“I appreciate the respect, as you know I don’t approve of taking the easy way when a bit of effort and time does the job. But.” Branna sighed. “We’re beyond that, and it’s foolish for you to drive into the village and back.”
Fin merely nodded. He lifted his hand, and in a flash held Meara’s sword.
Meara jolted, then laughed a little. “Well, that’s brilliant, and it’s so rare to see any of you do that sort of thing, I sometimes forget you can.”
“Fin’s a bit freer with it than Branna,” Boyle poin
ted out.
“We all don’t have the same boundaries.” Fin turned the sword. “There’s blood on it, and fresh enough.”
“I won’t have blood or swords at my table.” Branna rose, took it from him. “It’s enough to work with. I still have some from the solstice. But as you said, this is fresh—and it’s from him when he was wounded during a shadow spell.”
“I’ll come back, work with you as soon as I can get away,” Connor told her.
“So will I,” Iona added. “We’re really busy this morning, but I think my bosses might give me some flex time this afternoon.”
Boyle ran a hand over Iona’s cap of hair. “They might be persuaded. I’ll bring Meara back as well if you can use us. We can bring food if nothing else.”
“It’s quite a bit else.” Branna continued to study the sword. “As there isn’t enough of the fancy French stew to go full around a second time.”
“We’ll see to that then, Meara and myself, and come back around as soon as we can close things up at the stables. I’ll send Iona off soon as I can.”
“I’ll come get her,” Connor said. “I think we’re back to no one wandering around on their own, at least for a bit. I can juggle the scheduling and be off by three if that suits.”
“Well enough.”
“I’ll stay now.” There was a beat of silence as Fin spoke. “If that suits.”
“It does.” Branna lowered the sword. “The lot of you can put my kitchen back to rights. I’ll be in the workshop when you’re done,” she said to Fin, and walked out.
13
MEARA SPENT MOST OF HER NEXT FREE DAY AT HER mother’s helping with the last of the packing up for what they were all calling The Long Visit. And as packing required making decisions—what should be taken, what should be left behind, what might be given away or simply tossed in the bin—Meara spent most of her free day with a throbbing headache.
Decisions, and Meara knew it well, put Colleen Quinn in a state of dithering anxiety. The simple choice of whether to take her trio of pampered African Violets nearly brought her to tears.
“Well, of course you’ll take them.” Meara struggled to find balance on a thin midway line between good cheer and firmness.
“If I leave them, you and Donal will have the bother of watering and feeding them, and if you forget . . .”
“I can promise not to forget.” Because she’d take them straight to Branna, who’d know how to tend them. “But you should have them with you.”
“Maureen might not want them in her house.”
“Now why wouldn’t Maureen want them?” Teetering on that thin line, Meara pasted a determined smile on her face as she lifted one of the fuzzy-leafed plants, pregnant with purple blooms. “They’re lovely.”
“Well, it’s her house, isn’t it?”
“And you’re her mother, and they’re your plants.”
Decision made—by God—Meara set them carefully in boxes she’d begged off the market.
“Oh, but—”
“They’ll ride safe in here.” Seven times seven is—bugger it—forty-nine. “And haven’t you said plants are living things, and how they respond to music and conversation and affection? They’d miss you and likely wilt, however careful I was with them.”
Inspired, Meara sang “On the Road Again” as she tucked balled paper around the pots. At least that got a glimmer of a smile from Colleen.