The Advent

The Advent by Deidre Dalton is Book #1 in the Collective Obsessions Saga.

 

Forbidden love and dark secrets haunt two Irish families hacking out a new life in 19th-century America. When Molly Larkin's father discovers her affair with lighthouse keeper Colm Sullivan, his reaction pitches her into madness. Yet the legacy forges a bond of blood that will endure for generations...

From Chapter Nine

 

October 1886

Larkin City, Maine

 

MAUREEN SULLIVAN GAVE BIRTH to a healthy son on October 21, 1886 in the lighthouse keeper's cottage at Banshee Point. Clea assisted in the birth, which was an easy task because the baby came quickly and there was no need for Dr. McGarren to come. The wind was brisk, the day was clear, and Colm rejoiced at the birth of his new son.

After the birth, Maureen lay in bed while Clea tended to the baby in the crib. Colm looked at his new baby and smiled. He had Maureen's auburn hair and Colm’s blue eyes, and was crying with all the vigor he could muster.

“What do you want to name him, M'reen?” The pet name bothered her a little, since Molly had used it, but she said nothing as Colm spoke it with such affection.

Propped up on several pillows, tired but happy, Maureen pulled herself to a sitting position. “I like the name Aidan,” she said softly. “That was my late father's name. And I'd like him to have two middle names.”

“Two? One isn't enough?”

“Not this time, Colm, love. I'd like our son to be baptized as Aidan Jack Kelly Sullivan. The Jack is for my uncle who runs Quinn's Forge in the village.”

“Aye, I know. Don't I get a say in the lad's name?”

“Not this time. He has your last name.” Maureen smiled.

Colm chuckled. “You win. Aidan Sullivan it is. Excuse me, Aidan Jack Kelly Sullivan. Are you happy now?”

Maureen simply nodded, still smiling at his silliness.

Colm was struck by how beautiful, truly beautiful, she looked at that moment, glowing with an inner happiness that softened her face and brightened her eyes. He realized he had come to love her in his own way. Not like the violent and extreme passion he experienced with Molly that left him anxious and distraught, but a calm, steady affection that made him feel secure and warm. There had been no fireworks with Maureen when they had begun having marital relations five years ago, but an affectionate coupling that they both enjoyed at least twice a week. His mind-shattering passion for Molly had been one-sided.

Colm is thinking about Molly again. Maureen could tell by his distant, sad expression. Why doesn't she just disappear from our lives forever?

Little Michael, nicknamed “Mick” by his parents, almost four months past his fifth birthday, stood in the bedroom doorway. Mick looked startlingly like Colm, except his eyes were coal black. He glanced askance at his parents. “Do Johnny and I have a little brother now? Do we Daddy?”

Colm smiled at his oldest son. “Indeed you do, Mick. Would you like to see him?”

Mick nodded vigorously.

“Go get Johnny, and you both can see your new brother,” Maureen said. “Where is Johnny?”

“He's in the kitchen with Claude,” Clea said.

“Non,” Claude said, leading Johnny by the hand into the room. “He’s right here.” Colm and Claude had become close friends. There was not much the two did not talk about.

Mick ran over to his twin brother, and Johnny was obviously startled by the fast movement. Mick apologized by rubbing his brother's arm. “Sorry, Johnny. I forgot. Come on, let’s see our new baby brother.”

Shy Johnny, a much smaller version of robust Mick, was very pale, had red-blond hair and protruding blue eyes. Looking up at Claude, he raised a thin hand to his mouth and coughed.

Claude nodded. “Oui, petite monsieur. Go and see your new brother. I will wait here.”

Johnny smiled timidly, and said in a tiny voice: “Oui, Claude. I mean, yes.” Mick grabbed Johnny’s hand and led him slowly to the crib.

Claude watched smiling, but caught Colm’s flash of despair that he hid with a smile. Something is amiss with Beauty.

While Mick and Johnny looked at their new brother under Clea's watchful eye, and Maureen rested in the bed, Claude walked over to Colm. “Join me in your kitchen, Beauty?” he asked softly. Colm nodded and followed him out of the bedroom. Once in the kitchen, Claude came to the point. “Why do you look so sad when you look at le petite Jean?”

Colm sighed and wandered over to the back door. “Johnny gets sick so easily. That's nothing new, I know, but now he has a cough that won't go away. I took him to see Dr. McGarren yesterday, and he said if Johnny doesn't get over this chest cough, it could go into pneumonia, and it could kill him. He says Johnny's little body can't take much more, that his natural immunity to illness has weakened because he gets sick so often. That means it's harder and harder for him to fight these awful colds he gets.”

