment, neither speaking. Katie had no words. Joseph, she imagined, was searching for the right ones.
“I don’t know that it helps at all, but it happened very quickly.” He lightly rubbed her upper arm as he spoke, the gesture gentle and caring. “She was gone in an instant, we are absolutely certain of it. There was no suffering, no pain.”
But there was still the inescapable fact that another small child she might have saved was dead, was likely already lying in the frozen ground. How vividly she remembered helping her father dig her sister’s tiny grave.
I should have been faster. I shouldn’t have wasted time with words. I should have . . . I should have . . .
She sobbed, sending shards of pain through her ribs.
Joseph kept her at his side, silently smoothing her hair with his fingers. He didn’t speak, didn’t offer empty words of comfort. He simply held her as she cried.
She opened her mouth to ask him to stay with her. But the words died even as they echoed in her mind in Marianne’s frightened voice. Don’t leave me.
Katie could do nothing but weep as her heart broke irreparably in two.