Chapter Forty-Three
People, Katie had been told, kept lists of their favorite moments and brightest days. Her life had contained so few bright moments, the idea of tracking them had never occurred to her. But standing in the guest bedroom at the Johnsons’ home the morning of her wedding day, she felt certain that day would live forever as the best of her life.
Mrs. Johnson had delivered a healthy son less than a month after the fire. They’d named the boy Connor Gabriel. Connor in honor of Finbarr O’Connor, for his efforts to save Marianne, and Gabriel in honor of Mr. Johnson’s late brother. The family still carried the weight of mourning, but there was a bond there that gave Katie hope they would eventually emerge, if not whole, closer to one another.
They had offered their home for her to make her wedding preparations, as it sat closer to the church than any other building in town. She wore the boots they’d given her as a gift in the aftermath of the tragedy. The women on the Irish Road had made the sky-blue dress she wore. Joseph’s shawl hung about her arms, adding an elegance she was grateful for and the feeling that he was there even in the last moments of her life without him.
She had mostly recovered in the two months since being trapped beneath the remains of his barn. Her broken arm and hand no longer hurt when she moved them. She’d even relearned how to do quite a few things. She could breathe without pain. The burns she’d sustained were little more than still-pink scars.
Through it all, Joseph had been at her side, doing anything and everything she asked, more even. Though she’d moved back to Granny’s home three weeks after the fire, he had visited her every day without fail.
There would be no more visiting. They would be together.
Katie smiled at herself in the tall mirror. Life had often been cruel, but it had brought her to this moment, to a measure of happiness she had never known before. For that she was grateful.
A knock sounded at the bedroom door, a knock she knew without having to even think on it. ’Twas the exact rhythm Joseph tapped out on a door.
Katie crossed the room and pulled the door open enough to peek out. She gave him a teasing look of reprimand. “You were supposed to go to the church, Joseph Archer. I do believe you’re lost.”
He quirked an eyebrow, even as one corner of his mouth pulled up. “I know exactly where the church is, Katie, and I fully intend to be there today. But one of the ranch hands from up the road just returned from the train depot.”
“He traveled there in the winter?” After more than two months of cold and snow, Katie had gained a deep respect for the severity of a Wyoming winter.
“I know. They’re a little crazy out on the ranches.” He smiled. “Nonetheless, he brought back something you need to see.”
“On my wedding day? It must be particularly important.” Her teasing tone dropped off as his expression grew inarguably serious. “What is it?”
“May I come in?”
She nodded and pulled the door open.
He stepped inside, dressed in his Sunday suit. “The ranch hand left this at the house. It—” Joseph’s eyes widened, his words trailing off. “You look beautiful.”
Heat crept up her neck at the intensity of his gaze. “Did you push your way in here to tell me that?” If she could tease him, she might not blush quite so hard.
He shook off his distraction and pulled a folded bit of paper from his jacket pocket. “There was a letter at the post office for me, with one inside it for you.”
“A letter for me?” Only one person ever wrote to her. Mother. Katie’s heart fell to her feet. Father had not been expected to live out the year. Was this the news she had dreaded hearing?
She looked to Joseph, pleading silently with him. She couldn’t bear to hear such a thing on today of all days.
Joseph came to her side and wrapped an arm around her. “I received a letter that explained this one. I would not have brought it today if it was a painful thing.”
Katie nodded, breathing through the tension in her lungs. “Will you read it to me?”
“Of course, darling.”
She sat on the oak chest at the foot of the bed, preparing herself for whatever the letter might contain. “It is from my mother, isn’t it?”
Joseph’s gaze was steady and reassuring. “No, Katie. It is from your father.”
Her breath caught. A fierce uncertainty clasped her heart. Father. He had never written to her nor sent a single word of greeting in the nineteen years since she’d seen him last. Not once. Not ever.
Joseph unfolded it.
“My dear Katie,
“I hope this letter finds you well. Though I know you to be a woman grown, when I close my eyes to sleep at night I see you as the wee girl you once were. I worry for you and think of you every day. It’s twenty years since I lost you, the last child I had in my keeping. I regretted the boys’ leaving. I mourned your poor sister’s passing. But you, my brave little bird—losing you hurt like nothing before or since.
