Promise Me This (24 page)

August brought blue-white skies, violent thunderstorms, and long days of peach and corn harvesting. The hot weather also brought mosquitoes—flying, biting insects Michael had never known—to share their land and suck their blood.

“Their bite reminds you that you’re living, Michael!” Daniel laughed at the boy’s fitful swatting and frustration. “They tell you to be grateful for your life’s blood, lad—for if you’re not, they’ll gladly relieve you of it!”

Michael might have grown tired of Daniel’s glee at his expense had he not known his jest was kindly meant. He’d also learned that Daniel McKenica seldom wasted words, that one word spoken often doubled for two meanings.

So he wondered how it worked—this being grateful for your life when you knew it was at the expense of another. He knew by Daniel’s own words that he did not see Michael’s life as a trade but as a gift that should be gratefully received and dutifully, joyfully shared. By the end of summer, Michael alternately feared and dared to wonder if there could be some truth in that.

It was in the evenings, with the day’s work behind, that a gentle melancholy sometimes settled over the threesome. Michael fell easily into their custom of sitting in the small parlor on the rare cool or rainy evening or, more often, sitting on the porch if the evening was fine. Daniel puffed his pipe, sometimes reading or rereading the weekly newspaper. Maggie mended or darned until the light failed. Then she leaned back, rested her head against the rocker, and hummed the old songs of Ireland.

The tunes brought an ache to Michael’s heart for he did not know what—something he’d long forgotten, if he’d ever known it. At times they reminded him of the bagpiper on the stern of
Titanic
piping “Erin’s Lament” as the ship pulled from her shores. And then he would think again of Owen, standing beside him. He thought mostly of Owen.

Maggie and Daniel talked of Sean, Maggie’s husband. Though Michael saw her grow quiet at odd times throughout the day and lift her apron’s hem to wipe stray tears, she just as often told Michael funny stories about her husband and their life together. All the years they’d lived in America, Daniel had worked for them. Through those years he’d become a brother to Sean and Maggie; together they had formed a family.

One fine day when September waned, Maggie banned Daniel and Michael from the kitchen. They took their meals, morning and noon, on the porch steps.

“Whatever has come over you, woman?” Daniel demanded. “What’s that you’re hiding behind your back? What smells so goo—?”

“That’s none of your nevermind, Daniel McKenica. You’ll both be allowed in my kitchen when I say so, and not a moment before. Have you not work enough in the gardens? Do you need me to find some employment for your idle hands?” Maggie shook a wooden spoon in his face. “If you’re finished blathering, I can surely find another job for you two to—”

“Come, Michael. She’s got her dander up. We’d best put our feet to the road before she reads us her doomsday list.”

Michael hurried to keep up with Daniel’s rapidly retreating gait. “What sort of list is that, then?’”

“Ach. That, my boy, is a list that will keep our noses to the grindstone from now till doomsday—nary a breath nor break between!”

But Maggie’s banishment lasted only until supper. When the two wary males returned from the fields, she bade them scrub at the pump outside the kitchen door till their skin glowed red. She left a pail of steaming water for each and hung clean trousers, shirts, stiff collars, and even neckties over the porch rail.

“What has the woman gone and done now?” Daniel fretted.

Michael swallowed his panic.
Has someone died?
He’d never been so smartly dressed, not even the day Owen made him change his shirt to eat in the third-class dining room aboard
Titanic
. But to wear a necktie—he’d no idea how to finagle the thing about his neck. What could Maggie Allen be thinking? And why was Daniel McKenica near laughing at his discomfort?

“Come round the front, the both of you.” Maggie ordered. “Close your eyes, Michael.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, close your eyes,” Maggie repeated patiently.

“Do as you’re told, lad. Things will go easier with you,” Daniel warned, gruff in his nod.

Michael closed his eyes and, for good measure, covered them with both hands. He did not know if the pull of temptation was because he’d been forbidden to look or because he dreaded whatever unknown thing lay ahead.

