Love Remains Page 5

  “Good day, Miss Attwater,” Finbarr said quietly. His wasn’t merely a sulking tone, but also a sad one. ’Twas always a sad one.

  “Your brother told you that we were to begin at eight o’clock this morning. Why are you not in the sitting room, ready to begin?”

  “I don’t need you here,” he said. “I’m getting on fine.”

  “Are you?” Cecily set both hands on her cane and leaned ever so slightly on it. “Did you dress yourself this morning? Eat your breakfast? When did you last bathe on your own? Leave this house on your own?”

  She was hounding him, and Tavish didn’t like it. He stepped closer to her so he could speak in a lowered voice. “Show the boy a bit of sympathy, will you?”

  “He has been fed enough sympathy to choke on.” She didn’t turn toward Tavish. Indeed, she returned to haranguing Finbarr with her very next breath. “Have you eaten breakfast?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Finbarr muttered.

  “You’re a seventeen-year-old boy; of course you’re hungry.”

  Finbarr offered no response. Miss Attwater didn't seem to require one.

  “Now, do you mean to come out and begin your day properly, or do you intend to spend it here in this dark abyss?”

  Finbarr’s shoulders drooped. “My entire life is a dark abyss.”

  The words struck Tavish’s heart like a hot fire poker. These were the moments he felt the most helpless. Finbarr had once been endlessly sunny. Now, nothing Tavish did ever brought the slightest glimpse of light back into his brother’s expression.

  “I will be here every Monday through Friday from eight in the morning until six in the evening,” Cecily told Finbarr. “You are welcome to spend the remainder of your time feeling sorry for yourself if you wish. But while I am here, you will work, and you will learn. That is what I was sent for.”

  “I didn’t send for you.” ’Twas the retort Finbarr offered most often.

  “Those who need me most never do. But your family did, and if you fail to learn what I am here to teach it will not be my fault.” She shifted her cane a bit so she held it once more in her left hand. It jutted out a bit in front of her. “I will meet you at the fireplace in two minutes.”

  With no more ceremony than that, she turned and retraced the path she’d taken to the alcove. Tavish remained behind, watching her turn the corner and slip out of sight.

  “I don’t like her, Tavish,” Finbarr muttered from the alcove.

  Neither do I. But Tavish had to give this a chance. Cecily lived independently without full sight. She traveled the country, alone. She could show Finbarr how to live, how to function. She was their first hope of a future for the lad.

  “What do you think I should do?” Finbarr asked.

  “I’d suggest getting yourself to the front of the fireplace within two minutes. Elsewise, she’s likely to crack your head with her cane.”

  Finbarr turned the tiniest bit in his direction. “She has a cane?”

  “And she wears spectacles with green glass.”

  For the briefest, most wonderful of moments, a single corner of Finbarr’s mouth tugged upward. The lad hadn’t smiled in ten months. Not once.

  “Why do you suppose she wears green spectacles?” Finbarr asked.

  “I’ve not the slightest idea.” He had a thought and pushed ahead with it. “You ought to ask her about them, out of the blue. She’d have a terrible time trying to piece together just how you know she wears spectacles.”

  “I am still not deaf, Tavish O’Connor.” Cecily called from out of sight.

  “Shall we face her down, lad?”

  “I will go sit by the fire.” Finbarr rose as he spoke. “But I’ll not promise anything beyond that.”

  “That is good enough for me.”

  But it likely wouldn’t be enough for Cecily.

  Chapter Six

  The first weeks were always the hardest. Cecily had to convince not only her student but usually the student’s well-meaning loved ones as well that they’d all do best to follow her instructions. Her brief moments with the O’Connor family the night before had told her in no uncertain terms that they were worried about Finbarr. She felt quite certain that Tavish was as well, but he was also frustrated with the boy, and that frustration could go a long way toward securing his cooperation. Eventually.

  The one person she hadn’t sorted out yet was Finbarr. She couldn’t yet say if he was more angry or more afraid; she’d experienced significant amounts of both as her world had gone dark. Though she didn’t generally admit it, even to herself, she still felt those same emotions as she faced further loss of sight.

  The windows and low-burning embers provided just enough light for Cecily to make out moving shadows. She already knew Mrs. Claire sat in the chair across from her. She recognized Tavish when he stepped back into the room. And his brother entered on his arm. The young man’s steps dragged. He hung back from the fireplace.

  From distrust or stubbornness? Or both? Chipping away at his walls would take patience, a virtue she’d learned well during her years as a tutor. He would discover soon enough that her fortitude would outlast his obstinacy.

  “Find a place to sit, Finbarr,” she said. “Somewhere on my side of the room, if you would.”

  The slow scrape of his boots on the floor came a touch closer and then stopped. His shadow loomed too high for him to have sat.

  “I mean to ask you a great many questions,” she told him, “so, for your comfort, you would be well advised to sit.”

  Finbarr’s arm jutted out, his hands searching for a chair. Had he not made the effort to memorize the room in which he spent his days? They had more ground to cover than she’d realized. Tavish helped his brother sit, then stood beside Finbarr’s chair.

