THOMAS Concannon’s wake would be talked about for years. There was fine food and fine music, as he’d planned for his daughter’s celebration party. The house where he’d lived out his last years was crowded with people.
Tom hadn’t been a rich man, some would say, but he was a man who’d been wealthy in friends.
They came from the village, and the village beyond that. From the farms and shops and cottages. They brought food, as neighbors do for such occasions, and the kitchen was quickly stocked with breads and meats and cakes. They drank to his life and serenaded his passing.
The fires burned warm to stave off the gale that rattled the windows and the chill of mourning.
But Maggie was sure she’d never be warm again. She sat near the fire in the tidy parlor while the company filled the house around her. In the flames she saw the cliffs, the boiling sea—and herself, alone, holding her dying father.
“Maggie.”
Startled, she turned and saw Murphy crouched in front of her. He pressed a steaming mug into her hands.
“What is it?”
“Mostly whiskey, with a bit of tea to warm it up.” His eyes were kind and grieving. “Drink it down now. There’s a girl. Won’t you eat a little? It would do you good.”
“I can’t,” she said, but did as he asked and drank. She’d have sworn she felt each fiery drop slide down her throat. “I shouldn’t have taken him out there, Murphy. I should have seen he was sick.”
“That’s nonsense, and you know it. He looked fine and fit when he left the pub. Why, he’d been dancing, hadn’t he?”
Dancing, she thought. She’d danced with her father on the day he died. Would she, someday, find comfort in that? “But if we hadn’t been so far away. So alone…”
“The doctor told you plain, Maggie. It would have made no difference. The aneurysm killed him, and it was mercifully quick.”
“Aye, it was quick.” Her hand trembled, so she drank again. It was the time afterward that had been slow. The dreadful time when she had driven his body away from the sea, with her breath wheezing in her throat and her hands frozen on the wheel.
“I’ve never seen a man so proud as he was of you.” Murphy hesitated, looked down at his hands. “He was like a second father to me, Maggie.”
“I know that.” She reached out, brushed Murphy’s hair off his brow. “So did he.”
So now he’d lost a father twice, Murphy thought. And for the second time felt the weight of grief and responsibility.
“I want to tell you, to make sure you know, that if there’s anything, anything a’tall you’re needing, or your family needs, you’ve only to tell me.”
“It’s good of you to say so, and to mean it.”
He looked up again; his eyes, that wild Celtic blue, met hers. “I know it was hard when he had to sell the land. And hard that I was the one to buy it.”
“No.” Maggie set the mug aside and laid her hands over his. “The land wasn’t important to him.”
“Your mother…”
“She would have blamed a saint for buying it,” Maggie said briskly. “Even though the money it brought put food in her mouth. I tell you it was easier that it was you. Brie and I don’t begrudge you a blade of grass, that’s the truth, Murphy.” She made herself smile at him, because they both needed it. “You’ve done what he couldn’t, and what he simply didn’t want to do. You’ve made the land grow. Let’s not hear any more talk like that.”
She looked around then, as if she’d just walked out of an empty room into a full one. Someone was playing the flute, and O’Malley’s daughter, heavy with her first child, was singing a light, dreamy air. There was a trill of laughter from across the room, lively and free. A baby was crying. Men were huddled here and there, talking of Tom, and of the weather, of Jack Marley’s sick roan mare and the Donovans’ leaking cottage roof.
The women talked of Tom as well, and of the weather, of children and of weddings and wakes.
She saw an old woman, an elderly and distant cousin, in worn shoes and mended stockings, spinning a story for a group of wide-eyed youngsters while she knitted a sweater.
“He loved having people around, you know.” The pain was there, throbbing like a wound in her voice. “He would have filled the house with them daily if he could. It was always a wonder to him that I preferred to be on my own.” She drew in a breath and hoped her voice was casual. “Did you ever hear him speak of someone named Amanda?”
“Amanda?” Murphy frowned and considered. “No. Why do you ask?”
“It’s nothing. I probably mistook it.” She shrugged it away. Surely her father’s dying words hadn’t been a strange woman’s name. “I should go help Brie in the kitchen. Thanks for the drink, Murphy. And for the rest.” She kissed him and rose.
There was no easy way to get through the room, of course. She had to stop again and again, to hear words of comfort, or a quick story about her father, or in the case of Tim O’Malley, to offer comfort herself.
“Jesus, I’ll miss him,” Tim said, unabashedly wiping his eyes. “Never had a friend as dear to me, and never will again. He joked about opening a pub of his own, you know. Giving me a bit of competition.”
“I know.” She also knew it hadn’t been a joke, but another dream.
“He wanted to be a poet,” someone else put in while Maggie hugged Tim and patted his back. “Said he’d only lacked the words to be one.”
“He had the heart of a poet,” Tim said brokenly. “The heart and soul of one, to be sure. A finer man never walked this earth than Tom Concannon.”
Maggie had words with the priest about funeral services set for the next morning, and finally slipped into the kitchen.
It was as crowded as the rest of the house, with women busily serving food or making it. The sounds and smells were of life here—kettles singing, soups simmering, a ham baking. Children wandered underfoot, so that women—with that uncanny maternal grace they seemed to be born with—dodged around them or scooped them up as needs demanded.
The wolfhound puppy that Tom had given Brianna on her last birthday snored contentedly under the kitchen table. Brianna herself was at the stove, her face composed, her hands competent. Maggie could see the subtle signs of grief in the quiet eyes and the soft, unsmiling mouth.