Page 118 of Valley of Dreams

He shrugged. “Practically nothing, but I’m a quick study in most things.”

“You trained Aidan in a summer to be one of the best farmhands I’ve seen,” Joseph said. “You could teach Patrick.”

Finbarr pulled his hat down further, hiding more of his face. Did he realize it did that? Is that why he so often wore his hat tilted forward that way? “There’s too much to do for me to talk him through it.”

“It’s farm work,” Patrick said. “You’ve been doing it almost all your life.”

Finbarr turned and slid down, sitting in the wagon bed. “It’s never been planted. The fields haven’t been chosen or laid out. The irrigation ditches haven’t been dug. I can’t do any of that.”

“I’ve worked digging ditches,” Patrick said. “I’m good at it.”

“I can’t see the land,” Finbarr said. “I couldn’t tell you where to dig or how to lay out the fields.”

“You and I have five brothers and brothers-in-law who take great delight in bossing me. Da enjoys it too. You can sit on a rocker under the overhang and enjoy listening to them bark orders at me.”

“Grannies sit in rockers under overhangs,” Finbarr grumbled.

“Given the choice,I’dsit in a rocker under an overhang.” Patrick kept his tone light, not caring for the turn in Finbarr’s mood.

“No, you wouldn’t. You’d bebuildingthe rocker, and the overhang, and the house it was attached to.” He slumped a little lower. “You wouldn’t want to be useless.”

Useless?Patrick shot a look at Joseph. The worry and sadness in the man’s face matched what must have been on his own. Finbarr had seemed at home and at ease in their brothers’ and da’s fields the last couple of weeks. For months, Finbarr had moved about confidently with Aidan’s assistance. Why did doing the same on his own land deal him such a felling blow? Whatever the answer, there was no mistaking that Finbarr didn’t want to discuss the matter further.

Patrick jumped back to the earlier topic with Joseph, hoping to give the lad a chance to regain his footing. “If the stage company gives you the answer you’re expecting, is there any hope of moving forward with the inn?”

“They weren’t going to make any monetary contributions. The funds would still be sufficient, but the overnight guests wouldn’t be.”

So it could still be built. “’Tis a shame, that. Having so large a building would be a boon to the town. We could havecéilísno matter the weather. Wedding suppers could be held without limiting the guest list to those who’d fit in a small house. The doctor could have his infirmary.”

“Only if we build closer to town, like Eliza had wanted to begin with,” Joseph said. “But we know the stage won’t stop for the night just outside Hope Springs. They pass us closer to midday. And, with the stage running each direction only twice a week, staying afloat would have been difficult even with their business. Without it . . .”

“In one of the Canadian towns I lived in, a woman took in boarders, but only in the summer. ’Tweren’t enough visitors passing through in the winter months. She said that made things mighty lean half the year.”

Joseph glanced back at Finbarr. The man cared a lot about Patrick’s little brother, there was no mistaking that. He liked him all the more for it.

“Eliza would likely have had to close the kitchen a couple of days a week even with reliable business from stage passengers.” Joseph slowed his wagon as those in front of them slowed as well. “She is certainly in a difficult position.”

The first inklings of an idea began forming in Patrick’s mind.

Open only in the summer. Close the kitchen a couple of days a week. The stage passes midday.

He needed to think longer, sort out the details, but he had the entirety of this run to the depot to do so. And, better still, he had Joseph’s mind for business at his disposal.

An answer was tucked just out of reach; he knew there was. And he was going to find it.

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