“Daniel, hold the door! This way, Michael. Take my hand,” Maggie crooned, leading him round the side of the house, up the front steps, and over the threshold.

“Why are we coming in the front door?” Michael asked. He’d rarely entered through the front since the day he’d fallen through it and into the world of Allen’s Run Gardens.

“So many questions,” Maggie chided good-naturedly.

The moment he stepped through the portal, Michael’s nose gained control of his senses. Never in all his life, not even in the Christmases of his early childhood, could he remember having smelled anything so tantalizing, so utterly amazing. It was as though every hair on his body stood up and every bud on his tongue shouted, “Creation!”

Whatever his face showed was enough for Maggie. She laughed aloud and pulled Michael’s hands from his eyes.

The three stood in the dark dining room—a room rarely opened even for airing—now bright with sixteen burning candles stuck in a blackberry pudding. A roasted goose, bigger than any Michael had ever seen, was circled with steaming apples, and a platter heaped in golden-brown St. Michael’s bannock sat on the sideboard, surrounded by bowls of cabbage and carrots swimming in butter and an array of sweetmeats and nuts, barely squeezed into the space.

“Happy birthday, Michael! Happy Michaelmas!” Maggie hugged him.

Daniel, no longer in the least bewildered or vexed, clapped him on the back, a perfect partner to the conspiracy. “You can have a birthday every month if this be the bounty it brings!” He laughed.

“For me? All this for me?” Michael could not believe it.

“You were born on Michaelmas, were you not?” Maggie teased.

“I was! But how did you know?”

“You said you’d turn sixteen in September. I wagered a boy named Michael must have entered this world on Michaelmas.”

“Named for the angel, I was—Mam said.” Michael blushed.

“And not just an angel, the archangel—the angel above all angels!” Maggie laughed. “What better day to be born?”

“You two are stickier than the pudding I’ve a mind to plow into,” Daniel fussed. “See what your lungs can do with those candles, my boy.”

Michael was mesmerized by the beauty and wonder of the pudding set afire. “Nobody’s ever made me such a feast, Maggie.”

“I’m glad you like it, Michael. But you need to make a wish and blow out the candles.”

“Before they burn down the house!” Daniel nearly shouted.

“A wish?” Michael had never heard of such a thing.

“Just in the quiet of your mind. A wish or a prayer,” Maggie coached, “then blow them out.”

“Blow them all out at once and the wish is bound to come true,” Daniel added.

That made no sense to Michael. How could blowing out candles make something as important as a wish or a prayer come true? But he would not miss the chance.

“Please, God,” he whispered so low no one else heard, “bring Annie here—for Owen’s sake.” Michael filled his lungs until he thought they’d burst. He blew and blew—not only the candles, but the very flowers that Maggie had so painstakingly arranged upon the pudding.

Daniel laughed till he cried; Maggie looked very nearly distressed before she pulled Michael away.

Never had a meal tasted so wonderfully good—not one he had earned nor one he had stolen. Michael ate and ate until he would not have been surprised to see the buttons pop from his trousers. At last he sat back, full, contented, and licked the goose grease from his fingers. Maggie gave him a reproving wag of her head but smiled just the same.

By the time the table was cleared and the dishes washed, the sun had pulled a blanket over its head. Frost was still far away, but the chill of a late-September evening drew them into the front parlor. Daniel built a fire. Maggie sank gratefully into her rocker, her sewing basket by her feet.

Michael stretched across the rug by the hearth, letting the heat from the fire seep into his skin and comfort his bones, and opened
The Call of the Wild
, the new Jack London novel Daniel and Maggie had given him—wonders for his heart and soul in one slim volume.

Daniel loaded his pipe and took up his newspaper. For once, Maggie chased neither him nor his smoke out of doors.

Michael shut his eyes, holding close the moment. When he opened them again, Maggie rocked slowly, back and forth, back and forth. Her needle plied a sock stretched taut across her darning egg, working it round and round.

