Page 10 of Valley of Dreams

Eliza flew in through the back door. “I saw Aidan. Heavens, Maura, he’s grown so much this past year. I hardly recognized him.”

Aidan. Patrick hadn’t seen the lad since he was four years old. He’d be fourteen or fifteen by now.Begor, so much time had passed.

“Did Aidan see Lydia?” Maura asked

Eliza nodded. “He spun her around and around, saying, ‘My little Lydia.’ She stared at him as if he was entirely out of his mind.” She laughed. “Poor girl doesn’t remember him—she was so tiny when you left. She’ll love him again soon enough, though.” Her gaze shifted to him. “Did the man with the ginger hair knock any of your teeth out?”

“Are you hopin’ he did?”

She smiled and, without answering, turned and walked into the room Maura had indicated would be hers once she began working in this house. “This room is so very much nicer than any at the Widows’ Tower.”

Patrick’s heart dropped at the reminder of the building where Maura had lived when he’d found her again after the war. “Eliza lived in that hellhole?”

Maura hooked an eyebrow. “You left Aidan and me in that ‘hellhole,’ so you must not’ve thought it too terrible.”

It had, in fact, been entirely terrible—falling apart, a hovel in every sense of the word. If he’d had the means to help her escape it, he would have. In the end, he’d done the only thing he could to improve her situation. He’d removed himself from it.

Eliza peeked her head out of the room. “Every drawer in the bureau opens without even the tiniest bit of difficulty. You didn’t tell me I’d be living in the lap of luxury.” She slipped inside once more.

“I’ve missed her,” Maura said fondly. “I’ve never known anyone as buoyant.”

“Or as talkative,” Patrick added in a low voice. “Must’ve said a thousand words to every one of mine.”

“And they were all cheerful, weren’t they?”

He nodded. “Is she a little touched?”

Maura laughed lightly. “No. She’s simply the most determinedly optimistic person a body’s likely ever to meet.”

A woman like that ought not to have been trapped in a stagecoach with someone as despicable as he. Fate was sometimes vindictive.

A lad of likely about fourteen stepped inside the increasingly busy kitchen. Patrick’s mouth hung open. Looking at the boy was like looking in a mirror, but when he was less than half the age he was now.

“That’s not wee Aidan,” he whispered in amazement.

“He’s nearly grown now,” Maura said. “And looks so very like his father.”

“He’s a good lad? Treats you as he ought?”

She nodded. “And he’s so much happier here than he ever was in New York.” She reached over and patted Patrick’s hand. “This is a fine place to live. It’s good that you’ve come.”

He needed it to be far more than “fine.” He needed Hope Springs to be miraculous despite the fact that he was never granted anything resembling a miracle.

“Ma, have you seen Lydia?” Aidan was holding the hand of Eliza’s little girl. “She’s so big, and she can walk now, and Mrs. Porter says she can even talk.”

“A child is very different at a few months old than at nearly two years old.”

“I’m glad you sent for them,” he said, his very American accent at odds with all the Irish voices ringing in through the open back door. “They’ll be happier here.”

Ma and Da stepped inside next. Would so many O’Connors coming and going ever grow easier to endure? His heart lurched at each arrival. Perhaps coming to Hope Springs hadn’t been an entirely wise decision.

“Chores are calling to everyone,” Ma said. “We’d all best get back to our work.” The tenderness with which she looked at him made him feel guilty as sin. He didn’t deserve anything but being shoved away. “We’re over the river and a pace down the road. A beautiful farm. The house we all built together. You’ll love it; I know you will.”

“I don’t want to take up room.”

Da held a hand up to cut off his objection. “Best not argue with your ma about this, lad. She’ll not give you the tiniest listen on the matter.”

He’d not expected such close quarters. Every town he’d lived in since the war had boasted at least one house that took in boarders. He’d known he’d need his family’s generosity for a time while he found a means of supporting himself and renting a room somewhere with space enough to breathe. But in all his imaginings, he saw himself lying in a corner of a barn or some other kind of outbuilding, far enough away from his family to grant them the distance they deserved.

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