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Author:For Now, Forever [Forever, For Now,]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-01-16T23:29:54.915000+00:00

"In Scotland," he began, as if talking to himself, "we lived in a little cottage no bigger than the garage on your house. I was five, maybe six, when my mother took sick. After she'd delivered my brother, she was never really well again. My grandmother would come every day to cook and help tend the baby. I'd sit with my mother, talk to her. I didn't realize then how young she was."

Anna sat with her hands in her lap and her eyes intense. A few weeks before, she would have listened politely if he had spoken of his past. Now, it seemed half her world hinged on what he would say. "Go on, please."

It wasn't easy for him, nor had he planned to speak of it. Now that he'd begun, he discovered he'd needed to tell her all along. "My father would come home from the mines, his skin black, his eyes red. God, how tired he must have been, but he sat with my mother, played with the baby, listened to me. She hung on, nearly five years, and when I was ten, she just slipped away. She was suffering the whole time, but she never complained."

Anna thought of Mrs. Higgs. This time she let the tears fall. Daniel said nothing for a moment but listened to the sea.

"My grandmother came to live with us. Tough old bird. She made me tow the line

—

study in books. When I was twelve I went to work in the mines, but I could read and write and work with figures better than the grown men. I was as big as some of them already." He laughed at that and flexed his hand into a fist. More than once he'd been grateful for it.

"The mines were hell. Dust in your lungs, in your eyes. Every time the earth shook, you waited to die and hoped it'd be quick. I was about fifteen when McBride, who owned the mine, took notice of me. He found out I was clever with numbers, so he used to have me come in and do a bit of figuring for him. In his way, he was a fair man, so I was paid for the extra work. Within a year, I was out of the mines and doing his books. My hands were clean. As soon as I'd started working, my father had me put half my earnings in a tin jar. We could have used the money day to day, but he wouldn't have it. Even when I was making more in the office, he made me put half the money aside in that jar. It was the same with my brother, Alan."

"He wanted you to get out," Anna murmured.

"Aye. He had a dream for me and Alan to get out of the mines, away from everything he'd had to live with."

He turned to her, his eyes hot and angry. "I was twenty when the main shaft caved in.

We dug for three days, three nights. Twenty men were gone, my father and my brother with them.

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