Garret angled his head to look down into Meggie's small face, awash with innocence, adoration. But no comfort took root inside him. Instead he felt himself tumbling again into a dark chasm of dread that seemed to engulf him, suffocate him.
He tightened his hold about the little girl, as if somehow to shield her from the insidious claws of the fates that had ripped another little girl from his arms twenty years ago, a little girl who had looked at him with the same unconditional love, the same blinding trust as the child he now held.
* * *
The first raysof sunlight teased Ashleen's pink-calico curtains, the frying hotcakes and sizzling venison on the hearth filling the cabin with tantalizing scents of morning. Flowers still stood in the pitcher, the petals only a little faded since the night before, and clean tin plates glowed mellow silver.
Even the faces around the table were the same as those who had celebrated not only Meggie's saint's day but the day she had again joined in the world of childish chattering and sweet laughter.
Liam and Renny were stuffed into clean clothes, their hair slicked down by wet combs; Shevonne and Meggie's braids were plaited to perfection, bright ribbons on the ends. Their best pinafores were smoothed in starched, ruffled perfection over their good dresses. But the faces scrubbed to a Sabbath day shine were so crestfallen that Garret couldn't raise his eyes from his plate.
"Mr. MacQuade, you can't—can't be leavin' us," Liam whispered with a telltale sniffle. "You can't be."
"Always knew he would," Renny snapped out, belligerence a meager shielding for the hurt the boy was feeling. "Our mas left us, and our pas, and all our folks. Why should he be any different?"
"Renny—" Ashleen's taut chiding was cut off by Shevonne's shrill cry.
"Shut up, Renny!" the girl demanded, her voice thick with tears. "Just shut up!"
"Well, didn't I tell you he'd leave?" Renny snarled.
"I'm not leaving forever," Garret said, forcing himself to confront the pain in their faces. He would rather have taken a beating. "I’m just going for a little while."
"Where you goin', Mr. God?" Meggie's tremulous question was a knife thrust to his heart. "Up to heaven?"
"No, dammit, I—"I have to kill the Garveys, Garret wanted to yell.I have to find some way to protect you—like I couldn't protect Ma or Pa or Beth.He battled to steady his voice. "I have some business to attend to."
"See, Renny, it's paintin' stuff. Business." Liam bristled.
"Yeah, like my ma had business with that fancy man she run off with. She claimed she'd come back, too, but I never saw anything but her backside walkin' away from me. She didn't even look back."
There was a shuffling sound as Ashleen wheeled, turning her back on them, and Garret could see her shoulders quiver with stifled sobs. He wanted to go to her, stop her hurting, but there was nothing he could do but ride away.
"Renny," he said quietly, "all of you... I'll be counting the minutes until I can come back to you. I don't know what happened with your parents. Can't pretend to understand it. But this much I can tell you: Hell, I love you. Each one of you. And"—he paused, swallowed hard—"when Í come back, well... I'd be real proud if you'd let me be your pa."
"Pa?" Liam's mouth rounded into an awed circle. "You wanna be our—"
There was a horrible crash as Renny leapt up from his keg, one booted foot slamming into it, sending it crashing to the floor. "Stop it! Just stop makin' promises you ain't gonna keep," the boy cried, his thin shoulders heaving. "It's mean, Mr. MacQuade. Mean! I never had a pa an' always—always wanted—" A most unmanly sob broke from Renny's lips. "Just go away if you've a mind to! And quit—quit lyin'."
He spun away, bolting out the door. Shevonne's face crumpled, and she bolted up as well, scaling the loft ladder. Garret winced as he heard a soft thud, the child flinging herself on her feather tick, giving way to a flood of tears.
But the worst torment of all was looking at the faces of the two children who remained at the table. Liam's impish features were solemn as he rummaged for the crutch they had painted those long, worry-laden days when they had feared for Meggie's life. His fingers closed around the dragons that decorated the carved stick of wood, and he climbed to his feet. "I'm gonna go be quiet near Renny for a while," he said. "Like you told me to when Meggie was sick."
Garret felt something knot in his throat. "That'd be real nice, boy," he said then reached out his arms. Liam flung himself into Garret's embrace, and Garret could feel the child shaking, could feel how badly the boy wanted to believe in happily-ever-afters and forevers with a pa of his own.
Gritting his teeth, Garret smoothed his hand over the warm golden silk of the boy's hair. "You take care of—of Sister Ash now," Garret said against the child's curls. "Promise me."
"If—if you're gonna be our pa, can—can we call Sister Ash our ma now?" Liam raised a tear-streaked face to look into Garret's eyes.
Ashleen's voice, strained, filled with grief and fear and longing, whispered, "I'd like that, Liam. I'd like that very much."
Garret closed his eyes as Liam pulled away, heard the rhythmic thump of his crutch across the floor. Silence. It crushed his chest until he couldn't breathe, his mind roiling.
How can you do this, MacQuade? How can you leave them?
A tugging at his sleeve forced Garret to look down into a small angel face, wisps of dark hair pulling free from braids to curl about pink cheeks. He had thought he understood pain, guilt, remorse when Renny and Shevonne and Liam had fled the room. He had thought he understood how it felt to have one's heart ripped from one's chest when he had held Ashleen in his arms last night.
But now, as he stared down into Meggie Kearny's eyes, the emotions he had suffered increased a thousandfold.
