As he stepped into the cool, dim interior his heart lurched, the familiar walls seeming to close around him as his mother's arms had so long ago. The precious glass windows his father had given his mother for Christmas their second year on Stormy Ridge were grimy, yet all save one astonishingly whole, letting the boldest rays of sunlight filter through to the dusting of leaves and twigs scattered across the plank floor.
Garret remembered how glad Beth had been when he and Pa had laid the last board, covering the old dirt floor. "Now I'll be able to tell when I'm done sweeping," she had cried, brandishing the willow-twig broom. Neither he nor Beth had ever been able to see the sense in brushing away the dirt when there was only the ground beneath.
Garret's throat constricted as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, his gaze roving over his mother's curtains, now tattered ribbons stirring in the faint drafts, and over the stone hearth that had once been warm with her laughter. Some animal had torn apart the ticking of his parent's feather mattress to make a nest, but the thick posts of the bedstead hewn by Tom MacQuade's axe still stood tall. Garret walked slowly to trace his fingers over the carving at the top of the headboard. His parents' initials, and the year they had arrived in Texas.
His fingers froze as realization jolted him. This would be his bed now. The bed he would share with his wife. New babes born of the love they shared would be conceived in this bed, and he would carry them out in his arms to show Meggie and Shevonne, Renny and Liam their tiny brothers and sisters.
Life would begin here—new life, not only of the golden-curled children that were now just whisperings in his dreams, but life for himself. Beginnings.
Beginnings that could be snatched away forever by the blast of a single gun.
He braced one hand on the wood, leaning his face against his arm. He heard the sound of footfalls beside him and felt a feathering touch upon his hair.
Ashleen. Save for holding his hand in the wagon a little while past, she hadn't touched him since their argument. Now the feel of her was bittersweet, filled with promise, pain.
He turned, and in her hand he saw a scrap of paper, yellowed, faded, its edges crumbling.
It was the picture of his family Kennisaw had preserved, the picture Garret had drawn of them all when he'd been a child, blissfully unaware of how fleeting, how precious such moments could be.
"I saved this that night in West Port when you stormed off. Couldn't bear to throw it away," she said. "I thought you might want to hang this on the wall now, so that when you come back—" Her voice cracked, breaking Garret's heart. With a groan he crushed her in his arms, kissing her with a desperation that reverberated through them both.
"I will come back, Ashleen," he vowed into the cascade of her hair. "I swear to God I will."
He felt a shudder work through her as she strained him closer against her breasts. But she didn't speak, couldn't speak, her silence echoing inside him with the insidious chill of foreboding.
* * *
Candlelight glossed the fresh-scrubbed floor,the fire crackling on the hearth wreathing the room in a cozy glow. The window panes glistened like a bright Wicklow stream, while the goods that had been packed in the wagon so long were tucked about the cabin, giving it an aura of hominess that seeped into Ashleen's tired arms, filling her with a hollow sense of satisfaction.
Hours ago the giggles and whispers of the children had stopped drifting down from the night-dark loft, blanketing the room below in silence as she had bustled about, setting the last of the things to rights.
A lantern had glowed through the open door of the stable since nightfall, Garret busy bracing the walls so that the livestock could spend the night safe from the wolves whose mournful howls drifted upon the wind.
Renny had been determined to help him with the work, the fragile new bond between the two precious, tentative. Ashleen had practically been forced to drag the boy away by the scruff of his neck when it was time for bed, only Garret's promise that he would teach Renny how to shoot his rifle sometime the next day inducing the boy to trudge after Ashleen into the cabin.
She should feel relieved, what with their hard-won truce. Should feel glad that the boy was finally beginning to trust Garret's gruff affection and her love for the boy. But she could only think of what Renny's face would look like when he realized that Garret was riding away.
Wearily Ashleen emptied the washbasin where she had scrubbed the grime from each of the children in turn hours ago. She filled the container again with water drawn from the well. Clear, soothing, she splashed it upon her dirt-grimed face, scrubbing away the last traces of her battle with dirt and leaves and flyaway feathers that had been scattered about the cabin.
She dabbed at her cheeks with a towel, her eyes turning longingly to the plump new feather bed Shevonne and Renny had helped her settle upon the big bedstead hours before. Quilts were spread across it now, broken rainbows of color over crisp ironed sheets.
She had not made love with Garret since Meggie had taken ill, had scarcely touched him since the night he had rent her very soul by confessing he was going after the Garveys. She had never paid heed to walls other people constructed around their hearts, had always barged through them, heedless, as if they were nothing but mist.
Now she felt the pressing weight of walls of her own.
Going to the chest Garret had shoved beneath one window, she withdrew a fresh nightgown. Shedding her clothes, she let it slide in soft waves down her body. She fingered the ribbon that tied it primly at her throat, remembering the desire that had smoldered in Garret's silvery eyes the night he had stripped the gown from her, the way his hands had felt, eager, loving, driving her to madness.
She glanced out the window toward the stable and was surprised to see that the lantern light was gone. Instead it glowed upon the hill, casting shadows over the three homemade crosses that marked the MacQuade dead. She could see Garret there, a shadowy figure alone in the vast emptiness of night.
Alone except for ghosts he had never laid to rest.
Ash turned to peer into the small, cracked looking glass Liam had hung over the basin, and the face staring back at her was pale, sorrowful, afraid. Afraid of losing him forever to one of the Garveys' guns.
But if they didn't have forever, at least there was this night. One night alive with need.
Barefoot, she stole out of the door, the cool night nipping beneath the hem of her nightgown, the breeze whispering through the trees kissing color into her cheeks.
As she ascended toward the tiny burial ground she could see Garret more clearly. His back was braced against the trunk of a tree; one knee was bent, his elbow resting atop it. Sometime while he had been working he had caught his hair back at the nape of his neck with a leather thong.
