Flight of the Earls Read Online Free

vanished over the last rung, and Clare turned her attention to her mother, who had nodded off in her chair.
    Kneeling beside Ma, Clare removed the knitting tools from the woman’s brittle grip and picked the scarf up from the floor. It was tangled and knotted. It saddened Clare to recall how beautifully her mother’s hands once clothed the entire family.
    With a gentle touch, Clare tucked the stringy, gray hair behind her mother’s ears. Oh, how grief had aged the woman. Even in the calming arms of slumber, Ma looked troubled.
    Kevan’s death was still hovering in her mother’s fragile mind. Last Saturday would have been the boy’s fifth birthday had he not fallen into the creek that fateful day. Although Ma could barely function in ordinary day-to-day duties, she had a remarkable awareness of that date.
    The anniversary of his death was difficult for Clare as well. It brought back the haunting vision of her mother sitting in that chair, eyes vacant, while holding the limp toddler in her lap, his moist skin a pale blue.
    In many ways, the tragedy extinguished the last flicker of Clare’s youth. Following her mother’s ensuing breakdown, she was next in line to assume the duties and responsibilities of the matriarch.
    â€œUp we go, Ma. Let’s get you to bed.”
    Clare helped the fragile woman to her feet and escorted her to the far corner of the room. There she pulled back an opening through the hand-embroidered canopy Grandma Ella made as a wedding gift. It didn’t provide much privacy for the bed, but in Clare’s mind it represented the last symbol of her mother and father’s threadbare marriage. She obsessed to maintain the fabric to its original beauty, but the years of turf smoke in the room left the linen with a yellow tinge and a sooty smell.
    She helped her mother curl into the bed and laid a worn wool blanket over her. Clare seated herself on the edge of the bed and watched the frail woman fall asleep.
    â€œNightie, Mam.”
    Clare rose and became aware of the aching in her back and the throbbing in her temple. It was only when she was no longer tending to others that the pains in her own life surfaced.
    She stood still, allowing a silence to confirm her two brothers and sister had settled to rest above in the loft. The room was eerily still, save the crackling of the fire, as the red glow of its burning peat cast shifting shadows upon the walls.
    Margaret’s chair was angled at the table, and out of habit Clare straightened it. She ran her fingers over the time-smoothed oak chair and tried to imagine her older sister sitting there, her laughter winning the room. Clare didn’t blame her father for favoring Maggie, because her sister had a natural radiance about her few could match.
    What kind of life would Clare have had if Maggie never left for America with her Uncle Tomas four years ago? Certainly she wouldn’t be carrying this burden alone.
    She immediately felt shame for her self-pity and punished herself with guilt. Such a horrible tragedy her sister endured, and here Clare was feeling sorry about taking on some additional chores.
    She went to the bookshelf above the mantel and ran her slender hands over the cracked leather bindings, as if there were something magical in the touch of her fingertips that would discern a proper choice. Clare had read these few books many times over; the adventuresome places and intrepid characters so well known to her they seemed as real as her life here on the farm.
    Something compelled her to pull down the Holy Bible her grandmother had given her before she died. It was the very one Nanna read to her often when she was a wee girl. Clare’s face burned at the dustiness of the cover. Her grandma would have been mortified and rightly so.
    With the Bible in one hand, she lifted Maggie’s chair and grabbed a heavy blue knit shawl from one of the hooks on the wall. After shifting a few things in her clutches,