Needed By The Highlander - Rebecca Preston Page 0,130
what she needed to show her that… and now, she hoped that her own experiences could help him with his own grief.
“What about your dad?” Eamon asked suddenly.
She reflected on that for a moment, smiling a little. “I think I was angry at him, too. He was so busy all the time… with Mom sick, he had to work all day to take care of us. He was doing his best for us, but I didn’t understand that he had to be far away from me sometimes to look after me. I just felt like he didn’t care, that if he really cared he’d be there with me. But people show love in different ways.”
“Was he sad? About your mam?”
“He was very sad,” she said softly. “He was sad the whole time she was sick, and for a long, long time after she died. For a while, he had to send us away to live with our aunt. She looked after us — she made sure we had food and a warm place to sleep — but…” She sighed, not wanting to get into her troubled childhood too deeply with Eamon. She wanted to keep things straightforward — stick to the similarities between them instead of getting sidetracked with differences. “And now… now I’m super far away from my whole family.”
“You are?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “They’re so far away that I can never see them again, ever. I’m all alone, and even though it makes me incredibly sad that they’re gone, I’m still grateful for the memories I had with them. Do you remember your mam?”
He nodded, his tiny face serious. “We walked on the beach. She made me my toys.”
She nodded, smiling. “Those are lovely memories to have. And they’ll always be with you… which means she’ll always be with you, Eamon. And she’ll always be with your da, too.”
A shadow crossed Eamon’s face at that. “I’m mad at him,” he said truculently. “He yelled at me. He made me go to my room. He won’t let me go where I want — won’t even let me go on the beach where I went with Mam. He wants me to forget her. Forget her like he’s forgotten her.”
“Oh, Eamon.” She sighed. “He’s doing his best, okay? He hasn’t forgotten her, and he doesn’t want you to forget her. He’s just… he’s so scared of losing you too, little man. I know that’s hard to understand, but he’s doing all this because he wants to keep you safe. Do you ever get angry when you’re scared?”
Eamon hesitated. This might be a little too much emotional intelligence to ask of a four-year-old, she thought with a wince… but the little boy was clearly giving the issue some serious though. At least he’s calm, she thought with a smile. She rose to her feet, extending her hand to him.
“Why don’t we go and get a cup of water?”
“Da said to stay in my room,” he said warily.
“That’s good of you, to do what he said,” she said softly. “But I think we can grab a cup of water.”
He gave her something approaching a smile… but she could tell he was still troubled. There was a lot of anger in him — misdirected grief, mostly — and it seemed to be focused on his father at the moment. That made sense, she supposed. There weren’t many other people in his life to direct it toward. In a way, she thought with a smile, it was almost a good thing that he’d gotten so angry with her. It meant that she was providing another outlet for his anger — taking some of the load off Niall. It would be better still if he could find healthier coping mechanisms for those feelings in the first place, but after all, he was only four years old.
Baby steps.
Chapter 51
They were sharing some water when Niall came home. She could tell the minute he strode through the door that he was frustrated. His shoulders were tense, and his head was low and when he saw Eamon and Helen sitting at the table together, a stormy look came over his face that she recognized, strangely, from seeing it on the face of his son. He took a few steps across the room toward them and she felt Eamon tense up beside her, lifting his chin defiantly as he locked eyes with his father.
“What’s he doing out of his room?” Niall demanded, not taking his eyes off his son. She