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The morning after Eliza had come to visit him, Patrick did something he’d not done even once since coming to Hope Springs: he drank during the day. He kept himself to a single, albeit generous, swallow, telling himself it was temporary liquid courage.
Eliza had such faith in him, far more than he had in himself. And she believed in his family’s love for him—far more than he’d allowed himself to believe in it for years. He didn’t want to disappoint her. So he’d concocted a plan during his long and sleepless night.
He grabbed the bundle he’d pulled from his traveling trunk. The one he was going to bring to Da and Ma’s house at the weekly family dinner. The one he was terrified to show them but knew it was time he did.
Patrick rubbed at the back of his neck as he stood at his front door, willing himself to begin his long walk. “It’s easier being the villain at a distance,” he’d told Eliza. He’d been more truthful in that moment with her than he had been with anyone in years.
“But you aren’t a villain,” she’d said.
If she could believe that he wasn’t, then maybe his family could, as well. He stepped over his threshold and set his feet determinedly in the direction of his parents’ house. He paused, as he so often did, on the bridge spanning the river, letting the sound of the water soothe him. He closed his eyes and listened and breathed.
“You aren’t the villain,” he told himself. Even if only Eliza ever believed that of him, it was true to someone, and that mattered.
He repeated the reassurance a few times as he walked down the road. He had ample time to convince himself not to turn tail and run—as well as ample time to do precisely that.
In the end, he pushed himself all the way to the door of his parents’ home without losing his nerve. That he’d needed whiskey to hold on to that courage didn’t reflect well on him.
Drinking during the day. He was in deep trouble if that became a regular thing again.
Ma spotted him straight away and hugged him the moment he slipped inside. He was so used to coming and going unnoticed. Whichever house they met at was always chaotic, full near to bursting with people. No one had a table large enough for all of them, so O’Connors sat and stood scattered throughout, carrying plates of food around with them. How easy it’d be to drop himself in the corner and let the gathering happen without him. He very nearly did, but then he saw her.
Eliza.
She stood not more than ten feet away, chatting with Maura.
He’d come within a breath of kissing her last night. The wind had rustled her hair, bringing a tinge of pink to her cheeks. She’d looked at him in such a way . . . But the return of the Archer family had stopped things just in time.
He was living a lot of lies, and she deserved better than that. Last night, he’d been a heartbeat away from tossing back the first of many mouthfuls when she’d knocked at his door. She, who’d lost her husband to drunkards, had very nearly arrived at the home of one. She deserved so very, very much better.
One of Mary’s children noticed the bundle he’d brought with him and asked the question he’d been both dreading and anticipating.
“What’s that?”
Here it was: the moment of truth. “It’s a haversack.”
Ian’s oldest boy hovered nearby. “What’s a haversack?”
Patrick pushed ahead. “It’s a bag carried by a soldier.”
“Like in the war you fought?” the boy asked.
Patrick nodded.
The boys gathered nearby, clearly intrigued by the beaten, faded, black bag. A few other family members took note, watching.
Ian’s daughter broke the momentary silence. “Was it your bag when you were a soldier?”
Patrick’s eye caught Maura’s, and for a moment he almost lost his nerve. “It was Uncle Grady’s.”
That brought the entire house to a complete standstill. No one spoke or moved or ate—or likely breathed.
For his part, Patrick was actually shaking. Would they resent that he, of all people, had brought them a piece of their lost family member’s wartime service? Would it make them only more resentful? Eliza pushed her way through the crowd closing in around him and took his hand. She led him to the long bench in the midst of the gathering, with room enough for them both. She sat beside him. Her presence made all the difference. Saints preserve him, in that moment he let her be his strength.
“Every soldier had a haversack to carry our things in,” he told his gathered family. “These went everywhere with us. But when a soldier—” He swallowed. “A haversack without an owner”—that seemed a softer way of speaking about death in battle—“was given to the quartermaster to be redistributed. I couldn’t let that happen to Grady’s after he—” This was every bit as difficult as he’d feared it would be. “I gave them mine, and I carried his sack and his canteen and his bedroll.”
For the first few weeks he’d used it, the bag had even smelled like Grady. That had been torture. “I carried it with me the rest of the war. And it has traveled with me all over Canada.”
All eyes were on the bundle, but no one moved.
“Nothing is more important to a soldier than his haversack and equipment. And these were his.” He pushed the words out. “This bag and its contents were with him from the moment he left home”—he met Maura’s teary gaze—“until the day he died.”
“If a haversack is so important to a soldier,” Mary’s son asked, “why did you give yours away?”
“Because I wanted something of Grady’s to carry with me, something of his to bring back home. This was all I had. All he had.”
“The tintypes were in this bag, then?” Ma asked.
Tintypes? He looked to Maura. “You kept them?”
“Both. Of course I did.”
He shook his head. “I really didn’t want you to keep mine.”
“Well, I wanted to keep it. ‘Something of you to carry with me.’”
Ma had slipped out and returned nearly too quickly to be noticed, holding something he recognized at a glance: the hinged leather frame held a glass-etched portrait of either Grady or himself.
“Which one is it?” he asked, afraid of the answer.
“Grady’s is at Maura’s house, of course,” Ma said.
