22
Mike had been gone just shy of a month—one wasted month—and now it was done. The rescue mission was over. And wherever Sarah was, she was on her own, as in so many ways she’d always been. The weight of abandoning the search, even temporarily, was wedged tight into the base of Mike’s throat, where he knew it would always be.
Was God punishing him for loving her when she belonged to another? He never thought the Almighty operated along those lines, but this failure felt very like a lesson being crammed down his gob.
It helped watching Aideen and Taffy step aboard the ferry, their bags packed, Aideen smiling more broadly than he could ever remember her doing. He watched the sharp and bracing salt air rake the two travelers. Aideen turned her face into it, as if she welcomed the assault, the clean slate, the new life that awaited her.
Donovan’s Sacrifice, he thought bitterly as he sat on Petey at the top of the pasture and looked down onto the harbor, the ferry gone hours earlier. His failure spelled a new life for Aideen, but it was at the cost of being able to help the one woman who mattered most to him.
He turned his horse’s head west toward home and Donovan’s Lot. Whatever waited for him back home would be there still when he arrived. Whatever bollocks Gavin had made of things would be sorted out in time. He likely couldn’t have destroyed a whole community in a month’s time.
No, there was only one piece of wreckage that wouldn’t soon be recovered from or easily survived by his failure.
John.
What the hell was he going to say to John?
The lad seemed a little better, a little stronger. Whether it was the endless cups of tea, the lack of chores, Fi’s constant attention, or just the resilience of a young body overcoming the mysterious ailment Fiona would never know, but he was slowly coming back to them.
There was a day or two when she wasn’t sure he would.
Fiona hefted the plastic laundry basket full of wet clothing onto her hip and squinted at the sky. There wouldn’t be loads of sun, but neither did it look like it was about to rain any time soon. She smiled to herself as she stepped off her porch. She was fairly sure that her real job at Donovan’s Lot was as Chief Worrier. She knew her brother felt he held that title, but he wasn’t a woman. He wasn’t even close. Nor until he grew ovaries could he ever be.
She lugged the basket to Mike’s hut and set it down heavily on the first step of his decking. Typical Mike, she thought. He’s worked to make everybody else’s cottage as tight and windproof as they could be and left his own place to grow moss and catch leaks. Not for the first time, she caught herself, thinking, If only Ellen had lived…
A high-pitched squeal of a laugh caught on the breeze shuffled through camp and snagged Fiona’s attention. Speaking of Ellen…She caught a glimpse of the dead woman’s younger sister as Caitlin ran behind the tents that lined the main campfire.
What was the girl up to now?
True, the lass had come to her offering to sit with young John while he was the sickest, but then had been conveniently unavailable when Fiona suggested any real work for her to do. And as for sitting with the lad—Fiona pulled out a pair of cotton pants from the pile of wet laundry and draped it over Mike’s porch railing—that had lasted all of one day after Fi caught Caitlin feeding the boy poteen. Remembering the incident, Fi colored with annoyance all over again.
“Are you trying to kill the lad?” She had grabbed the bottle from Caitlin’s hands. “He’s twelve, you eejit!”
Fi had seen an unpleasant side of Caitlin during that exchange, which ended with Caitlin flouncing out of the cottage and slamming the door behind her.
When Fi saw that John was fine—if a little woozy for the experience—she regretted her harsh words. Still, it’s hard enough to live during these times without having to live through someone else’s foolishness on top of it.
As she flapped out a wet t-shirt and positioned it next to the pants on the railing, she craned her neck to see what Caitlin was up to that involved scampering and squealing. She was supposed to be gathering kindling for the widow McGinty’s cook stove. When no other sounds came from behind the tents, Fi shrugged and went back to her own chores.
After the poteen incident, Caitlin had opted to keep her distance from Fiona—and so, John—and Fiona had to admit she found it better for everyone all around. The following day when Fiona had gone to pour the poteen into a smaller bottle so that she could use the bigger one to store cooking oil, nearly a half a dozen undissolved aspirin tablets were glommed at the bottom of the bottle.
An innocent mistake, surely, on Caitlin’s part, obviously trying to make the boy more comfortable.
But one that could easily have been fatal for him.