Hearts Made Whole (5 page)

And somehow she was going to have to break the news to them that they were now homeless.

R
yan stared at the boys, certain his medication was causing him to see double. He blinked hard. Then blinked again. But two identical brown heads and two identical pairs of blue eyes stared back at him. Their hair was sun-streaked, their faces bronzed, and their noses sprinkled with too many freckles to count, the obvious sign of boys who spent a great deal of time outdoors.

At the sight of him standing in the kitchen doorway, their ready smiles dimmed, replaced by curiosity.

For a long staggering moment, Ryan's vision clouded with another boyish face, with wide innocent eyes, filled with curiosity . . . at first. But then the face had grown angrier and more incensed as the soldiers ransacked his home. Ryan had wanted to shout out a warning to the boy. At the very least he should have stopped his comrades. But like a coward he'd stood back and done nothing.

Ryan shook his head and focused again on the twins. But the boyish face flashed before him again, only this time it was pale with lifeless eyes staring at nothing.

With a gasp, Ryan took a step back into the kitchen, his forehead breaking out into a sweat, his head pounding with enough ferocity to weaken his knees. He needed the bed. He needed to escape the torturous memories that wouldn't let him go.

He looked around the kitchen frantically. Where had he discarded his leather satchel? His throat burned for a sip of whiskey from the flask the tavern owner had given him.

Caroline had moved past him into the sitting room with the children. He prayed she would take them away, get them out of his sight.

“Caroline,” their childish voices chorused, “who is he? Why is he here?”

Ryan leaned against the wall near the door, the coolness of the plaster seeping through his undershirt and reminding him he was only half dressed. How must that look to the new arrivals? To find both he and Caroline undressed?

“His name is Mr. Chambers,” Caroline replied. “And he's here . . . he's come to . . .”

There was desperation in her tone. She apparently hadn't expected him to arrive today. She wasn't ready to move out. She hadn't even begun to pack, which would account for the homey feel of the cottage.

“Exactly why is there a strange man in the house?” asked the young woman who had arrived with the twins.

“Mr. Finick visited this morning,” Caroline started again, “and he brought some bad news.”

Ryan tensed, and he lifted his head. So she'd only just received the news about having to leave the lighthouse earlier that day? No wonder she'd been surprised to see him.

“He's found a new keeper,” she added. “Mr. Chambers.”

Her voice was drowned by a chorus of “That's not fair” from the boys and “It's about time” from the young woman.

“I did my best to convince Mr. Finick to let me stay,” Caroline said louder above their voices, “but he wouldn't listen to me. He thinks the lightkeeper needs to be a man.”

“No one should be a lightkeeper,” said the young woman, “except for crazy people who don't care about whether they live or die.”

“Tessa!” Caroline's voice was sharp and commanding. It brought the sitting room to silence and told him exactly who was in charge. If her father had died, he guessed the other children were her siblings and that she was the oldest and responsible for their care.

For a long moment no one said anything. Only the distant yodeling cry of a pair of loons echoed through the open kitchen window.

“I thought we had until the end of the week to move out,” Caroline finally said, breaking the silence. “But as you can see, the new keeper arrived today.”

“Where will we go?” asked one of the boys.

“What will we do?” asked the other.

“Why don't we move to Detroit?” Tessa said. “Surely you can find normal work there.”

The questions came in rapid fire. They shot through Ryan's muddled brain and his heart, opening old wounds.

He stared at the center of the kitchen table, at a jar filled with fresh-cut flowers. His eyes moved to the aprons hung neatly on a peg in the wall, then to a corner shelf unit lined with an assortment of blue dishes.

This was their home.

“I don't know where we'll go yet.” Caroline's voice rose
again above the clamoring. “But Mr. Chambers has agreed to let us stay here for a few more days so that I can pack and find a new place for us to live.”

The questions the others had raised ricocheted around Ryan's mind. Where would she go? And what work would she find to support her siblings?

“We'll camp outside for a few days,” Caroline continued with forced cheerfulness. “I know how much you boys like sleeping in a tent. So you can help me fashion a tent in the yard. And Tessa and I will sleep in the boathouse.”

The twins' response was enthusiastic, while Tessa gave a cry of protest. “Surely you're jesting. I'm not sleeping in the boathouse.”

“Be grateful he's allowing us to stay a few extra days.”

“I
am
grateful. To be going,” Tessa retorted indignantly. “But I won't stand for being thrown out like trash.”

“That's enough, Tessa—”

“And what about Sarah? You're not proposing to make her sleep in the boathouse too, are you?” Tessa's pitch rose with each word she spoke. “It would kill her.”

There was a pause. Ryan peered down the hallway to the closed door. Who was Sarah? And what was wrong with her?

“I'll do my best to persuade Mr. Chambers to let Sarah stay in her room.”

Ryan pushed away from the wall, a low growl welling up in his chest and spilling out. He'd listened to enough, and he couldn't take any more.

“She can stay,” he said, ducking through the doorway into the sitting room.

The four grew silent and turned hard eyes upon him. Accusing, angry eyes. For a moment the face of that other boy flashed
before him with the same accusing and angry eyes. Quickly, Ryan shoved the memory aside. He had to focus on what was happening here and now and not let his pain and problems distract him.

“Sarah can stay,” he repeated, though he had no idea who Sarah was. “In fact, you can all stay.” Maybe the war had turned him into a monster, but he wasn't the kind of man who would kick a family out of their home—not without them having somewhere to go.

