“I assume you left it in the care of a manager of some sort, someone trustworthy and capable?”
“Of course.”
“Imagine if Henry were still alive and he asked to manage your hotel while you were gone. He promised you could trust him despite the money he stole from you in the past. He promised he’d be responsible and report back to you. Would you let him?”
He closed his eyes, felt the brush of winter air on his cheeks, and drew in a breath. “No.”
“And that’s precisely why I can’t go to South Dakota with you. You’re asking me to give up everything I’ve worked for and offering promises I can’t trust in exchange.”
The air he’d just drawn into his lungs turned to shards of glass, tearing through his insides until it hurt to breathe. He looked out over the moonlit yard, toward the winding path that would lead him back to town.
“Tell the girls I’ll be by to visit them in the morning. If that’s still allowed?”
She shrugged before turning her face away.
Fine then, he’d keep visiting his daughters. But as for their mother? Seemed he had as much chance at winning her back by staying in Eagle Harbor as he did by returning to Deadwood and writing another five years’ worth of letters to the wrong address.
Chapter Twelve
Alone wolf’s howl echoed through the night as Isaac stomped across the yard, the snow crunching beneath his boots. Behind him the lights from the cabin glowed brightly, spilling their warmth through the windows. He couldn’t stay there any longer, not with all the cheerful faces. Not with all the well-intentioned questions about how Tressa’s baby was doing, whether Lindy was excited to be expecting her own child, and what projects his mother and others on the Beautification Society were planning for next summer. An endless circle of happy thoughts and cheerfulness.
A circle where no one talked of Pa.
Surely Elijah had to miss him tonight, and Ma had to think of her lost husband at least a little. Pa had always loved Thanksgiving, had made everyone who shared their meal—and there had always been plenty of people—go around the table and say what they were thankful for as well as quote a favorite Bible verse.
He’d sat in Pa’s spot tonight at the end of the table. Had Elijah noticed? Had Elijah cared? How could his brother laugh and eat pie and play games with Pa gone? Isaac huffed, holdingout his lantern though he hardly needed it with the reflection of moonlight on the snow. Or was he batty for not being able to enjoy Thanksgiving three-and-a-half years after their father died?
No, he wasn’t batty, not when he’d been the reason for his father’s death.
He trudged toward the workshop on the far side of the yard. People in town might say a sudden storm had killed Pa three summers ago. But no one who said that had been in the lighthouse tower watching their father’s little mackinaw fishing boat flounder. None of them had stood rooted to the iron platform when the boat capsized and Pa started swimming toward shore. A wave had washed over Pa, and he’d been so sure Pa wouldn’t come back up, but Pa had. Isaac had counted all the waves, one, two, three, four. And then… no Pa.
His twin sister Rebekah had stood there with him, along with Mac, who’d been the assistant lighthouse keeper then. She’d tugged on his arm, begging him and Mac to take the dinghy down by the beach and row out and rescue Pa after his boat capsized.
They’d told Rebekah they’d only get themselves killed by attempting such a thing.
But when Elijah had come home from sailing the Atlantic, he’d proved everyone wrong, starting a life-saving team and showing just how easily Pa could have been rescued—if Isaac had only been willing to try.
Isaac pushed open the door to the workshop, the calming scent of sawdust and pine filling his nostrils. Just what he needed. A few hours of?—
Crash!
His free hand immediately slid between the buttons of his coat to grip his gun. “Who’s there?”
“I-I’m s-sorry,” a familiar, lilting voice stammered.
He picked up the lantern again and peered deeper inside the building, leaving the door open behind him.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone, and ye frightened me.” Aileen Brogan righted the wooden chair she must have knocked over when he’d come into the building. If her Irish accent hadn’t given her away, her fiery red hair glittering in the lantern light would have. Had he ever seen hair such a shade of deep, rich red before?
He slid his hand off his gun and pulled the door shut behind him, then headed toward where she stood by the potbelly stove at the back of the shop. “Are you by yourself?”
She gave him a look he didn’t quite understand. “I was until ye arrived, but I’ll leave now, so as not to be in yer way.”
She grabbed her coat from the end of one of the tables filled with wooden toys he’d made over the summer. He’d meant to get them shipped to Chicago at the end of the season, but hadn’t reckoned on getting diphtheria and then being elected sheriff.
“Wait.” He reached out to put a hand on her arm, to stop the anxious flutter of movements and keep her from running out so quickly. But the instant he moved his hand toward her, she jumped back, bumping into the chair once more and sending both it and herself to the floor with another crash.
“Are you all right?” He bent to where she lay sprawled on the wooden planks and extended a hand to help her up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you again.”