“The priest and the doctor both say I haven’t long for this world, and I find my mind reflecting on the years of my life. I think back on the letters your mother sent to you and the words you sent us in return. I think of all the times you asked after me, and I, coward that I am, could not bring myself to answer. I tried, Katie. Heaven forgive me, I tried but couldn’t bear it. I’d failed you, left you to the keeping of strangers and the unkindness of a cruel world. My heart smote me for doing that to my dear girl and, in my guilt, I couldn’t bear to send so much as a greeting.
“This man, Mr. Butler, says you are cared for in your new home in America. He tells me a Mr. Joseph Archer has developed a fancy for you, the same Mr. Archer who has offered to see your mother and me through these final weeks and months. He strikes me as a fine man, and my heart finds peace knowing you’re with good people who can do for you what I was never able to.
“I’ve not given you much in your life, my girl, and that weighs on me greatly. I know you to be one who doesn’t scare at the necessity of work and that, I pray, has seen you through the hard times you’ve faced. And I hope you’ve continued with your music. The tunes of home have ever been a comfort to me. I left our fiddle with you so you’d have a bit of me in your life no matter how far away from each other the years pulled us.”
Katie wiped at her streaming eyes with the hand towel she found on the washing table. Our fiddle. He didn’t consider it his, but theirs. And he’d left it behind on purpose? All these years she’d hated herself for stealing it, when he’d meant it as a gift, an offering of himself.
Joseph’s voice trailed off. She lifted her eyes and found him watching her, his eyes searching her face. “Do you need me to stop?”
She shook her head. Hearing from her father after so many years of longing for him was difficult, but she couldn’t bear to leave the rest of his letter unread.
Joseph’s eyes returned to the pages in his hand.
“Your Mr. Archer has purchased a headstone for our Eimear’s grave, a proper and fine one. Knowing our little girl will not be forgotten by the world has given your mother a measure of peace she’s not known in many years. He has also offered to return to us the land we lost in The Famine, as ours to keep—not as tenants, but as owners. And he’s asked only that, in return, we send you woolen stockings regularly. Brennan means to accept the offer, and it does my heart good.”
Katie looked up into Joseph’s face, hardly believing all he’d done. These arrangements must have been made many months earlier, before anything between them had been settled. “Oh, Joseph,” she whispered.
He sat beside her on the wooden chest. He kept the letter in one hand and put his other arm about her, pulling her close. He continued reading.
“I realize my words are likely too few and a great many years too late, but I’ve little else to offer you. I’ve asked Mr. Archer to do a few things for me, and I hope they will help you think on your father with more kindness than I deserve.
“Remember me in your prayers, my dear girl. If heaven is merciful, I will be with our Eimear again soon, the both of us smiling down on you. Be happy, sweet bird.
“Your loving father,
“Sean Macauley.”
Her heart ached, even as a warmth that had eluded her for nearly twenty years spread through her. These were words she’d never thought to hear from her father. She’d needed them, longed for them, and given up all hope of ever having them. To hear him say he loved her, that he thought of her and missed her, meant the world to Katie.
Joseph gave her a handkerchief to replace the cloth she’d soaked through with her tears. Katie leaned her head against his shoulder as she wiped at her wet cheeks and eyes. He held her close to him.
She didn’t know how long they sat there as her heart slowly, silently poured out of her. So many regrets settled in her even as weights were lifted by her father’s words.
After a time, she found the strength to ask one of her many questions. “He said he asked you to do something. What was it?”
Joseph rubbed at her upper arm. “He asked me to see to it you learned to read if you hadn’t been taught already. He said your brothers have all learned and, in his words, you are ‘a far sight brighter than they ever were’ and if they could master it, you certainly could.”
Somehow her father had known how much she’d longed to learn to read and write. Even separated by years and oceans, he’d known that.
“I was also asked to do what I could to make certain you were never cold.” His other arm wrapped around her, pulling her into a full embrace. “He has been haunted for twenty years by the memory of you nearly freezing to death, without a home to shield you or a proper coat or shoes to wear. Even after all these years, he worries about you being cold again.”
Katie put her arms around Joseph as well, needing his strength as she faced the demons of her past. “I have thought for most of my life that he didn’t love me, that he didn’t even like me.”
Joseph kissed her forehead, lingering there as he held her close. “He does, Katie. So deeply. So much. He spent as much time pleading with me to look after his ‘sweet bird’ as he did threatening me in proper fatherly fashion if I ever mistreat you at all. He told me his ghost will haunt me mercilessly if I make you the least bit unhappy.”