  She dove straight to the heart of the matter. “How much can you see, Finbarr?”

  “We included all of that in the papers we sent to you.” Tavish’s tone held almost a note of panic.

  This happened every time. The family circled their wagons, not realizing their loved one was suffocating.

  “Yes,” she said. “But I want to hear it from him.”

  Tavish stepped closer to her and in a low and tense voice said, “He doesn’t like to talk about it.”

  Which was why she always asked. Until the newly blind could acknowledge their condition, they could not come to terms with it.

  She pressed on despite Tavish’s objection. “Is one eye better than the other, Finbarr? Or are they both the same?”

  “He doesn’t like to—”

  “Mr. O’Connor,” Cecily broke in, “why don’t you walk Mrs. Claire back home? I believe I can handle this.”

  “This, here, is how you handle it?” His silhouette moved away. “You’ve been here but a few minutes, and things are already a shambles.”

  “Which is why I am asking you to leave. If I am to address the shambles, I must remove the shambler.”

  His form shifted and, she would wager, turned back to look at her, but he didn’t say a word. She had a feeling he wasn’t accustomed to being left speechless—an opportunity she didn’t mean to let pass.

  “Your brother is not a child, nor does he seem like a simpleton, nor do I suspect his is a temper which flares so easily that he’ll beat me senseless the moment you’ve stepped from the door. All things taken into consideration, I do believe he and I will be fine on our own for a few minutes.” She punctuated the declaration with a nod of her head.

  Mrs. Clair jumped in, thank heavens. “Let us go call on your mother, Tavish. I’ve not gabbed with her in a month of Sundays.”

  “And what of Finbarr?” Tavish sounded entirely unconvinced.

  “I’m not a child,” Finbarr muttered.

  “Come along, then, Tavish.” Mrs. Claire moved toward the door, Tavish moving with her. Cecily would wager he was being dragged.

  At last, she was alone with her new student. Now they could accomplish something. “I haven’t any brothers of my own, so I must
ask. Has he always babied you this much, or is this new?”

  “I am the youngest in the family. They’ve all always babied me. But it has been worse since . . . this.” He didn’t speak in specific terms about the fire in which his eyes were damaged. Had he ever?

  “Speaking of ‘this’”—she wouldn’t push him to discuss the incident, not yet—“tell me, in your own words, the state of your vision, or lack thereof. Hearing from you what you are experiencing will help me understand.”

  “You don’t understand.” There was the anger she’d expected. “Everyone acts as though they know what this is like. ‘It will all be fine,’ they say. ‘We know what you’re going through,’ they say. But they don’t. No one does.”

  Anger. Isolation. How well she knew those emotions.

  “Allow me to share my story. I believe hearing it will help you recognize just how well I do understand.” She folded her hands on her lap. She’d told her history so often, it no longer hurt. “When I was eight years old, I experienced a sudden, unexplained pain in my eyes, accompanied by a subtle cloudiness in my vision. The pain subsided after a time, but my vision remained affected, not blurry like one in need of spectacles, but murky, as though I were viewing the world through a glass of dirty water.

  “Over the next few years, I had more painful episodes, always resulting in ever-murkier vision. One doctor after another, from Edinburgh to London, evaluated my eyes, and every one of them agreed: my vision would continue to worsen, and nothing could be done to prevent or repair the damage. I would, they were all entirely certain, eventually be left with no vision at all.”

  Finbarr sat in silence. She hoped he was listening.

  “My father, upon accepting the fate that awaited me, made inquiries, and, after a time, learned of a school here in America, the Missouri School for the Blind, which specializes in teaching the sightless and nearly sightless how to live their lives in the dark. Though I was, at the time, still in possession of most of my vision, he felt it best to prepare me for the unavoidable. He liked what he’d learned about this school more than he did the few such schools available in England.

  “We sold our home, our lands, and nearly all our possessions and came to this country. I was eleven years old. In that school, I learned to be independent and productive, and how to live my life the way I wanted to live it.”

  There was a great deal more to the story, of course, but she only ever shared the parts that most helped her students accept their situations and her role in improving it.

  “I know you do not want me here, and that you do not even think you need me. Perhaps you don’t. Perhaps your life is playing out precisely as you’d like it to.” That, she knew, was grossly untrue.

  “I will sort it all out,” he said. “Everyone is just babying me, like you said. Once they stop—”

  “Believe me, Finbarr O’Connor, the babying stops today. I am the one with whom you will be interacting most, and I baby no one.” She said no more. She would sit there, and he could take all the time he wanted to mull over her words. She couldn’t force him to learn, but she could make refusing her help awfully difficult for him.

  “Is your sight gone now?” He spoke almost too quietly to be heard.

  “Not entirely. In enough light, I can make out shapes. I can even read very large lettering if I hold a candle nearly touching the paper. But eventually, even that will no longer be possible.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And I am sorry that there is a need for me to be here.” She leaned forward, facing him directly. If his family’s explanation was accurate, he could make out enough of the silhouettes around him to know she’d moved and was looking at him. “I will make you this promise: give me a chance, see if I can teach you anything useful, and in return, I vow to never treat you like someone who is broken.”

