He’s been good to me, I can’t deny it. At night when I wake from a terrible dream, the damn things that will keep coming, he’s there. He holds me. At first I didn’t understand it at all. Why would a man who’s so stern and domineering be all kind and gentle when it comes to me? I don’t know if I can trust it, trust him. I wasn’t sure, at first. I didn’t really get it.
Then Caitlin and Maeve took me out for a walk by the cliff one day and explained. They told me how seriously the men of The Clan take their responsibilities toward their women. The way Maeve talks about her late husband—a man I never met, but a man Cormac refers to with honor and reverence—makes me long for that type of earnest, heartfelt love that most women only dream of.
Maeve wears a thin locket around her neck and her wedding band, thick, solid gold with a Celtic knot dead center, to this day. When she talks of her husband Seamus, she spins that ring and talks in a distant voice, as if part of her heart was buried with him.
And Caitlin’s love for Keenan is nothing short of adoration. The way she speaks about him, you’d reckon the man hung the bloody moon. But he’s fallible. They all are. He’s good to her, though, just like Cormac is to me and Seamus was to Maeve. I’ll never want for anything. I know this.
“’Tis a matter of honor, lass,” Maeve said over hot tea in the library one afternoon. “He’ll never let you go without. Your every need will be met. But in turn, they have expectations.”
“Aye,” I said bitterly. “Don’t step a toe out of line, eh?”
She smiled. “No, love. Not quite. You’re allowed to speak yer mind and have your say, of course. But in time you’ll learn when and how to speak your mind. It’s all in the timing.”
“Right,” Caitlin said. “For example, when he’s lying in after a good night’s… sleep?” Her cheeks flushed pink as her eyes darted between me and Maeve, indicating it isn’t a good night’s sleep she’s thinking of. “Good time. On his way to do a job or mete out punishment to someone who’s defied the Clan or disobeyed an order? Not the right time.” She took an extra long pull from her tea to hide her flaming hot cheeks.
“Quite right,” Maeve said with a snort of approval.
I like these two. There’s a kinship between us I never had before. I miss my sisters, but these two fill a void in my heart.
Maeve smiled. “Life is like a cup of tea, lass, as the old saying goes.” She lifted her mug and took a long draught before finishing her sentence. “It’s all in how you make it.”
It’s all in how you make it.
Do I like it sweet and soothing, comforting and warm, so it slips down to my toes and warms me through? Or will I make it bitter and cold, tainted by bitter regret and anger?
I’m trying. God, I’m trying, but the weight of a child in my womb and his ring on my finger makes everything seem that much harder.
I’m eager to get out of here, to go with Maeve and Caitlin and work a little retail therapy out of my system. And yes, to see the way my husband’s eyes go dull and sullen when I drag him around the shops. I giggle to myself at the memory. Cormac McCarthy is many things; a shopper is not one of them.
I wish I could get that damn article out of my mind. It hounds me like a thorn in my heel, aching with every step that I take. If there weren’t truth in the article, it wouldn’t rankle so much.
But I bury it. I put it down. I’m here with my new-found family, and even though the pain I carry taints my interaction with them, I have to admit, I’m starting to feel as if I belong here.
“You ready to go to the shops?” Caitlin asks from the landing. “Megan wanted to come, but she had a shift at the hospital.”
Megan’s recently been hired as a nurse. It pleases Keenan, who thinks her services could come in handy. I’m disappointed I don’t get to see as much of her.
“Pity she couldn’t make it,” I say. I join her on the bottom floor. Cormac told me to go ahead and plan where I wanted to go with Caitlin and Maeve. I think he has some sort of foolish notion that if we plan ahead we’ll be quicker, but the truth is, planning ahead just means we’ll have more shops on the list to go to than we can possibly fit in.
“We’ll have to plan another outing with Megan as well.” I like the brass, friendly cousin. And she knows things about the boys, having been raised with them. She tells us stories Maeve’s too classy to repeat, and they’re too proud to tell us themselves. A McCarthy by blood, she has an in with the Clan even Caitlin doesn’t.