Katie half smiled, half sobbed at that. “Never take lightly an Irish threat of haunting, Joseph Archer. Our afterlife activities are a serious matter.”
“I assure you, my darling, as a father I know that is a warning to be taken very seriously.”
A feeling of peace settled over her. Worries she had carried all her life were lifting from her heart.
“You gave Eimear a headstone and Father his land back.”
“It mattered too much to you for me to leave it undone.” He spoke so matter-of-factly, as though there had never been a question of doing this amazing thing for her. “I want to take you back there, Katie. I want to take you to visit Ireland, to see your home. And I’d like to introduce the girls to your mother.”
Though she had come to terms with her decision not to return home and the knowledge that she would never see her family or homeland again, that loss had been a painful one. To return again was an unspeakably beautiful gift.
“My dear, sweet Joseph. I didn’t think I could be any happier, and then you give me this.”
He set her a little away from him, watching her with concern. “Are you happy, Katie? Truly happy? With all you have been through, I worry that you aren’t, that you have resigned yourself to some degree of contentedness. But, my darling, I want more than that for you. I want you to be happy.”
“I am,” she assured him. “I absolutely and completely am.”
“You’ve lost your music. That worries me a great deal.”
She reached up and touched his face. “If I promise you that even that doesn’t cloud my joy, will you let your heart quit aching over it?”
He smiled. “I will try.”
“I love you, Joseph.”
“Perhaps you should marry me then?”
Good heavens. “We aren’t late, are we?”
He shook his head. “But I do need to get over to the church. Ian will never let me live it down if I’m late to my own wedding.” He got to his feet.
“Will you kiss me before you go?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, because then we will be late.”
She laughed at that. “Then will you do something else for me?”
“Anything at all, darling.”
She moved to stand in front of him. “Will you read my father’s letter to me again sometime?”
“Whenever you need to hear it, Katie. Until you can read it yourself.”
To read her father’s words her own self? “That would be wonderful.”
“And then”—he lifted her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles like he always did—“then I will write you letters and leave them around the house for you to find.”
He meant to write her love letters. “And I will write you letters as well.”
He tipped his head, his gaze locking with hers. “Do you promise?”
Katie nodded.
He kissed her forehead, but stepped away quickly. At the doorway, he looked back. “Don’t be late.”
A quarter of an hour later, she walked with Biddy to the church. Biddy moved slowly, the weight of her pregnancy taking its toll. Her new little one was due to arrive any day.
“I’m so happy for you, Katie.” Biddy squeezed her hand. “And for Joseph.”
Katie sighed contentedly. “Yes, it seems this is to be a day filled with happiness.”
The girls, bundled in their heavy winter coats, met Katie at the church’s back door.
Biddy gave her a quick hug. She stepped into the church, leaving Katie there with her sweet girls.
Ivy slipped her hand into Katie’s right. Emma took hold of her left. In the weeks since Katie’s fingers were removed, Emma had become entirely comfortable holding her oddly shaped hand. The girl seemed less unnerved by it than Katie herself was.
Ivy grinned from ear to ear. Emma wore a look of focused determination. She glanced up at Katie. “I am glad you’re marrying my papa.”
Her heart felt ready to simply leap out of her chest. She, who’d spent so many years entirely alone, was surrounded by people she loved and who loved her in return. “I am very glad too.”
Mr. O’Connor stepped out of the chapel. “Are you ready, then, mo ‘níon? You’ll turn to ice out here in the cold.”
“He’s right, girls,” she said. “Inside with you where it’s warm.”
She followed them in and helped them off with their coats, hanging them amongst so many others. She slipped out of her own coat, a beautiful green one Joseph had given her.
“We’ve saved two seats for you right in the front, lasses,” Mr. O’Connor told the girls. “Hurry up, then.”
Katie straightened her shawl and smoothed out her hair. Mr. O’Connor offered her his arm. She slipped hers through it.
“Are you ready, my girl?”
“Absolutely.”
They walked around the back wall of the chapel. Every bench was full. The town didn’t divide itself by nationality any longer. Friendships had been formed across the old chasm. The change, slow as it was, still amazed her even after the passage of two months. Her thoughts, however, didn’t stay on her neighbors.
Joseph stood at the front of the chapel, smiling at her as she walked up the center aisle. The look in his eyes warmed her from head to toe. She was loved. Deeply and truly. And she loved him with all her heart. From that day on, they would have the rest of their lives to spend together.