  “But—I am.” His voice cracked on the words. “I used to be able to do anything. I was going to do so many things.” Emotion rose as he spoke, and with it the fear Cecily had suspected hovered beneath his dour demeanor. “It’s all broken now. My whole life. My future. Everything.”

  He needed hope back. He needed a future he could feel excited about. She could give those to him, if only he’d allow her to.

  “That is why I’m here. You tell me which broken pieces of your life you want to reclaim, and I will help get them back.”

  “I just want my eyes back,” he muttered.

  “So do I.” Heavens, it had been a long time since she’d admitted that to anyone. “But let us focus on something more practical. Did you dress yourself on your own this morning?”

  “I can’t see the buttons or laces.”

  “Neither can I, and I dress myself every day.” She rose from her chair. “Tomorrow, you will do the same. And you will eat breakfast at eight o’clock, just as soon as I arrive.”

  “Do you expect me to cook it?” he asked dryly.

  “Eventually.”

  “I can’t cook. I can’t see—”

  “Finbarr.” She stepped directly in front of him. “You will find some things to be beyond your ability, but until you’ve tried them, you are not to declare that you can’t do them. That is a rule I will require you to live by. It is the only way you will ever know what you are capable of.”

  His outline slumped lower in his chair. “I didn’t want you to come,” he muttered.

  “I know.” She set her cane in front of her once more. “Now, you may sit here and sulk all you want today—only today—though I hope you’ll spend some of your energy thinking about what I’ve said. We’ll not worry about lessons until tomorrow. In the meantime, I need to memorize the specifics of this house.”

  She left him there to stew while she counted steps. Six from the sitting room to the alcove that served as Finbarr’s bedroom. Four more brought her to a back wall. Four steps back up toward the alcove but along an opposite wall—almost like a very short corridor. There she found a door, something she hadn't expected to find. If she’d counted correctly—and she was always careful to count correctly—the front door sat directly across from the alcove.

  “What’s behind this door?” she asked, knowing Finbarr was close enough to hear.

  “A bedroom.”

  Tavish’s, no doubt. She continued counting steps. Around and around she went, retracing her same path. The sitting room, she discovered, functioned as both sitting area and kitchen. It constituted the entirety of the house, outside of the short, narrow “corridor” containing the alcove and the door to Tavish’s bedroom. Near the fireplace, she found a ladder.

  “Is there a loft?”

  Finbarr made a noise of confirmation.

  “Do you know if it has a window?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  She’d need to ask Tavish. A boy struggling to escape the darkness needed space of his own that was at least dimly lit. The dark confines of the alcove would never do.

  Looking upward, she could not make out much difference between the light in the loft and that of the room below. There might very well be a window tucked around the corner, but she couldn’t tell. It wasn’t promising. Finbarr needed light.

  She retraced her steps to the corridor and bedroom door. Tavish might be convinced to allow Finbarr to use his bedroom if it was light enough, though that would hardly be a permanent solution. Finbarr would likely feel himself an even greater burden if he displaced his brother in his own home.

  She turned the knob, opened the door, and stepped inside—all she managed before amazement stopped her. The room was positively flooded with light. Windows graced three of the four walls, rendering the room as bright as if she were standing outside.

  Cecily’s hand moved of its own accord and pressed to her heart. She could hardly breathe. For seventeen years, she’d watched the world grow darker, especially indoors. But this room . . .

  She could make out the furniture, including the bureau pressed against a wall. Usually walls were too shadowed for furniture to stand out
. She could see the floor and even the far wall, not clearly as she would have once, but she could see them.

  With a breath of apprehension, she lifted her hand from her heart and held it in front of her, arm outstretched. She moved her fingers about.

  Good heavens. She could see each individual finger. Not merely the outline of her hand, but the hand itself. She could see this well out-of-doors still, but that hadn’t been possible inside the dim confines of a room for more than two years.

  She bent forward and lifted the hem of her dress a tiny bit. The tips of her boots were visible. Indoors. She could see these details indoors.

  Cecily took another step inside. She pressed the tips of her fingers to her lips as she slowly turned in a full circle, taking in the bright expanse of this miraculous place. If she was ever fortunate enough to have a home of her own, with a room of her own, this is what she wanted. Windows. And light. Even when her sight went through its next inevitable worsening, this was a room in which she might retain some of what she would lose.

  “What are you doing in here?” Tavish’s voice boomed, shattering her reverent silence.

  She sucked in a startled breath. “I’m sorry.” There was no true reason to apologize, and yet she felt compelled to.

  “No one is allowed in this room.”

  Her usual resolve had fled. This room had cast a spell, and she was struggling to free herself from it. For those brief moments, she’d forgotten her role as teacher, forgotten her struggling student and his stubborn brother. Nothing existed but this flood of light.

  Without words, and hardly noting where she moved, she stumbled back into the dimness of the corridor. Tavish snapped the door shut. The spell broke.

  The light was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  “How are you holding up, then?” Ian sat with Tavish in the barn, helping him mend rope. “Miss Attwater seems a handful.”