“Don’t say that. Don’t.” He squeezed her hard, worried. “There’s nothing more precious than marriage and family. Nothing in the world.”
“If that’s so, how can it be such a prison?”
“It isn’t meant to be.” The weakness came over him again, and all at once he felt the cold deep in his bones. “We haven’t given you a good example, your mother and I, and I’m sorry for it. More than I can tell you. But I know this, Maggie, my girl. When you love with all you are, it isn’t unhappiness alone you risk. It’s heaven, too.”
She pressed her face into his coat, drew comfort from the scent of him. She couldn’t tell him that she knew, had known for years, that it hadn’t been heaven for him. And that he would never have bolted the door to that marital prison behind him if it hadn’t been for her.
“Did you love her, ever?”
“I did. And it was as hot as one of your furnaces. You came from that, Maggie Mae. Born in fire you were, like one of your finest and boldest statues. However much that fire cooled, it burned once. Maybe if it hadn’t flared so bright, so hard, we could have made it last.”
Something in his tone made her look up again, study his face. “There was someone else.”
Like a honeyed blade, the memory was painful and sweet. Tom looked to sea again, as if he could gaze across it and find the woman he’d let go. “Aye, there was once. But it wasn’t to be. Had no right to be. I’ll tell you this, when love comes, when the arrow strikes the heart, there’s no stopping it. And even bleeding is a pleasure. So don’t say never to me, Maggie. I want for you what I couldn’t have.”
She didn’t say it to him, but she thought it. “I’m twenty-three, Da, and Brie’s but a year behind me. I know what the church says, but I’m damned if I believe there’s a God in heaven who finds joy in punishing a man for the whole of his life for a mistake.”
“Mistake.” His brows lowered, Tom stuck his pipe in his teeth. “My marriage has not been a mistake, Margaret Mary, and you’ll not say so now, nor ever again. You and Brie came from it. A mistake—no, a miracle. I was past forty when you were born, without a thought in my head to starting a family. I think of what my life would have been like without the two of you. Where would I be now? A man near seventy, alone. Alone.” He cupped her face in his hands and his eyes were fierce on hers. “I thank God every day I found your mother, and that between us we made something I can leave behind. Of all the things I’ve done, and not done, you and Brianna are my first and truest joys. Now there’ll be no more talk of mistakes or unhappiness, do you hear?”
“I love you, Da.”
His face softened. “I know it. Too much, I think, but I can’t regret it.” The sense of urgency came on him again, like a wind whispering to hurry. “There’s something I’d ask of you, Maggie.”
“What is it?”
He studied her face, his fingers molding it as if he suddenly had a need to memorize every feature—the sharp stubborn chin, the soft curve of cheek, the eyes as green and restless as the sea that clashed beneath them.
“You’re a strong one, Maggie. Tough and strong, with a true heart beneath the steel. God knows you’re smart. I can’t begin to understand the things you know, or how you know them. You’re my bright star, Maggie, the way Brie’s my cool rose. I want you, the both of you, to follow where your dreams lead you. I want that more than I can say. And when you chase them down, you’ll chase them as much for me as for yourself.”
The roar of the sea dimmed in his ears, as did the light in his eyes. For a moment Maggie’s face blurred and faded.
“What is it?” Alarmed, she clutched at him. He’d gone gray as the sky, and suddenly looked horribly old. “Are you ill, Da? Let me get you back into the lorry.”
“No.” It was vital, for reasons he didn’t know, that he stand here, just here at the farthest tip of his country, and finish what he’d begun. “I’m fine. Just a twinge is all.”
“You’re freezing.” Indeed, his wiry body felt like little more than a bag of icy bones in her hands.
“Listen to me.” His voice was sharp. “Don’t let anything stop you from going where you need to go, from doing what you need to do. Make your mark on the world, and make it deep so it lasts. But don’t—”
“Da!” Panic bubbled inside her as he staggered, fell to his knees. “Oh God, Da, what is it? Your heart?”
No, not his heart, he thought through a haze of bleary pain. For he could hear that beating hard and fast in his own ears. But he felt something inside him breaking, bursting and slipping away. “Don’t harden yourself, Maggie. Promise me. You’ll never lose what’s inside you. You’ll take care of your sister. And your mother. You’ll promise me that.”
“You’ve got to get up.” She dragged at him, fighting off fear. The thrash of the sea sounded now like a storm breaking, a nightmare storm that would sweep them both off the cliff and onto the spearing rocks. “Do you hear me, Da? You’ve got to get up now.”
“Promise me.”
“Aye, I promise. I swear it before God, I’ll see to both of them, always.” Her teeth were chattering; stinging tears already ran down her cheeks.
“I need a priest,” he gasped out.
“No, no, you need only to get out of this cold.” But she knew it was a lie as she said it. He was slipping away from her; no more how tightly she held his body, what was inside him was slipping away. “Don’t leave me like this. Not like this.” Desperate, she scanned the fields, the beaten paths where people walked year after year to stand as they had stood. But there was nothing, no one, so she bit back a scream for help. “Try, Da, come and try now to get up. We’ll get you to a doctor.”
He rested his head on her shoulder and sighed. There was no pain now, only numbness. “Maggie,” he said. Then he whispered another name, a stranger’s name, and that was all.
“No.” As if to protect him from the wind he no longer felt, she wrapped her arms tight around him, rocking, rocking, rocking as she sobbed.
And the wind trumpeted down to the sea and brought with it the first needles of icy rain.
Chapter Two