Mr. O’Connor walked her to where Joseph stood. “You take care of her, Joseph Archer.”
“I intend to.”
Mr. O’Connor kissed her cheek and gave her a smile of joy. “We love you, Katie-girl.”
He stepped back, and Joseph took Katie’s hand. His fingers wove through hers.
“I missed you,” he whispered as they turned to face Reverend Ford.
“It has only been twenty minutes, Joseph.” But she smiled at the sentiment. She had missed him as well.
The ceremony was simple and touching. The words weren’t fancy, but Katie cherished every moment. Joseph slid her ring on her right hand, a necessary break from tradition.
Reverend Ford pronounced them husband and wife. Joseph kissed her before the preacher had a chance to instruct him to do so.
He kissed her slowly, taking his time. Katie put her arms around his neck and kissed him in return. He held her tight, and the world around them disappeared.
Life, with all its past ugliness and pain, had brought her to a perfect, glorious moment. She had a home and a family. She had Joseph, her wonderful, loving Joseph.
He broke the kiss, but kept her in his embrace.
“I love you,” she said.
He kissed the tip of her nose, then her top lip.
“Enough of that, you two,” Mr. O’Connor called out with a laugh. “We’ve a bit more to do here and a party to start up.”
Katie turned to Ivy, sitting beside Finbarr, and gave her a knowing nod. The girl recognized her cue. Ivy hopped off the bench and hurried to where Katie stood, handing her a fingerless glove.
“Katie?” Joseph asked.
“We’ve a fine surprise for you, Joseph.”
He looked curious, just as she’d hoped he would.
Seamus came and stood next to her, helping her slip an odd contraption they’d created onto her mangled left hand. She buckled it good and tight and thanked Seamus.
Emma came up next, carefully carrying Katie’s fiddle and bow. Katie slipped the bow inside the strip of leather across her left palm. She and Seamus, with the entire O’Connor clan offering suggestions, had designed a way to keep her bow in a hand with no fingers.
She took her fiddle in her right hand, something she imagined would always feel a little odd, and slipped it under her chin. She took a deep breath, feeling unexpectedly nervous.
Her playing was still very unsure, nothing like the music she had once played, but it was a beginning, a promise of beautiful things to come. The chapel filled with “Ar Éirinn,” a tune she loved even more than before. The notes filled her heart with her father’s kind and loving words, with the comfort of knowing her family was home again, with thoughts of this town that had at last become a place of hope and healing.
Joseph stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, setting his head against the side of hers, managing to hold her in a way that allowed her to continue to play. “Oh, Katie,” he whispered. “You have your music.”
Playing her fiddle again, knowing her father had meant her to have it, with Joseph holding her, Katie’s heart filled with utter peace.
Her song ended and, inexpert though her offering had been, the chapel erupted in cheers and applause. Hardly an eye was dry, including Joseph’s.
“You have your music,” he said again.
“’Twill be many years before I can play well, but there’s still joy in scratching out a tune, however unrefined.”
He took her face in his hands. “I don’t think I have ever enjoyed your playing as much as I did just now. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve heard in some time.”
They were soon surrounded by well-wishers, people offering congratulations and expressions of happiness.
Mr. O’Connor put Katie’s fiddle away. Joseph helped her unbuckle her bow holder, shaking his head in clear amazement. Katie couldn’t seem to stop smiling.
The wedding guests trickled out, making their way to Joseph’s newly reconstructed barn where the entire town had been invited to join in the celebration. Biddy and Ian hugged Katie and Joseph once more for good measure. Finbarr and Tavish offered sincere and heartfelt congratulations. Though Finbarr hadn’t recovered his sight, he seemed to be slowly adjusting to his new life, and Katie held out hope that he would return to the cheerful lad he’d been. And Tavish did seem to be happy, just as he’d told her he would be. Mr. O’Connor gave her a fierce hug and told her again how much he loved her.
Katie had told Biddy this was to be a day filled with happiness. How true that was.
Only Katie and Joseph and the girls remained. Joseph pulled all three of them into his embrace. Katie kissed the top of each girl’s head, then Joseph’s cheek. Her family. This was her family.
“This is the best day ever,” Ivy declared, her smile the widest Katie had seen.
“I agree.” Joseph’s gaze held Katie’s. “The best day ever.” He kissed her. “So far.”
She loved the thought of that. They would make each day better than the last. And they would be together. Always.