Born in Fire Read Online Free

that.” She reached out, brushed Murphy’s hair off his brow. “So did he.”
    So now he’d lost a father twice, Murphy thought. And for the second time felt the weight of grief and responsibility.
    “I want to tell you, to make sure you know, that if there’s anything, anything a’tall you’re needing, or your family needs, you’ve only to tell me.”
    “It’s good of you to say so, and to mean it.”
    He looked up again; his eyes, that wild Celtic blue, met hers. “I know it was hard when he had to sell the land. And hard that I was the one to buy it.”
    “No.” Maggie set the mug aside and laid her hands over his. “The land wasn’t important to him.”
    “Your mother…”
    “She would have blamed a saint for buying it,” Maggie said briskly. “Even though the money it brought put food in her mouth. I tell you it was easier that it was you. Brie and I don’t begrudge you a blade of grass, that’s the truth, Murphy.” She made herself smile at him, because they both needed it. “You’ve done what he couldn’t, and what he simply didn’t want to do. You’ve made the land grow. Let’s not hear any more talk like that.”
    She looked around then, as if she’d just walked out of an empty room into a full one. Someone was playing the flute, and O’Malley’s daughter, heavy with her first child, was singing a light, dreamy air. There was a trill of laughter from across the room, lively and free. A baby was crying. Men were huddled here and there, talking of Tom, and of the weather, of Jack Marley’s sick roan mare and the Donovans’ leaking cottage roof.
    The women talked of Tom as well, and of the weather, of children and of weddings and wakes.
    She saw an old woman, an elderly and distant cousin, in worn shoes and mended stockings, spinning a story for a group of wide-eyed youngsters while she knitted a sweater.
    “He loved having people around, you know.” The pain was there, throbbing like a wound in her voice. “He would have filled the house with them daily if he could. It was always a wonder to him that I preferred to be on my own.” She drew in a breath and hoped her voice was casual. “Did you ever hear him speak of someone named Amanda?”
    “Amanda?” Murphy frowned and considered. “No. Why do you ask?”
    “It’s nothing. I probably mistook it.” She shrugged it away. Surely her father’s dying words hadn’t been a strange woman’s name. “I should go help Brie in the kitchen. Thanks for the drink, Murphy. And for the rest.” She kissed him and rose.
    There was no easy way to get through the room, of course. She had to stop again and again, to hear words of comfort, or a quick story about her father, or in the case of Tim O’Malley, to offer comfort herself.
    “Jesus, I’ll miss him,” Tim said, unabashedly wiping his eyes. “Never had a friend as dear to me, and never will again. He joked about opening a pub of his own, you know. Giving me a bit of competition.”
    “I know.” She also knew it hadn’t been a joke, but another dream.
    “He wanted to be a poet,” someone else put in while Maggie hugged Tim and patted his back. “Said he’d only lacked the words to be one.”
    “He had the heart of a poet,” Tim said brokenly. “The heart and soul of one, to be sure. A finer man never walked this earth than Tom Concannon.”
    Maggie had words with the priest about funeral services set for the next morning, and finally slipped into the kitchen.
    It was as crowded as the rest of the house, with women busily serving food or making it. The sounds and smells were of life here—kettles singing, soups simmering, a ham baking. Children wandered underfoot, so that women—with that uncanny maternal grace they seemed to be born with—dodged around them or scooped them up as needs demanded.
    The wolfhound puppy that Tom had given Brianna on her last birthday snored contentedly under the kitchen table. Brianna herself was at the stove, her face composed, her hands