And he was the reason she’d pained it climbing the ladder. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you always apologize for things that aren’t your fault?”
“That’s a more complicated matter than I think you realize,” he said.
“I’m not a dunderhead. I can comprehend complicated things.”
“I haven’t any doubt on that score,” he said. “I only meant to explain why it’s hard for me to . . . explain.”
She tucked one of Lydia’s stray wisps of hair out of the girl’s face. “Do your best and take your time. Thecéilíwill go on for hours.”
This wasn’t something he could even consider discussing with his family. But Eliza wasn’t connected to that complication. Perhaps he could manage the words with her. He needed to tell someone, he needed someone to know what he carried around every day.
“When my family came to Hope Springs, my brother Grady and I stayed in New York. I loved the city, loved the pulse of it, the enormity of it. I’d planned to stay for a time, figure out what I wanted out of life. I just needed time to manage that. And, knowing Grady was there, neither of us would’ve been entirely without family. We talked between us about—”
He stopped. He’d never told anyone about this, not even Maura.
Eliza slipped her arm around his without jostling Lydia. “Go on,” she said. “I’m listening.”
“You have to promise not to share this with m’family. I can’t do that to them.”
“I’ll not whisper it about, but if I think you ought to tell them, I’ll probably hound you a bit to do it.”
He breathed slowly. “Just promise you’ll be gentle about it.”
She looked up at him, worry in her eyes. “I’ll not push you. I promise.”
“Grady and I said that, in a year, or maybe two, we’d see if we couldn’t convince Maura to move west. Maybe even talk her parents and sister into making the journey as well. He— He was willing to stay if she absolutely wouldn’t go, but he hadn’t intended to stop trying. And I’d promised myself that, so long as he stayed in New York, so would I. He’d be heartbroken without at least one member of his family to keep that connection.”
“But you would have rather come here?”
“I would’ve. But they all think I didn’t care about them or about being together. It comes up now and then, even though I told them. I swear I did—before they all left, I said that it wouldn’t be forever, that we’d be together again. But they didn’t—” Frustration and sadness silenced him for a minute. “No one heard me. Sometimes I think they still don’t.”
“You’re here now, though, but you’re not happy, and they’re not happy. What went wrong?”
“They still begrudge me staying behind. It was selfish, they think. Maybe it was, a little, but not listening to me wasn’t very giving of them, either.”
“Why can’t you tell them this?” Eliza asked. “If they knew—”
“I can’t.” Saints, this was hard to talk about. “When I was living with Maura and Aidan after the war, she’d go on and on about how Grady had stayed in New York on account of her, how he loved her so much to be willing to do that and he never minded and never begrudged her that, how he never even gave it a second thought.”
“Oh, dear,” Eliza whispered.
“It’s proof in her mind that he loved her. Telling her he’d meant to convince her to move west, that he’d given it second, third, fourth thoughts . . . I don’t want to be the reason she wonders if her husband loved her, because he did. I don’t know many people who loved anyone as deeply as Grady loved Maura. All she has left of him are memories, and if I tell her all the truths I’m carrying around, she might lose even that.”
“Truths? Is there more than his not wanting to stay in New York forever?” Eliza had seen the cracks in what he was leaving out.
“A lot of what they believe about Grady isn’t true, but it’s part of who he is to them, part of who he is to Aidan. I can’t take that away. I can’t.”
“But what they do believe reflects badly on you?” She was whip smart; no one could deny that.
“It’s better that they think a little poorly of me. I’ll give them that gift, whether they see it as such or not.”
“For what it’s worth, Patrick O’Connor, I think you should tell them. You should tell them what you’ve told me, and you should likely tell them whatever else you’re still holding back. I suspect even Grady would agree with me.”
“And the bits even he didn’t know?” Patrick had a lot of secrets.
“Are they so terrible?”