“Keep him warm and inside the cottage,” Claude said simply. “He may not like it, but he will stay alive.”

“I worry about Johnny. He started out with a disability, and now he has to contend with constant sickness. How can it be that Mick is so strong and never sick, while Johnny seems to have never had a healthy day in his short life?”

Claude shrugged. “This is Mother Nature, non? If you take extra care with le petite Jean, he will be fine. Keep him close and warm, Beauty, and the child will do good. You'll see.”

“I hope you're right.” Colm smiled for his friend, wanting to lighten the mood.  “Enough of my dire doom, aye? How would you like it if you were little Aidan's godfather?”

“This is the new babe's name? Aidan?”

“Oui,” Colm teased. “Aidan Jack Kelly Sullivan. Will you stand in as his godfather?”

“Oui, naturally,” Claude said, excited.  “I would love that, Colm. I will be honored to be his godfather.”

“It's settled then. Now we'll see what Maureen has to say about it.”

Claude snorted with humor. “She gave your new son a mouthful of a name, non? Certainly she will not protest moi as the sainted godfather!”

They laughed as they left the kitchen together.

 

*  *  *

 

MOLLY HAD NOT FARED well. Despite her desire to rejoin society after bearing the twins in 1881, she could not shake her extreme depression. She rarely left her rooms, and when she did, it was to go up to the vast attic. There she was alone in the dim albeit large stuffy room, reviewing her life, her failures, her shameful acts, and her conscience.

The attic was the last addition John Larkin made to the mansion in 1879. The only way to reach it was through the fourth floor, where the servants were housed, and down a long carpeted corridor, past a massive mullioned window, to a small doorway that led to the attic.

The first level beyond the door was a storage place for supplies, unused furniture, and the normal detritus of households. But then there was another landing, more stairs, and a vast space, endless in both directions, holding more cast-offs and little light.

A rounded carpet on the landing held a solitary antique chair with a high back and thick armrests. Above was a window that went across the breadth of the ceiling, revealing sunlight in good weather and clouds, rain and snow in bad. The design of the ceiling window was ingenious, sprung from the mind of John Larkin for the top and final level of his extraordinary home. This is where Molly sat, shuttered in the dim grayness of a stormy day.

Molly was annoyed. Much as she disliked being cared for by Clea, she missed her when she was away. It had become a daily game for Molly to see how far she could push Clea with her foul language and her impatient demands, but Clea usually maintained her stiff reserve. Molly quite enjoyed their tête a tête’s, as Claude called them, but she would never admit to such a thing.

Once in the attic, Molly sat in the chair. It was dark now in the autumn months, although it was barely past five o'clock in the afternoon. Clea had been gone for most of the day, and when Claude brought lunch to her room she could not pry from him where Clea had disappeared to. In a huff, Molly had eaten only part of her lunch, and had refused to speak with Claude, or anyone else, including her brother, Roddy and his wife Sascha, who had visited her after lunch.

Molly felt fortified by the isolation. It was self-imposed, of course, but what else was there to do? She whiled away her days looking out of windows, reading books on the Orient, thanks to Sascha, eating sparsely, bathing every evening and then going to bed. It was not much of an existence, but she simply could not will herself to do anything else.

John sent for several top doctors over the years to try to determine the cause of her worsening six-year-long depression and unwillingness to leave the security of her rooms or the attic. But each doctor said much the same thing: Molly was suffering from some sort of incurable mental affliction. They essentially advised more of the same: isolation, understanding, and patience, which is what she had been getting. They gave her laudanum to soothe her nerves and keep her calm, but the drug only seemed to dull her senses and make her more verbally abusive. They may as well have prescribed pure untreated opium to her she thought bitterly, as good as the laudanum was doing. It seemed to depress her more, if that were possible.

Molly lit a candle and set it on the floor by the chair. She wore dark colors, and always a cap, because she wanted to hide the two grey streaks in her hair. With no interest in food, she was painfully thin and had deep lines by her eyes and the sides of her mouth. Although she was only twenty-two, she looked twice her age.

She still blamed Colm Sullivan for her problems. If it weren't for him, she would have been married to a proper gentleman by now, with a family of her own. Colm was the root of all evil as far as she was concerned, and no one could convince her otherwise. She would not admit to herself that she had been the initiator and a willing participant in the frolics with Colm. He lured her into his bed, with his evil and ruthless charm, and he held her there with his breathtaking looks and his silver tongue. She escaped him eventually, yes, but she birthed his bastards and her life was in ruins because of that. The stigma of the twins’ birth, their virtual bastardy, did not concern Molly. In fact, there was nothing about the whelps that bothered her now. She would not even think of them, because they were part of Colm Sullivan, the trickster, the demon lover, the son of Satan. She had a whole library of names for him, none of them complimentary.

