Public Secrets Part 66

hilltop nearby she saw a man. He stood, overlooking the small grave and

the grief, silently taking pictures.

HE WOULD NEVER be the same, Brian thought as he drank steadily, a bottle

of Irish whiskey on the table near his elbow. Nothing would ever be the

same. The drink didn't ease the pain as he had hoped it would. It only

made it sink its roots deeper.

He couldn't even comfort Bev. G.o.d knew he'd tried. He'd wanted to.

He'd wanted to comfort her, to be comforted by her. But she was buried

so deep inside the pale, silent woman who had stood beside

him as their child had been put in the ground that he couldn't reach

her.

He needed her, dammit. He needed someone to tell him there were reasons

for what had happened, that there was hope, even now, in these the

darkest days of his life. That was why he'd brought Darren here, to

Ireland, why he'd insisted on the ma.s.s and the prayers and the ceremony.

You were never more Catholic than you were at times of death, Brian

thought. But even the familiar words, and scents, even the hope the

priest had handed out as righteously as communion wafers hadn't eased

the pain.

He would never see Darren again, never hold him, never watch him grow.

All that talk about everlasting life meant nothing when he couldn't take

his boy up in his arms.

He wanted to be angry, but he was far too tired for that, or any kind of

pa.s.sion. So if there was no comfort, he thought as he poured another

gla.s.s, he would learn to live with the griel

The kitchen smelled of spice cakes and good roasted meat. The scents

hung on though his relatives had been gone for several hours. They had

come-he wanted to be grateful for that. They had come to stand beside

him, to cook the food that was somehow supposed to feed the soul. They

had grieved for the loss of the boy most of them had never met.

He had pulled away from his family, Brian admitted. Because he had had

his own, had made his own. Now what was left of the family he'd made

was sleeping upstairs. Darren was sleeping a few miles away, beneath

the shadow of a hill, beside the grandmother he had never known.

Brian drained his gla.s.s, and with oblivion on his mind, poured another.

"Son?"

Looking up, Brian saw his father hesitating in the doorway. He wanted

to laugh. It was such a complete and ironic role reversal. He could

remember, clear as a bell, creeping into the kitchen as a boy, while his

father sat at the table getting unsteadily drunk.

"Yeah." Lifting the gla.s.s, Brian watched him over the rim.

"You should try for sleep."

He saw his father's eyes dart and linger on the bottle. Without a word,

Brian pushed it toward him. He entered then, Liam McAvoy, an old man at

fifty. His face was round and ruddy from the cross-st.i.tches of broken

capillaries under his skin. He had the blue, dreamy eyes that had been

pa.s.sed on to his son, and the pale blond hair now wiry with

gray. He was gaunt, brittle-boned, no longer the big, powerful ' I man

he had seemed in Brian's youth. When he reached for the bottle, Brian

felt a jolt. His father's hands might have been his own, long-fingered,