Conall’s mouth crooked into a smile. “Those sound like pretty normal questions for kids who’ve had a parent die to ask. And, okay, where souls go is hard to answer without sounding glib, but the fingernail question is easy enough.”
“Easy?” His partner stared at him as though he was crazy. “I’m supposed to talk about gruesome stuff like that to an eight-year-old kid? I asked where he’d heard that and all he did was mumble, ‘Dunno.’ So I said no, it’s not true, and he said how do you know? Had I ever looked at anyone when they first died and then a week later to see if the fingernails and hair and stuff had grown.”
“They’re thinking about death a lot,” Conall repeated. “I think maybe they have to have answers, or they’ll keep wondering. Answers let them, I don’t know, process their grief.”
“How do you know that?”
He shrugged, uneasy but not wanting to give that away. He said abruptly, “It makes sense, that’s all.”
He’d had a lot of questions about prison the first time his dad was sent away, too. The Washington State Correctional Institute was a great unknown to him, maybe not so different than death. Dad was just…gone.
Mom had shut Conall down every time he asked questions. In those days, he hadn’t had the internet to look up answers. He’d found a couple of books at the library and secretly studied them, but they were about correctional institutes in general and not the one his father was at in particular. He hadn’t been very satisfied with them. In retrospect he realized the books had been dated and he’d known that without putting his finger on what was wrong.
He hadn’t thought about any of this in a long time. He hadn’t remembered, either, that it was Duncan who’d finally told him what he knew. Mom had dragged Duncan, the oldest, on a couple of visits to Dad. Duncan told Conall he was lucky he hadn’t had to go. That it was scary going into that place with buzzers going off and heavy doors closing with muffled thuds behind Mom and him as they worked their way through security. That knowing they were locked in, too, made Duncan want to run out screaming.
Duncan scared. Conall had marveled at the concept. Hell, he still marveled at the concept. Didn’t Duncan face life square on? Had he ever once in his life flinched?
Feeling that streak of bitterness surprised Conall, and for the first time ever, he was ashamed of it. Yeah, Duncan was all about duty and doing the right thing, but that didn’t mean he was never scared or uncertain or furious at fate. He had to have been furious when Mom ditched them all.
I’ve held a grudge all these years over nothing, Conall realized. He should be ashamed. It seemed like every time he dredged up memories, Duncan was at the heart of them. It wasn’t his fault that Conall had felt inadequate in comparison. It was probably even natural, given the age difference between them. How did a kid that much younger ever equal the big brother whose achievements loomed so large?
Conall had known all this intellectually. Even known that if their family hadn’t been so screwed up and Duncan had gone away to college, Conall would have been grateful when his big brother called or noticed him during school breaks. They might have grown into friendship later, as the years passed. But as things had been, even before Mom walked out, their relationship was doomed. Conall could close his eyes and recall what an explosive mass of anger he’d been. Duncan had saved him. The fact that he resented being saved had never made sense.
But that crawling sense of shame gave him a clue. Until then he’d been able to pretend he was keeping his head out of the water on his own. From the instant Duncan sat him down to say, “Mom’s left us,” Conall had known the truth. He was drowning, and his only chance of survival was the brother he admired so much, the one who was having to ruin his own life because he had to rescue Conall—the pathetic, scrawny, excuse-for-a-MacLachlan youngest boy. He’d known Duncan despised him even as he felt obligated.
That was what he couldn’t bear knowing. He’d wanted to hate someone else instead of himself.
He eventually heard the Subaru and couldn’t stop himself from going to the window to watch Lia, the boys and Sorrel troop across the yard. He could see their mouths moving but couldn’t hear a word. They were all carrying bags that looked like they held clothes and shoe boxes. So she’d taken them shopping, even picked up Sorrel from school so she could join them at the mall. The sight made Conall feel disgruntled. He took himself and his bad mood back to the other side of the attic.
Tonight was Jeff’s turn to eat downstairs. Conall didn’t get a chance to see anyone but Sorrel, who delivered his dinner tray. Her face was brighter and happier than usual.
“Hey,” he said. “Good day?”
She nodded vigorously. “Lia said we needed some summer clothes so she took us to the discount mall. I got some really cool sandals and shorts and—” She eyed him and said, “I guess you don’t care about clothes, do you?”