Caroline stared at him with wide eyes, which were an interesting shade of light blue, the color of the summer sky in the full heat of day with the smoke from campfires casting a haze. They didn't contain anger, only resignation and worry.

He hadn't paid attention to her features in the bedroom, but here in the brightly lit sitting room that overlooked the lake, he had a clear view of the heart shape of her face and the sleekness of her cheeks that only highlighted her pretty lips. Her straight hair was a warm honey brown. It fell in tousled disarray across her shoulders and dangled halfway down her back.

The quilt had slipped from one of her shoulders, revealing a slender neck and the dip of her thin nightgown. Although he hadn't meant to look in the bedroom earlier, he'd seen enough before he'd averted his eyes to know she was slender yet womanly in all the right places.

Embarrassed, he shifted his attention to his bare toes. It had obviously been too long since he'd been around a pretty woman.

As if sensing the direction of his thoughts, she tugged the quilt back up and tightened her grip. “I don't understand. You're letting us stay?”

“I'll sleep in the boathouse,” he said.

“You will?”

He nodded. “I'm used to sleeping wherever I can find a dry place. Been doing it for the past few years. So several more nights bedding on the ground won't bother me.”

She released a long breath. “Thank you.”

He met her gaze then. And the gratefulness in the clear blue of her eyes made him want to do more for her.

“Stay the whole week,” he offered.

The twins regarded him with suspicion, and Tessa eyed him with open curiosity.

Caroline cocked her head, and her hair slid forward over the side of her face. She peered at him through the loose strands as if trying to assess his true motives.

“If Mr. Finick said you have until the end of the week,” he said, “then I can wait to move in until then.”

“We won't need a week since we're anxious to go,” Tessa said.

“We're not anxious to go.” Caroline shot Tessa a look of warning. The younger girl ignored it and instead bent to pick up a haversack she'd discarded near the door. “We'll be thankful for every day that we have here.”

Ryan stepped aside as Tessa brushed past him into the kitchen, leaving him alone with Caroline and the two boys, who were still staring at him.

If he didn't escape them, he had the feeling they would bombard him with unwanted questions, especially if they caught sight of his injured hand.

“Can we talk somewhere privately?” he asked Caroline. “Maybe outside?”

She nodded and then said to the twins, “Go wash up and Tessa will give you a snack.”

They gave Ryan one last disparaging glance before obeying their sister and padding across the room into the kitchen.

Ryan headed out the front door, down the stone steps, and onto the thick grass that spread out in front of the dwelling. It felt cool and soft beneath his bare feet, with the breeze coming off the lake equally soothing.

Surprisingly, the weight of his earlier exhaustion had lifted. He was still tired, the alcohol and the pain-killers both made him sleepy, yet for the first time in a long while his mind was clear and the perpetual need to sleep gone.

The door banged closed behind him, and then Caroline joined him in the yard. She peered across the lake to a distant steamer passing to the south, likely on its way to Detroit laden with the harvest of northern farms. The sharpness in her eyes told him she was experienced with seafaring vessels and their navigation—probably much more than he was.

“Listen,” he began, not exactly sure what he wanted to say but knowing he had to say something. “I didn't know all this would happen when I rode up here today.”

She shrugged and turned her attention to the swarms of black and orange fluttering along the shoreline. “The monarchs are here.” For a few seconds a smile transformed her face and chased away the lines of concern.

He was tempted to simply watch the delight playing across her face, but when she peeked at him sideways, he rapidly shifted his sights to the hordes of butterflies along the shore to the north.

“They usually stop here at Lake St. Clair each year while migrating to Mexico for the winter.” She spoke softly, almost reverently. “Sometimes we see large groups of hummingbirds migrating too.”

Against the backdrop of the blue lake, the monarchs were a majestic display of color, along with the fading russet grass and yellowing poplars.

It was all so beautiful. He drew in a breath and then released the tension that had found a permanent home in his shoulders. After weeks of restlessness he could finally find peace here, couldn't he?

Next to him, Caroline shifted, her toes poking out from the tattered edges of the quilt.

The fleeting peace evaporated, and guilt tightened his muscles again. Apparently his peace was to come at this woman's expense. “After you leave here, where will you go?”

Her eyes clouded, covering all traces of delight. She glanced over her shoulder at the door before responding. “I haven't had the time to locate a place to stay.”

“Do you have family you can live with?”

“I might have an uncle or aunt back east,” she said quietly. “But even if I could travel that far with Sarah—which I can't—I wouldn't want to burden them with her care.”

“Sarah?” Though he'd heard her name several times now, he'd yet to make sense of who she was.

“My youngest sister,” Caroline explained, worry lines creasing her forehead. “The doctors don't really know what's wrong with her, except that she has some kind of muscular disease where she just keeps getting weaker.”

“I've heard of the disease,” he said. And from what he'd heard, the prognosis wasn't good. The muscular degeneration only continued until the lungs were too weak for breathing or the heart too flimsy for beating.

“Sarah can't get out of bed anymore,” Caroline said with a sadness in her voice that tugged at him. “Unless we carry her . . .”

“How long has she had the disease?”

“It started coming on a couple of years ago, about the same
time my father's rheumatism worsened.” She stared at a distant spot far away in the lake. Was that where her father was buried?

He swallowed the question. She likely resented the prying about her heartaches as much as he did. From what he'd been able to piece together, she'd lost her father not too long ago, she was losing her sister, and now she was losing her job and home.

Was it possible someone else was in as much or more pain than he?