His, then. That was the last thing he wanted to look at. He turned, instead, to his nieces and nephews. He motioned to the haversack. “It’s filled with a few things of your uncle Grady’s, things you’ve likely not seen before. You can dig through it.” To their parents, he said, “No weapons or dangerous things inside. I swear to it.”
The children needed no more encouragement. The grownups joined in the exploration soon thereafter. Noticeably absent from the perusal were Maura and Aidan, though they watched closely.
Maybe he should have brought these things to Grady’s wife and son first. Saints, he couldn’t seem to do anything right.
Lydia crawled from her perch on Eliza’s lap to his and curled into him as she often did and wrapped her arms around her doll.
Ma slipped closer. “Maura brought this to us when she moved here last year.” Patrick’s pulse pounded painfully in his head. “We’ve kept it here ever since, but now that you’re here . . .” She held out the tintype.
“I don’t want it, Ma.” He tried to keep his tone casual but knew he didn’t manage it. “I left it with Maura for a reason.”
“Do you not even want to see it?” She tried again to give it to him.
He couldn’t entirely stop himself from recoiling. “No.”
It was Ian who asked the next question. “Why not?”
Patrick had braced himself for interrogations but still wasn’t completely prepared for the question. “Those were the worst years of my life. I hated everything about that war. I don’t want to have to look at myself living my own nightmare, and that’s what I’d see in my face if I ever open that leather frame.”
Ian looked confused. “When did you start hating the war?”
“The first time I saw someone die,” he muttered, dropping his gaze to the younger ones still rummaging through the haversack. Thus far, they’d pulled out the tin coffee cup, the metal mess kit, Grady’s canteen and compass. “Though I never was eager for battle, even before we left home.”
Lydia’s tiny hand reached up and touched his cheek. “Sad.”
He smiled at her. “I’m happy you’re sitting with me, mo stóirín.”
She held up her doll for him, and he offered it a kiss on the head. She mimicked the gesture before returning to her quiet play.
Eliza leaned closer to him. “You aren’t a villain,” she whispered.
He turned his head toward her, hiding his mouth from any curious eyes. He dropped his voice to a near-silent whisper. “I haven’t told them everything.”
“But you’ve told me everything, and you’ve made a start with them.”
He pulled a breath in through his nostrils then pushed it slowly past his lips. “I hope it helps.”
Her expression changed. Her mouth and brows twisted in contemplative confusion. She studied his face.
“What is it?” he asked.
Nothing changed, and she didn’t answer.
“Eliza?”
She waved him off but didn’t look any less concerned or confused.
Patrick returned his attention to those looking through the haversack and eying the things inside. He explained to one of Mary’s children how to use the compass. Ciara flipped almost reverently through pages of Grady’s pocket-size book of Robert Burns’s poems. Ian’s son took up the folding mirror.
“That was used for shaving,” Patrick said. “’Twouldn’t do to take a razor to one’s throat without a mirror at hand.”
“It folds up so small,” Ian said, opening and closing it a few times.
“We hadn’t much room in our haversack.” For the first time in ten years, Patrick was able to talk about the war without being crushed by the weight of guilt and regret. Ma didn’t try to give him the tintype again. Ian didn’t ask any further questions.
Patrick ought to have been entirely relieved. But Eliza was still watching him in that unsettling way. “Are you upset with me, lass?”
She shook her head, but then she rose to leave. Leave? The dinner hadn’t even begun yet.
Patrick followed her and Lydia out the door, stopping her a few steps away from the house. “What happened? You seem displeased with me.”
She faced him, still clearly confused and upset.
“What is it?” he pressed.
“All the times we’ve talked and planned, and you’ve held my hand or held me . . . how often were you drunk?”
“Drunk?”
Her expression hardened a little. “My husband was not the only one who worked in a bar during our leanest months, Patrick. I know the smell of whiskey on someone’s breath, and I know the particular redness in the eyes of someone who’s been drinking.”
Oh, blessed fields. Panic began surging inside him.
“How many more of my secrets were you going to require before you shared this one with me?” She sounded both angry and hurt. “I told you things from my past I’ve not told anyone because I was so certain I could trust you. You made me think I could.”
“You can,” he said. “I want you to.”
“If I hadn’t sorted it out on my own, would you have ever told me?”
He wished he could say yes, but he didn’t know. He’d come to get his family’s help with this, and he still hadn’t told them.
“Were you drinking last night?” she asked.
“Not before your visit.”
That didn’t seem to reassure her. “Have you ever held Lydia after you’ve been drinking?”
“I’ve never been drunk when holding her.”
Eliza’s expression remained sharp and hard. “That’s not what I asked.”
“I usually drink only at night,” he said quickly.
“Usually?”
He pushed his hand through his hair. “This isn’t an easy thing to overcome.”
“Did you ever plan to tell me?” Her anger was giving way to hurt. “You told me heavy things from your past, weights that effect you. But this thing, this secret that impacts my safety, and my child’s safety, you never bothered to do me the courtesy to tell me any bit of it.”
“I’m not violent when I drink,” he said. “It doesn’t make me dangerous.”
“No.” She stepped away, holding Lydia in a protective embrace. “What it makes you is a liar.”
He watched her walk away, taking his heart with her. The pull that whiskey had on him, the destructive role it played in his life, was claiming yet another casualty.
Two, in fact. It was pushing away Eliza and drying up the last drops of hope he had.