Chapter 16: Part 15

Anne started the walk home, Jane and Lizzie behind her. A cold wind was blowing and clouds had gathered, so different from the warm morning! It was something she felt she'd never get used to- the Colorado weather was unpredictable and often violent.

"I'm not sure if I want to go back," Jane said slowly. "I wasn't able to understand most of today, but someday I might." She shrugged. "I'm just not sure."

Lizzie nodded. A grin went ear to ear on her face, her dark eyes sparkling. "I liked school," she cheerily stated. "Can we go back tomorrow, Anne?"

Anne nodded. "You can, and I think I might, too."

Lizzie cheered. Anne kept her eyes on the ground, afraid that she'd see something, or perhaps someone, that would remind her. But it was too late. Her eyes darted up for just a second.

And in that second, she remembered.

It was another day, another time. The sky was big over the Colorado Territories, and a shade of blue to hurt your eyes. An unusually warm fall breeze blew, and an eleven- year- old Anne walked to school. This time, it wasn't two 'adopted' girls with her. Instead, it was Emma and Matthew.

Matthew.

Even just thinking her precious brother's name was painful beyond belief. Although Emma was her twin and baby Adalyn could melt even the stoniest of hearts, Matty had been her favorite sibling. Anne could picture his green eyes, so like her own, and his blond hair that was never orderly. She remembered how he would play with anyone in the schoolyard, whether they wanted to play with him or not.

She remembered the boy who did seem happy to see little Matthew MacEilan every day that he came. It was an older boy, one with a misleadingly solemn disposition and ruddy cheeks. His  name was John. John von Jorgadde.

Anne had come to like John. While many of the other children made fun of the MacEilan's Irish accents and taunted them, John hadn't. He and Anne had been on the path to becoming good friends until Meav, Matthew, and the other siblings had died, and Anne had to stay home. It had been two years since then. Two years of virtual solitude.

Now, as Anne let her eyes flutter upwards, she recognised the boy who had been staring at her in class- and crashed into him.

"I'm- I'm sorry!" she cried. He smiled.

"It's alright," he reassured her. His face took on a slightly confused look. "Do I know you? It's just that you look so familiar."

"From today at school?" she teased.

"No, from farther back." He pondered a moment. She let him think. "That's it!" He held out his hand. "Long time, Anne."

She smiled, pleased that he remembered her. " Aye, John. It has." They shook hands.

"Why haven't you been at school?" A pause, but when she opened her mouth to start speaking, he cut her off. "And where's Matthew?"

She looked down. This is what she had been afraid of. Running Creek had held so many times with her family. Before the once- great MacEilan clan had become a small, sorry bunch.

"He's gone," she whispered. She could barely hear the words come from her mouth. The pain of losing him was almost as great as when she had lost her mother, and the reminder of them felt like a knife in her heart.

"I'm sorry, Anne, I didn't-"

"It's alright," she blurted, though it wasn't. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She walked away quickly, a confused Lizzie and Jane behind her and her eyes stinging, towards home.

*          *            *            *

"You didn't need to react like that, Anne," chided Mary when Anne had returned home. "The boy didn't know about them."

"Just leave her alone, Mary," said Emma.

Anne drowned both of her sisters out as she swept the already- clean floor. All she could think of now was her dead mother, and her dead brothers and sisters, and although it was a rather morbid thing to dwell upon, she couldn't help it...

*           *             *          *

"Faster, Kenneth!" Anne was five, and she sat on the eldest MacEilan's shoulders as he ran through the busy Galway roads. His legs were long, common to most fifteen- year- olds, and he laughed as they neared the dock, salty sea air peppering their faces. He stopped for breath, watching the ships.

It was something her oldest brother had loved to do ever since she could remember. He liked looking at the labels on crates to see where they were from- India, France, Spain, China. Spices from Arabia and fruits from the Americas. Crates full of Virginian tobacco and British tea. The people, too, were entertaining- everything from ladies dressed in velvets and silks to the rough, uncouth sailors who had tobacco stains on their yellowing shirts, and stubbly beards on their faces. That day, there were soldiers, men dressed in red uniforms and tall black boots. Kenneth looked up to them. It was in his gray eyes, how they shone with admiration whenever he saw their immaculate rifles and clean scarlet coats. The men made Anne feel strangely proud, too- though she was only five and too young to understand war and its terrible bloody toll.

"Look, Annie," breathed Kenneth into Anne's ear as they sat there, watching, drinking up the sunshine and people and goods like lemonade. "This time, in a year or two, it'll be me comin' off those ships. I'll be a war hero, and we'll always have a grand feast every night, and our own house instead of the hovel we live in now. You and Emma, Mum, an' Mary will always have cotton dresses, a new color for every day, and..."

His fantasies has always amazed her, and she could see it, her child's mind formulating grand plans. A dozen maids for each of them, a castle! Piles and piles of gold would come of her brother's heroic acts, enough so that Father would never have to work. It was mesmerizing, to this little innocent girl, as she watched people and cargo, and for a while, she'd believe it. When Kenneth did leave the next year, she and Emma waited for word of a Kenneth MacEilan being knighted. They waited for their dresses and for their servants, and for their beloved brother to come home with more bags of money than they could count.

Instead, they got nothing but a notice from the army, containing twenty pounds and a letter explaining that Kenneth was missing, his uniform of which he had been so proud found bloodied and tattered, and only one assumption could possibly be made. Kenneth was dead.

A bit more background on the family. It's important, I promise! Remember to vote and comment!