“Something else brought you to Branna last night and had you staying through it. Is it a man giving you grief? Do you want me to lay him low for you?”
He flexed one arm, made a fist, shook it fiercely to make her laugh.
Then she sniffed. “As if I couldn’t lay any I wanted low—or otherwise—myself.”
He laughed in turn, sheer delight, and gave her hip another bump. “I’ve no doubt on that one. What is it then, darling? I can hear the buzzing in your head like a hive of angry wasps.”
“You could stop listening.” But she relented enough to lean against him a moment, so he caught the scent of his own soap on her skin. An oddly pleasant sort of thing.
“It’s just my mother driving me half mad, which is a normal enough day in the life. Donal’s got himself a girl.”
“So I’ve heard,” he said, thinking of her younger brother. “Sharon, isn’t it, moved to Cong this past spring? A nice girl, from what I’ve seen. A pretty face, an easy smile. Don’t you like her then?”
“I like her fine and well, and more to the point Donal’s mad for her. It’s lovely, really, to see him so taken, and happy with it, and her very much the same.”
“Well then?”
“He’s after moving out of the house, and in with his Sharon.”
Connor considered that as they walked through the pretty morning toward work they both loved. “He’s, what, twenty and four?”
“And five. And, yes, past time he moved out of his mother’s house. But now my mother and my sister Maureen have their heads together and have come to the horrible conclusion I should move back in with Ma.”
“Well now, that won’t do, not for a minute.”
“It won’t.” Now her sigh held relief, as he understood the simple and bare truth. “But they’re laying it on like courses of brick. The guilt, the pressure, the bloody logic as they see it. Oh, Maureen’s after saying our mother can’t be left on her own, and me being the only one unhampered, so to speak, it stands I should be the one to right the ship. And Ma’s right behind her with she’ll have the room for me, and it would save me the rent, and how lonely she’ll be without a chick or child around.”
She shoved both hands in her pockets. “Bugger it.”
“Do you want my opinion or only my condolences?”
She slanted a look at him, bold brown eyes both suspicious and speculative. “I’ll take the opinion, though I may hurl it back in your face.”
“Then here it is for you. Stay where you are, darling. You were never happy, not really, until you moved out to begin with.”
“That’s what I want, and what I know I should do for myself and my sanity, but—”
“If your mother’s fretting about being lonely, and Maureen’s fretting about your mother—who’s her mother as well I’ll add—being on her own, why wouldn’t it be a fine idea for your mother to move in with Maureen and her family? Wouldn’t it be a great help to Maureen to have her mother with her, with the children and all that?”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Meara pulled away long enough to punch Connor’s shoulder, do a little dance. “Why didn’t I think of that my own self?”
“You hadn’t got through the courses of guilt.” In an old habit, he gave her long, thick braid a tug. “Maureen’s no right to push you to give up your flat, change your life just because your brother’s changing his.”
“I know it, but I know as well, Ma’s next to helpless. She has been since my
father left us. She did her best with a terrible situation, but she’ll dither her way through the days, worry herself through the nights living all on her own.”
“You’ve two brothers, two sisters,” he reminded her. “There’s five of you to help tend your mother.”
“The smart ones got well away, didn’t they? It’s only me and Donal right here. But I can plant the seed in Ma’s mind of moving in with Maureen. If nothing else, it should scare Maureen silent for a bit.”
“There you have it.” He turned, as she did, toward the stables.
Meara stopped. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll walk you to work.”
“I don’t need my body guarded, thanks. Go on.” She planted a finger in his chest, gave it a little push. “You’ve work of your own.”