Born in Fire (Born In Trilogy #1)

“Then there was my father.”

“Then there was Tom. From what I’m told they were blind and deaf to everything but each other. Maybe to each other as well.” He stroked the big hand down her hair. “It could be neither of them saw what was inside until they were bound. And when they did, what they saw was different than they’d hoped. She let that sour her.”

“Do you think if they hadn’t met, she’d have been different?”

He smiled a little and kept his hand gentle. “We’re tossed by the winds of fate, Maggie Mae. Once we end where they blow us, we make of ourselves what we will.”

“I’m sorry for her,” Maggie said softly. “I never thought I could be.”

“And you’ve done well by her.” He kissed Maggie’s brow. “Now it’s time to make yourself what you will.”

“I’m working on it.” She smiled again. “Very hard on it.”

Satisfied that the timing was right, Christine spoke up. “Niall, would you be a darling and give me a moment with Maggie?”

“Girl talk, is it?” His round face creased in smiles. “Take your time, I’ll go for a walk.”

“Now then,” Christine began as soon as the door shut behind Niall. “I have a confession. I didn’t go into the parlor right after last night. I came back, thinking I might be able to smooth things over.”

Maggie lowered her eyes to stare at the floor. “I see.”

“What I did, rudely, was listen. It took all my control not to barge into that room and give your mother a piece of my mind.”

“It would only have made things worse.”

“Which was why I didn’t give in to the urge—though it would have been greatly satisfying.” Christine took Maggie by the arms, gave her a little shake. “She has no idea what she has in you.”

“Perhaps she knows too well. I’ve sold part of what I am because there’s a need in me, just as there is in her, for more.”

“You’ve earned more.”

“If I’ve earned it, or been given it as a gift, it doesn’t change things. I wanted to be content with what I had, Mrs. Sweeney. I wanted so much to be, because otherwise I’d be admitting there hadn’t been enough. That my father had failed us, and he didn’t. Before Rogan walked through that door, I was content, or I’d talked myself into believing I could be. But the door’s open now and I’ve had a taste of it. I haven’t done a decent hour’s work in a week.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“He’s pushed me into a corner, that’s why. It can’t be for myself anymore, I can’t be for myself anymore. He’s changed that. I don’t know what to do. I always know what to do.”

“Your work comes through your heart. That’s plain for anyone who’s seen in. Maybe you’re blocking off your heart, Maggie.”

“If I am, it’s because I have to. I won’t do what she did. Nor what my father did. I won’t be the cause of misery, or the victim of it.”

“I think you are the victim of it, my dear Maggie. You’re letting yourself feel guilty for succeeding, guiltier yet for harboring the ambition to succeed. And I think you’re refusing to let out what’s in your heart, because once you do, you won’t be able to take it back again, even though holding it in is making you unhappy. You’re in love with Rogan, aren’t you?”

“If I am, he brought it on himself.”

“I’m sure he’ll deal with it admirably.”

Maggie turned away to shuffle tools on a bench. “He’s never met her. I think I made sure he wouldn’t so he couldn’t see I was like her. Moody and mean, dissatisfied.”

“Lonely,” Christine said softly, and drew Maggie’s eyes back to hers. “She’s a lonely woman, Maggie, through no one’s fault but her own. It’ll be no one’s but yours if you’re lonely, too.” Coming forward, she took Maggie’s hands. “I didn’t know your father, but there must be some of him in you as well.”

“He dreamed. So do I.”

“And your grandmother, with her quick mind and ready temper. She’s in you as well. Niall, with his wonderful lust for life. All of that’s in you. None of it makes up the whole. Niall’s right about that, Maggie. So right. You’ll make yourself what you will.”

“I thought I had. I thought I knew exactly who I was and wanted to be. Now it’s all mixed up in my head.”

“When your head won’t give you the answer, it’s best to listen to your heart.”

“I don’t like the answer it’s giving me.”

Christine laughed. “Then, my dear child, you can be absolutely sure it’s the right one.”

Chapter Twenty

BY midmorning, her solitude tucked around her, Maggie took up her pipe again. Two hours later the vessel she had blown was tossed back into the melt for cullet.

She pored over her sketches, rejected them, tried others. After scowling at the unicorn she’d set on a shelf, she turned to her torches for lamp work. But she’d hardly taken up a rod of glass before the vision faded. She watched the tip of the rod dip, melt, begin to droop. Hardly thinking of what she was doing, she began dropping the bits of molten glass into a container of water.

Some broke, others survived. She took one out by the tip to study. Though it had been formed by fire, it was cool now, shaped like a tear. A Prince Rupert’s drop, no more than a glass artist’s novelty, one a child could create.

Rubbing the one drop between her fingers, she took it to her polariscope. Through the lens the internal stresses in the drop exploded into a dazzling rainbow of colors. So much, she thought, inside so little.

She slipped the drop into her pocket, fished several more out of the bucket. Moving with studied care, she shut down her furnaces. Ten minutes later she was striding into her sister’s kitchen.

“Brianna. What do you see when you look at me?”

Blowing a stray hair out of her eyes, Brianna looked up and continued to knead her bread dough. “My sister, of course.”

“No, no. Try for once not to be so literal-minded. What is it you see in me?”

“A woman who seems to be on the edge of something, always. One who has enough energy to tire me to the bone. And anger.” Brianna stared down at her hands again. “Anger that makes me sad and sorry.”