Page 47 of Ordered Home for the Holidays
Both children went tumbling to the floor and Mary Kate immediately burst into tears. Jamie’s face was scrunched and his arm was bent at an awkward angle. As Deirdre rushed forward, he began caterwauling too.
“I should tan your hide into next Tuesday for this stunt,” she admonished.
“Mam, it hurts.”
She crouched beside him and carefully examined his arm. “I think it’s broken, boyo. We’ll need to visit the good doctor.”
After she righted them, she stood and held out her hands. “Come, it’s only a short walk.”
“Mammy, it’s wet,” Mary Kate protested.
“We’ll be fine. It’s only just around the corner.”
She bundled them into their coats, scarves, hats and mittens and after she’d left a note on the door for her boarders, they set off.
Both children were attached to her as if they’d just left the womb when Cass Trenton came around the corner whistling a jaunty tune. She thought her eyes surely deceived her.
“I didn’t know you were back.” Deirdre wished she was renewing their acquaintance under better circumstances. Her soaked, bedraggled skirts clung to her legs and her children had wound themselves up in them. Before she’d set her daughterdown again, kicking feet had marked her bodice with dirty bootprints.
“I returned last night.”
Deirdre closed her eyes at the sound of his voice - as familiar as the sound of her own. A reminder of heartbreak and sacrifice. She opened them to his gaze scanning her so hungrily she felt like a mouse with its tail pinned beneath the paw of a cat.
“Who’s this you’re dragging about?” He asked as he squatted in the middle of the muddy street to peer more closely at her children.
Deirdre gently nudged her son and daughter forward. “My youngest, Mary Kate, and my eldest, James Aloysius. He took a tumble in the kitchen and I fear he’s broken his arm.”
“And my arm hurts too,” Mary Kate piped up.
Cass’s eyes flicked to hers. “Is Doctor Hampton your destination?”
She nodded.
“He’s not there. He just stitched me up,” his hand grazed the red line on his cheek she’d failed to notice. “He’s closed the office for the day because he said he had a dinner engagement he couldn’t afford to miss.”
Deirdre sighed. He hadn’t volunteered any information regarding the gash on his cheek, and knowing his tempestuous relationship with his father, she was afraid asking about it might stir up a hornet’s nest. “Well that leaves me in somewhat of a quandary.”
Cass rose to his feet. “I learned some things out west. Sawbones weren’t always keen on hanging their shingles in mining towns. Too rough and tumble for them. Maybe I can set it?”
As her stomach roiled, her eyes searched his. Should she trust him? He’d left without a word seven years ago - before she could tell him she was carrying his child.
It had been early in her pregnancy, and Patrick O’Shaugnessy hadn’t minded wedding her and claiming James as his own. Thank goodness her eldest took after her in coloring and complexion- he was nothing but a bundle of fiery hair and freckles. It erased the need for explanations both then and now.
Cass Trenton’s knight in shining armor offer seemed earnest and there was a certain irony to the situation. When she’d needed him most, he was nowhere to be found. Good Irish Catholic girls didn’t get knocked up, and rather than risk the shame of waiting for him to return, she’d accepted Patrick’s proposal. He’d been pursuing her for months, whenever he was home from the mines, but she’d only had eyes for the man now standing across from her. Until he abandoned her.
He’d abandoned her.
The reminder felt like an ice pick to her heart.
Deirdre doubted Cassius Trenton had thought of her at all in the last seven years.
“You didn’t even say goodbye.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she wanted to take them back. She sounded too bitter. Too desperate. Like she’d been languishing in the same spot since the day he left.
“If I’d said goodbye, I wouldn’t have left,” he said as he pushed his cap from his forehead and raked his hair in agitation. “And I needed to leave.”
“Mam,” Mary Kate tugged on her skirts. “Do you know him?”
“Yes, poppet,” Cass answered. “Your mam and I have known each other since we were about your age.”
