"I'll live as I have to live, as I know how to live."
"You're holding your heart back from me, and it's cruel of you."
"I'm cruel? You think you're not hurting me by standing here and demanding I choose between my right hand and my left?" Abruptly chilled, to the bone, she wrapped her arms around herself. "Oh, it's so easy for you, damn you, Murphy. You have nothing to risk, and nothing to lose. Damn you," she said again, and her eyes were bright and bitter and seemed not quite her own. "You won't find peace any more than I will."
With the words searing on her tongue, she whirled and ran. The buzzing in her ears was temper, she was sure of it. The dizziness outraged emotions, and the pain in her heart a violent combination of both.
But she felt as though someone were running with her, inside her, as desperately unhappy as she, as bitterly hopeless.
She fled across the fields, not stopping when she reached Brianna's garden and the dozing dog leaped up to greet her. Running still when she stumbled into the kitchen and a startled Brianna called her name.
Running until she was closed in her room alone, and there was nowhere left to run.
Brianna waited an hour before she knocked softly on the door. She expected to find Shannon weeping, or sleeping off the tears. The single glimpse Brianna had had of her face as she'd streaked in and out of the kitchen spoke of misery and temper.
But when she opened the door, she didn't find Shannon weeping. She found her painting.
"The light's going." Shannon didn't bother to look up. The sweep of h
er brush was passionate, frenetic. "I'll need some lamps. I've got to have light."
"Of course. I'll bring you some." She stepped forward. It wasn't the face of grief she saw, but the face of someone half wild. "Shannon-"
"I can't talk now. I have to do this, I have to get it out of my system once and for all. I have to have more light, Brie."
"All right. I'll see to it." Quietly she closed the door behind her.
She painted all night. She'd never done that before. Never needed to or cared enough. But she'd needed this. It was full morning when she stopped, her hands cramped, her eyes burning, her mind dead. She hadn't touched the tray Brianna had brought up sometime during the night, nor was she interested in food now.
Without looking at the finished canvas, she dropped her brushes in a jar of turpentine, then turned and tumbled fully dressed into bed.
It was nearly evening again before she woke, stiff, groggy. There'd been no dreams this time, or none she remembered, only the deep, exhausted sleep that left her feeling hulled out and light-headed.
Mechanically she stripped off her clothes, showered, dressed again, never once looking at the painting she'd been driven to start and finish within one desperate night. Instead, she picked up the untouched tray and carried it downstairs.
She saw Brianna in the hall, bidding goodbye to guests. Shannon passed without speaking, going into the kitchen to set aside the tray and pour the coffee that had been made for her hours before.
"I'll make fresh," Brianna offered the moment she came in.
"No, this is fine." With something close to a smile, Shannon lifted the cup. "Really. I'm sorry, I wasted the food."
"Doesn't matter. Let me fix you something, Shannon. You haven't eaten since yesterday, and you look pale."
"I guess I could use something." Because she couldn't find the energy to do anything else, she went to the table and sat.
"Did you have a fight with Murphy?"
"Yes and no. I don't want to talk about that right now."
Brianna turned the heat on under her stew before going to the refrigerator. "I won't press you then. Did you finish your painting?"
"Yes." Shannon closed her eyes. But there was more to finish. "Brie, I'd like to see the letters now. I need to see them."
"After you've eaten," Brianna said, slicing bread for a sandwich. "I'll call Maggie, if you don't mind. We should do this together."
"Yes." Shannon pushed her cup aside. "We should do this together."
Chapter Twenty- Three
It was a difficult thing to look at the three slim letters, bound together by a faded red ribbon. And it was a sentimental man, Shannon mused, who tied a woman's letters, so few letters, in a ribbon that time would leach of color.
She didn't ask for the brandy, but was grateful when Brianna set a snifter by her elbow. They'd gone into the family parlor, the three of them, and Gray had taken the baby down to Maggie's.
So it was quiet.
In the lamplight, for the sun was setting toward dusk, Shannon gathered her courage and opened the first envelope.
Her mother's handwriting hadn't changed. She could see that right away. It had always been neat, feminine, and somehow economical.
My dearest Tommy.
Tommy, Shannon thought, staring at the single line. She'd called him Tommy when she'd written to him. And Tommy when she'd spoken of him to her daughter for the first, and the last time.
But Shannon thought of him as Tom. Tom Concannon, who'd passed to her green eyes and chestnut hair. Tom Concannon, who hadn't been a good farmer, but a good father. A man who had turned from his vows and his wife to love another woman-and had let her go. Who had wanted to be a poet, and to make his fortune, but had died doing neither.
She read on, and had no choice but to hear her mother's voice, and the love and kindness in it. No regrets. Shannon could find no regrets in the words that spoke of love and duty and the complexity of choices. Longing, yes, and memories, but without apology.
Always she'd ended it. Always, Amanda.
With great care, Shannon refolded the first letter. "She told me he'd written back to her. I never found any letters with her things."
"She'd not have kept them," Brianna murmured. "In respect for her husband. Her loyalty and her love were with him."