Read Online Heading Home by Susan Kiernan-Lewis - Free Book Online Page B

It’s
what me and Jamie have been doing sort of all along anyway.” He
turned to Declan. “How would it be organized, like?”
    Declan shrugged. “We’re just early days,
lad,” he said, watching Mike’s reaction. “There’s lots to talk
about before we do anything.”
    “Mind you,” Gilhooley said. “We don’t want
to wait too long.”
    Mike shifted in his
saddle. He tried to give every appearance of considering this daft
idea of making an army from the layabouts and fishermen that
constituted the bulk of the community of Donovan’s Lot. “Well, it’s
something to think about,” he said finally, before turning to Iain.
“Iain, you were tearing up the pasture pretty good and it’s not
usual for you to actually run if whisky isn’t somehow at the end of
it. Has something happened?”
    Iain looked at him with
confusion for a moment and then his face cleared as he remembered.
Mike was astonished to see the man actually glance at Gilhooley
first, almost as if for approval.
    “Yer sister stopped me to tell ya you got a
visitor.”
    “A visitor? What the feck does that
mean?”
    Iain shrugged. “She said a woman showed up
an hour ago, walked all the way from the coast—with a little girl,
mind—looking for you.”
    Mike stared at him for a moment and then
turned his gaze toward the camp.
    Was it Aideen? Could it
be? What the hell was she doing here?
    But he knew the answer to that.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    6
     
    “How in the world did you
get here?” Mike leaned across the small dinner table and handed a
cloth napkin to little Taffy, but his words were for her, Aideen
knew.
    “Just put one foot in
front of the other and Bob’s your uncle.”
    “You walked all the way from Wales?”
    “Mum said we’d get a ride
part of the way.” Taffy, a mulatto child with large expressive
eyes, pulled her bowl of stewed rabbit with pole beans closer to
her. “But we only did the one time. We walked the whole way.”
    Aideen smiled at her
daughter. It had been difficult trying to make the journey an
adventure, especially when Aideen had been nearly frightened out of
her wits a good deal of the time. She’d heard the stories of the
terrible things that happened to women in the backcountry of
Ireland after The Crisis, especially women traveling
alone.
    “Did living with your aunt
in Wales not work out then?” Mike asked.
    It had been a little less
than a year since the last time she’d seen Mike and, if anything,
Aideen had to admit he looked even more handsome. She knew that was
likely because he was happy. He certainly looked happy. And that was likely because
he’d found that woman he’d been looking for last year.
    “You could say that,” she
said, her eyes trying to express her unspoken words over Taffy’s
head, silently asking him to reserve any questions until they were
alone.
    He seemed to understand,
because he nodded and looked back to his meal.
    “You always made Donovan’s
Lot sound like Eden.” She turned to Declan, Brian and Fiona, who
were sitting at the table with them. “He said it was a community of
like-minded people, some family, but mostly people brought together
by circumstance and that you all lived and worked together. So I
thought, why not? Why not start a new life in this new world where
I have at least one friend?”
    “I’m new here, meself,” Brian said.
    Aideen thought Brian had
interesting looks. He was good looking in a rough sort of way, with
a slightly pocked complexion but because his eyes were so kind, the
flawed exterior came off rugged and honest.
    “It’s really as grand as
it seems,” he said. “Everyone supports each other. Just as you’d
think they should.”
    “Are you planning on
joining the community, Mr. Gilhooley?” Aideen asked. She noticed
Mike lifted his head from the study of his plate to hear the man’s
answer.
    “I am. That is, if they’ll have me. I have a
wife and some family back in Dublin. I wouldn’t want to bring them
out until