Page 96 of Against Ebony Irish Seas

She swam in front of his face, making him cry out. “Don’t tell me to stop pecking at you. I did it with Carrick out of love, and I’ll do the same with you. Do you not recall your own outrage at your brother for sacrificing the rest of his life out of guilt and misery after I died?”

He tightened his jaw. Dammit, he remembered it well.

“You’re doing the same thing, giving up Sophie and your life together! And you’re even stupider than Carrick here because Sophie is still alive. Oh, Jamie, have you learned nothing? When you find love, the kind that makes your heart sing, you love every day like it’s your last. You don’t throw it away. Not out of shame or fear and certainly not out of sacrifice. For pity’s sake!”

He’d never seen her flushed red with anger as a ghost, and it made his stomach tremble. “I don’t have to explain myself to you!”

“No, you don’t. And you shouldn’t have to with the school either! But Jamie, why would you fight that and not fight for a life with Sophie and Greta when you want it more than anything in the world?”

“I don’t see a way,” he cried out savagely. “Do you think I want to lose her and the child? You’re right. Everything I’ve ever wanted was right there, and now it feels like a damn rainbow, here one minute and gone the next.”

She uttered another shriek. “Jamie, your loveandhers are still there. Hold your head up, man! Don’t look at a year from now. Look at a few days from now, after you finish your review—”

“And then what?” he nearly shouted back. “Have her face the shame of me going back to work amongst the people who have pointed at me and called me immoral and unfit for children? I won’t put that on her or Greta. I could never live with myself.”

“There are other possibilities, Jamie, ones you’re being too thickheaded and stuck-in-the-mud to consider. You and your infernal routine! Other schools in this very county, not far from Caisleán, would be happy to have you for a teacher. Plenty of people know you’re not immoral or deviant. The entire idea is ludicrous!”

“You and I and others know it, but—”

“Do you want to teach the children to let the bullies and biddies win?” She slashed her hand through the air so hard, he felt the wind of it. “If a boy is called a bad seed on the playground when he isn’t, is he supposed to put a sign around his neck and wear it like a leper’s bell? Is Sophie to wearWhoreemblazoned on her shirt? You’re not thinking, man!”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “What would you have me do? I’d rather cut off my own arm than leave her, but I can’t see a way for us to live after this.”

She was silent, which made him turn his head to regard her. Composed she was, her temper behind her, all she emitted was compassion. “It’s simple. You live together—”

“Where? I can’t—”

“Stop thinking about the where and the how. Jamie, I love you with all the spirit I have left, but I tell you this truly. Decide to stay with her and the rest will fall into place.”

“But I still don’t see—”

“I know you don’t,” she said softly, her hand hovering over his arm in comfort. “It’s the choice to love that must be made. The details must come after. With adjustments to be made, yes, which you will both make. No place is perfect, Jamie, even Caisleán, as you’ve learned. There are gossips and biddies the world over. Don’t let them tell you how to live. You give them too much power when you do.”

His heart thudded in his chest. Words failed him. The talk would only die down if he went back to his old life and showed people he was the same man and teacher they knew. But he couldn’t make himself say it. She might brand him a coward, only showing she didn’t understand his sacrifice, and that would destroy him all the more.

“So that’s it, then? I can’t reach you all the way. Well, I’m not finished. I wasn’t through with Carrick until he saw sense, and I’m not through with you. Wallow in your sacrifice, you may, but not until I’ve exhausted every avenue to help you and Sophie live as one. I will not fail in my duty as matchmaker, and I will not fail those I love. That, Jamie, my boy, is how you choose to love—no matter what.”

With a flourish of white, she vanished. The scent of oranges came next, so strong he rolled the window down. But the smell only strengthened until he could taste it in the back of his throat.

He started the car and finished driving to his parents’ house. They’d just returned from Portugal. Summercrest was out of the question. There would be too many friends to poke at him, albeit good-naturedly, and he could bear no more conversations.

When he arrived, his mother opened the front door. She was still sunburned from her time in Portugal, and he was sorry to see any respite she’d had from holiday turn to worry and sadness for him. His father appeared behind her, his arm at her back.

He braced himself as he left the car. “I need a place to stay for a night. Maybe more.” He had no need to ask them if he could. They were his family.

His mother hurried toward him, her gray corkscrew curls bobbing. “You know the door is always open.”

When she enfolded him in her arms, he rested his head on her shoulder for a moment before lifting his gaze to his father’s.

“Come inside.” He gripped Jamie’s arm, his blue Fitzgerald eyes filled with sorrow. “We’ll have a whiskey and talk.”

His throat clogged with everything he could not say. “I can’t just now. I need—”

They stared at him helplessly. When he couldn’t force the words out, he watched as they slowly reached for each other’s hands, twining them together. The unity and comfort drove the final nail of pain into his heart.

He strode past them and headed back to his old room, stepping back into another old life.

On the bed, he put his face in his hands, hoping to banish the image of his parents.

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