She did not understand why she could not apply her strong will to her own mental weakness and make herself snap out of the awful grayness. She had wanted a new life after the twins were born, she wanted to start over and prove herself to her father, to show him she could be a lady befitting her station and behave with the proper decorum and grace.  But it had not happened as she planned, and Molly felt like she could no longer fight it. So she accepted her life as it was, living day by day in the dismal mansion filled with expensive furniture and expansive people. She hid in her room or in the attic, not facing reality, but floating on a narcotic sea of laudanum.

She heard footsteps and tensed. Who would dare bother her here?

It was Clea, and she looked tired. Clea was only thirty-one, but the passing of time had not been kind to her, either. Having to look after Molly had sapped her strength and normal resilience. She rarely saw her seven-year-old daughter Layla because of her work load in the mansion. Layla was tended by a kitchen maid, and Nigel helped when he could, but he was kept busy, too, with the demands made by John and Anne Larkin. But Clea was grateful that she and Nigel and Layla had a splendid roof over their heads, plenty to eat, and steady salaries. Sometimes, however, the pressure was just too much.

“Where the Christ have you been all blasted day?” Molly snarled at Clea.

Clea sighed. “Birthing a babe.”

Molly groaned. “Jesus God, not another one? Is that all my father pays his servants to do? Screw themselves senseless and keep popping out horrible little trolls, year after year?”

Clea closed her eyes to blot out Molly's obscenities. She should be used to them by now, but she was not. And she was not in the mood for it today.

“Who whelped today?”

Clea opened her eyes and looked at Molly coldly. Clea was weary of her foul mouth and her vicious tongue. With uncharacteristic cruelty, Clea said smoothly: “I'm sure you know them. Cute little couple. They live down on the beach.”

Molly was instantly alert. “The only couple living on the beach is that good for nothing former maid of mine, Maureen Kelly, and her son of a bitch of a husband, that Beelzebub Colm Sullivan.”

“Exactly.”

Molly was silent, eyeing Clea. She was lying. She had to be. Maureen and Colm having a baby? Impossible! Colm would never sleep with another woman after having Molly the way he had, she was sure of it. His marriage to Maureen was supposed to be in name only. What happened between Molly and Colm had been sacred, albeit evil and atrocious, but it had been between them. How could he ever think of being with another woman in the same way?

“You're lying. Father must have hired an assistant lighthouse keeper to help Colm. Is that the cute little couple you're talking about?”

“No. Colm is the sole lighthouse keeper.”

Molly bit her lip, refusing to accept the truth. “It was that be-damned bitch mother of mine, wasn't it? She put you up to spreading lies to make me think I'm crazy. The old crone hasn't come to see me in five years, and she's still trying to undermine me with my father. The old whore will never learn, will she? The bitch.”

Clea looked at Molly with loathing. “No, your sweet mother has nothing to do with this, and you know it.” Her voice was cool. “I helped deliver Maureen Sullivan of a healthy baby boy this afternoon, and now the twin lads have a new brother. Maureen and Colm named their new babe Aidan. That's an Irish name, isn't it Miss Larkin?” Clea feigned innocence although she knew her words had driven home.

Molly covered her ears with her hands, squeezing her eyes shut. She did not want to hear anymore, shocked by Clea's unusual generosity with information. Before now, Clea tried to keep things from Molly, making sure she never heard a wisp of anything to upset her further, to add to her depression.

Molly's eyes flew open. “I'll tell my mother you're lying to me, Clea, and we'll see how you fare.”

Clea smiled thinly. “Oh, will you? I thought your be-damned mother never came to see you? You could always tell Mr. Larkin, though, but I don't think he will believe you now. You've been sedated for too many years, Miss Molly. There's no telling what you've dreamed up in your head.”

“Take me to my room at once,” Molly demanded, trying to take control of the situation. “It's your job here to look after me, and I want my supper. Now. I don't wish to talk anymore.”

Clea smiled triumphantly and took Molly gently by the arm to help her out of the chair. “I finally shut the bitch up,” Clea thought with glee. “Now I know what buttons to push to get her to be quiet in the future.” Clea doused the candle by the chair, and led Molly out of the attic back down to her room.

Molly made a decision as Clea took her back to her room. An accomplishment, given her state of mind. “Why should Colm have a new life and be happy? Why should he be allowed to carry on, while I sit here and rot? It's because of him that I'm in such misery.”

                She would find a way out of the mansion and go to Colm. She would confront him with her misery and get the answers she deserved. He had to pay for what he had done to her, one way or another.