Page 8 of Valley of Dreams

He rubbed at his face and beard, weary and worn, but too near his breaking point to simply walk away. The family he’d turned his back on a decade earlier were now his only hope.

“You can never wander so far that there isn’t a road home,” Ma used to say. He was depending on that being true.

He nodded to himself, setting his jaw and shoulders. Maura would know where his parents were. He’d have to tell her who he was. But, she’d taken him in before, kept in contact with him over the years. She’d likely accept his return better than the rest of the family would.

Patrick stepped out onto the back porch of the home, fully prepared to see Maura again. Instead, he saw a flood of familiar faces, painfully beloved faces. Hisentirefamily.

He stopped at the edge of the porch, unable to take a single step closer to them. He’d imagined so many times over the past years seeing them again. Now that he did, it hurt. It hurt in every beat of his heart, every breath he took.

They would hate him; he knew they would. He’d known before he left Canada. But he’d had nowhere else to go.

Maura spotted him, and with the same lack of recognition, she approached. “Do come eat. There’s plenty.”

He shook his head no. His hunger wasn’t enough to push him toward the rejection that awaited him in this sea of family.

Maura glanced back at the crowd. “Mother O’Connor, come help me convince Eliza’s Good Samaritan to accept some food.”

He wasn’t ready for this. Not remotely. “I’ll be on m’way.”

“Nonsense.” Maura waved someone over.

In the next instant, Ma emerged and walked toward him.

Patrick swallowed back a surge of emotion. He’d not seen his mother since he was seventeen, a child, really. She approached, her gaze growing more pointed as she drew near. Her eyes narrowed, studying him. Maura hadn’t recognized him, and she’d seen him more recently than Ma had.

He pulled his hat off his head and held it against his chest. Ma eyed him ever closer. Confusion tugged at that achingly familiar face. She didn’t look away. Her gaze narrowed. Her brows pulled low. She couldn’t place him—he could tell she couldn’t—but she seemed to sense that she ought to have been able to.

He couldn’t endure it any longer. He couldn’t bear the thought of being a stranger to his own mother.

Patrick cleared his throat. Voice quiet, uncertain, he said, “I got your letter.”

She gasped, her hand pressed to her heart. “Patrick.” Her arms were around him before he could brace himself. “My Patrick. My Patrick.”

He kept himself still and breathing through sheer power of will. Every fiber of him insisted he set her away for her own good. No one was ever better for having him in their lives. No one.

Without warning, Da was there, weathered brow pulled into a mixture of surprise and hope. “Is it really himself?”

“’Tis our boy, Thomas,” Ma answered. “Under all those whiskers, it’s our boy come back to us.”

They’d anticipated the Patrick he’d been at seventeen. That dewy-eyed lad no longer existed, hadn’t for years.

Da’s firm embrace engulfed both Ma and Patrick. Around them, a flood of O’Connors descended. Though they were older, he recognized them all. His older sister, Mary. His brother Tavish, who bore a painfully striking resemblance to the oldest of the siblings, who’d died at Gettysburg. A woman he felt certain was his little sister, now grown. They were all surrounded by children—his nieces and nephews, no doubt—and people he didn’t know but wagered were his siblings by marriage.

He searched their faces, looking for the brother he’d thought of every day of the past thirteen years. He and Ian had been the best of friends. Until the day Patrick stayed in New York while nearly all the others had come west, they’d never been apart, not for a single day in all of Patrick’s life. They’d been each other’s best friends and closest confidantes. Patrick had been there when Ian met the lass who would eventually become his wife. Ian had offered Patrick the support he needed when deciding what to do with his life.

He’d been lost without Ian. For years he’d needed his brother nearby. He’d’ve had someone to talk to, someone to help him sort out the mess he’d made of his life. He wouldn’t have been so entirely alone.

“Come eat.” Mahadalways considered food the cure for whatever ailed a person.

“You weren’t planning on me,” he objected.

She waved that off even as the entire clan, questions flying at him from all directions, crowded him off the porch and toward the table of victuals.

“Where have you been?”

“Are you staying?”

“We thought you were dead.”

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