Page 21 of Valley of Dreams

That would also send him in the opposite direction of the road. Finbarr’s future farm didn’t, it seem, sit near the rest of the family’s. “You and Aidan seem to get on well.”

“He’s the only one who never talks to me like I’m something pathetic.”

That hit too near the mark. “Pity is a sour syrup, isn’t it?”

“Do people talk to you like that?”

“More often than I’d like,” Patrick said.

“They probablylookat me that way too.” Finbarr shrugged. “I’m actually glad I can’t see that.”

“How much farther?” Patrick asked. “Or can’t you tell?”

“Vaguely,” Finbarr said. “Just follow the river until you get to a very small pond, but don’t go over it. Just past the pond is a big grouping of rocks. That’s where my property begins. It borders Joseph’s land. We’ll eventually get around to fencing it off.”

“You seem very close to Mr. Archer,” Patrick said.

“He’s like family. I don’t think I’d want to live here if he didn’t.”

Interesting that he hadn’t said the same about his actual family. What was straining that connection? If this lad, who’d lived among the family his entire life, couldn’t seem to fit in with them, what hope did Patrick have?

“I see the rocks you mentioned,” he told his brother as they approached the spot.

Finbarr pulled his arm free and made his way carefully to the rocks, then sat on one of them. He kept still a moment, his head tipping towards the river. Listening, perhaps.

Apparently satisfied, he turned and faced away from the water. “That’s my land.”

“Which bits?”

“The part that’s not planted.”

Patrick looked out over it. Acres and acres of wild grass rustled in the stiff breeze, butting up next to fields of neatly planted crops. “That’s a large swath of land.”

“I don’t know that I can work it by myself.”

That was a complication. “Would Aidan help you, then?”

“Joseph hired him on this summer,” Finbarr said. “But Aidan’ll need to help his step-da on their farm next year.”

His step-da? Patrick had to think on it for a moment before the puzzle solved itself. Maura’s new husband would be filling that role in Aidan’s life.

“What’llyoudo next year?”

“Keep living with Tavish and his wife and their baby who cries all night.”

“Tavish has a baby.” Speaking the realization out loud didn’t make it any less shocking. “He was about your age when they all went west.”

Patrick looked over the area, debating the best spot for a house, which way it ought to face, which side the windows ought to be on, what shape it should take, what size the lad needed. There was a great deal to consider.

“Why didn’t you come to Hope Springs with the family?” Finbarr asked.

That was a more difficult question than Finbarr likely realized. It seemed best to give the answer everyone believed. “I liked New York. The busyness of it, the press of humanity . . . It suited the person I was.”

Finbarr leaned back on his elbows, face turned up to the sun. “I meant why didn’t you come after the war? Maura says you didn’t stay in New York. But from what I know of Canada, there’s no ‘press of humanity’ there.”

Patrick could laugh a little at that. “Many of the places I lived in were no bigger than Hope Springs.”

“So why did you stay away? Everyone thought you were dead.”

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