Patrick stood and returned to the chimney. He untied their ropes, then crossed back to Finbarr and snatched up the now much-lighter canvas bag. “The boss is summoning you.”
“Aidan’s been promoted, has he?” The lad had a fine sense of humor.
“Promoted to messenger, it’d seem.”
He guided Finbarr to the ladder and kept nearby as he turned and inched his way down. Patrick followed him down. Aidan fetched Finbarr’s cane and set it in his hand. The two walked off, Finbarr sweeping the ground in front of him, Aidan walking at his side.
Patrick slung his bag over his shoulder, holding the wad of ropes under his arm. The rope belonged in Ian’s barn; he’d roll it back up in there. That plan, though, was almost instantly thwarted.
Ian stood not five feet off, looking at him as if he were a cat sporting a hand’s worth of tails. “Finbarr was on the roof?”
“I anchored him good and fast. He’d not’ve fallen off.”
Ian didn’t answer, but continued simply watching him with an entirely unreadable expression.
“I can’t build the boy’s house without some help,” Patrick pressed on. “Teaching him to lend a hand is necessary.”
“You got him to go on the roof,” Ian repeated. “None of us have managed anything close to that, and we actually know the lad.”
Saints, Ian knew how to slice with a word. Dryly, he tossed back a remark of his own. “Well, one thing I didn’t do, I didn’t tell him to stay the devil away from me.”
Ian’s posture stiffened further. “That’s not fair.”
Patrick moved past him toward the barn. “Life’s not fair, Ian. That’s how you know you’re awake.”
Begor, he didn’t like being angry with Ian. But he’d learned from his lapse back into the bottle the night before that whether it was anger or indifference or flippancy, he had to pick something other than pain whenever he interacted with the brother who meant the most to him. He wasn’t strong enough to let himself feel the grief of losing Ian all over again.
Patrick stopped just inside the barn door and pulled the few remaining wood shakes from his canvas bag. He set them in the woodpile just to the side. He then made his way to an obliging stool a bit farther inside and sat, setting himself to the task of winding up the ropes so he could hang them up once more.
Ian entered. He didn’t even look at his brother. Patrick went about his work as if he were the only one in the barn. They’d once shared a tiny corner of the family’s small flat. More than once, their parents had needed to shush them, so their chatting didn’t keep everyone awake. They’d walked to and from the factory together every day and never wanted for things to talk about.
Patrick had longed for that connection the past ten years. He needed it now. But he didn’t have the first idea about how to get it back except for the one thing he was trying. Ian loved his wife; perhaps showing her kindnesses would help.
“Has Biddy thought of anything else I can do to pay off my debt to her?”
Ian stepped from a horse stall, shoving the door closed behind him. “The debt you owe this family can’t be mended like a roof, Patrick. You left us to mourn two brothers when we could’ve been bearing half that burden. That’s ten years of pain. You can’t make it just go away.”
“I know it.” He kept wrapping the rope.
“You were with Grady the last couple of years of his life. Do you have any idea the good you might’ve done if you’d been bothered to share even a bit of that with us? Saints, you’re the reason he was in that battle in the first place. Giving us back a tiny bit of him would’ve helped. But instead you ran away.”
“I did what I had to do, Ian,” he mumbled. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
For the first time since coming inside, Ian actually looked at him. “And Grady did what he set out to do: he kept you alive.”
And there it was: the reason Patrick had stayed away, and why he couldn’t explain any of his past to them. They thought of Grady in terms of noble sacrifice. They set him on a pedestal, one that required Patrick keep mum about far too many things.
He dropped the ropes onto the nail in the wall where he’d found them that morning. “I’ll ask Biddy my own self what she wants done, and I’ll do m’work out of your way.” He made for the barn door.
Ian’s voice carried after him. “You should’ve come back after the war.”
Patrick paused in the doorway. “And you should’ve listened to me before you left New York. But you didn’t. None of you did.”
He walked out, leaving behind Ian’s farm and the pain he couldn’t escape. Too much temptation awaited him in the loft of Da and Ma’s house, so he set himself in the opposite direction. Patrick refused to drink during the day. He’d started down that path while he was in Toronto. Drinking had cost him jobs, friendships, even a roof over his head. Drinking didn’t make him violent or combative. It numbed him, closed him off. It also made him too tipsy to climb up half-finished buildings, saw wood, or do any number of other dangerous things he’d undertaken on a daily basis.
He couldn’t let himself return to that. Being around his family had been even more painful than he’d anticipated, but it had done the trick: he’d kept away from the whiskey most of the time. He’d not indulged as much or as often as he had in Winnipeg. But his struggles with his family undermined all that.
He needed to go somewhere he could think. Da and Ma’s house wasn’t an option. He’d considered dropping in on Maura, but he didn’t know her new husband too well yet, and wasn’t at all willing to lay all his vulnerabilities on the table in a house filled with strangers.