“A letter came from Annie today,” Maggie said, not dropping a stitch.

Michael stiffened.
Could a wish come so suddenly true?
he wondered and closed his book.

Daniel stopped puffing. “How is the lass?”

Maggie sighed. “Hard to tell. She wrote that she’s been living with her family’s solicitor and his wife. They have a daughter.” She laid her darning in her lap. “She says they’re friends. They go about London with the missus, and the girls go together to some Red Cross lessons or other.”

“And what’s wrong with that? It’s good for the girl to have friends her own age.”

“They’re not her family, Daniel. We’re her family.”

“A family is those you’re stuck with—like it or not.”

“Daniel!”

“Well, maybe she likes them. Look at us. We’re not a family by blood, but you’re both as much of a family as I’ve ever had.”

Maggie tilted her head, watching Daniel.

Daniel squirmed and, clearly trying to relieve himself of Maggie’s attention, said, “Well, what about that aunt she’s got, right there in London? Has she not been her guardian since Mackenzie died?”

“Eleanor Hargrave . . .” Maggie rocked back and forth more quickly, then stopped. “But there’s something not right about it all. Mackenzie would not come to America because of her, though why, I never knew. He did not love her. And Owen insisted Annie not stay in the woman’s house. He wrote that he’d enrolled her in a girls’ school in Southampton until he was certain that moving to America was a good and stable change for them both.”

“Sounds very responsible.” Daniel puffed again.

“But that’s the quandary, don’t you see? Why would Owen think their aunt, their mother’s own sister, not a proper guardian for her? And why now, of all times, would Annie be living with her guardian’s solicitor?”

“You’re getting your detective mind going again, Margaret Faye. You’ll be drawing a mystery where there is none.”

“Annie said her aunt suffered a brain hemorrhage after they recovered Owen’s body,” Maggie mused.

Michael swallowed, and Maggie looked to him as though she regretted the reminder her words had surely given.

“There you are, then. The girl canna stay with an aunt who’s likely bedridden or incapacitated.”

“I don’t know,” Maggie said again. “Something’s not right. Annie doesn’t sound happy.”

“Owen’s dead,” Michael answered after a time, as though a question had been posed. “He was her family—her true family. How can Annie be happy?” Michael remembered the love lights in Annie’s eyes when she gazed at her older brother on Easter morning. “How can she ever be happy again?”

Maggie’s brow creased. She studied Michael a long time, almost as though she’d not clearly seen him before. “Why don’t you write to her, Michael?”

Michael felt the heat and shame run through his body, but he did not shrink from Maggie’s gaze. “She’d not want to be hearing from me.”

“I think she would. You and Annie knew and loved Owen best of all the people living, as near as I can tell. I think you’re just the person to write to her.”

Michael looked away.

“You can send your letter with mine. I’ll write tomorrow.”

“Maggie,” Daniel cautioned, “are you certain you want to interfere?”

“Helping to heal hearts is not interfering. I know what I’m about.”

Daniel ducked behind his paper.

“And I think, Michael Dunnagan,” she said, “that it is well nigh time you called me Aunt Maggie.” She smiled and, without looking at Daniel, said, “Don’t you think so, Daniel?”

Daniel shot Michael a glance that held, pulled the pipe from his mouth, leaving its corners half–turned up, and blinked. He shook his paper again, raised it to a proper reading level, and said in feeble gruffness, “Suit yourself. It’s as good a name as any.”

Annie stayed with the Spragues past her fifteenth birthday, past a subdued Christmas, and well into the bleak new year. A month before the anniversary of Owen’s death, Annie made her announcement.

“No, Elisabeth Anne, I do not think it wise for you to return to Hargrave House.” Mr. Sprague had never formed the habit, as had Mrs. Sprague and Connie, of calling her Annie. “You have done well here.”

“And we love having you, dear,” Mrs. Sprague insisted. “You know you are welcome to live with us—for as long as you wish.”