Conall looked down at himself and laughed. “I guess I don’t.” It was stuffy up here, and he wore sacky cargo shorts and a faded T-shirt. A clothes horse he was not.
“Dinner smells really good,” she told him cheerily and left him alone.
Dinner was good. Lia had used veggies from her garden in a stir-fry on rice. Just like one of the kids, he got a big glass of milk and two home-baked cookies, thick and chewy. He ate without the pleasure he would have felt if he were sitting at the table with everyone else.
He wondered what Walker and Brendan were asking Jeff tonight. Had they started speculating about sex yet? Conall kind of thought that by age ten he had been. Were they worrying about what would happen to them, or were they still too caught up in their mother’s death for it to occur to them how uncertain their futures were? He’d have to ask Lia.
When Jeff came up, Conall said in frustration, “We’re wasting our time sitting here staring at that damned house. It’s not quite time for the utility district meter reader to make the rounds, but would those guys know the difference?”
Jeff pushed out his lower lip while he thought about it. “Maybe not.”
“Could we get their electricity knocked out and use that as a guise to go visiting?”
Knocking out phone service was a handy dandy excuse, but these guys had never signed up for a landline. In fact, it appeared any telephone communications they had with others were made using throwaway cell phones. No major service listed them as customers.
“Hell,” he said irritably, on a sudden realization, “I figured out why they were so unfriendly to Lia. Her skin probably isn’t lily-white enough to suit them.”
“She looks more Caucasian than Hispanic.”
“Not with that hair,” he argued.
“No suggestion they’ve been real chummy with any of the other neighbors, either,” Jeff said mildly.
Conall grunted and kept his mouth shut. Behind him came the rustles and thumps that indicated Jeff was disrobing and stretching out in bed. Dusk was settling, plunging the never-bright-and-sunny attic into purple-gray gloom. They didn’t turn on lights up here, which might catch someone’s attention. Maybe the hours sitting in semi to complete darkness were getting to him.
The fact that everything he believed about himself was now floating around like the sparkling bits in a snow globe, likely to form an unfamiliar landscape when they settled, was completely irrelevant.
* * *
HE CAME TO HER BED, as Lia had expected he would. She’d tensed the moment she heard the quiet click of the attic door. Even so, Conall took her by surprise, slipping into her room like a ghost. The mattress sank from his weight, and then he had her in his arms and was kissing her with intensity and need that found an instant response in her. It seemed like forever since she’d seen him. This morning when she awakened alone, she’d been both grateful and disappointed. To not see him all day was almost more than she could bear.
Ridiculous, but, oh, she needed him.
/> If anything, their lovemaking was more powerful than last night’s. Maybe it was the anticipation, the fact that they now knew each other’s trigger points. But Lia thought there was something about the way Conall touched her tonight, as though he’d missed her, too. Needed her.
When it was over, he rolled to one side pulling her with him, so that her head rested where it was meant to be, in the hollow formed by his shoulder. His hand kept sliding up and down her back, his fingertips testing each vertebrae, the curve of her waist, the sharpness of her shoulder blades. Happiness mixed with a kind of desperation filled her chest. It was like holding her breath underwater. The moment would inevitably come when she had to let it all out and she’d be left hollow inside.
“Why aren’t you married, Lia?” Conall’s voice was a rumble that vibrated beneath her cheek. “Why don’t you have your own kids?”
Surprised, she tilted her head but, of course, couldn’t see his face. She took a minute to formulate a reply.
“I didn’t want a marriage like my parents’. It’s so…unequal. I saw friends’ families, of course, but I never felt that close to any of their parents. I always had this feeling of separateness, I wasn’t like any of them.”
“Because of getting deported.”
“Maybe. Probably. It made me feel dirty, like I didn’t belong here. But I didn’t belong there, either. Dad and Mom are so different from each other, I guess I’ve always felt split down the middle.” She didn’t remember ever saying any of this before, even though she’d figured it out a long time ago. Maybe it was the darkness and the comfort of Conall’s embrace that made speaking now so easy.
“You’ve had boyfriends.”
She was glad he didn’t ask if she’d ever been in love. He wouldn’t want to hear her say, Until now, you mean?
“Only a couple that were semi-serious. One in college. That was the closest call to anything permanent. Emilio’s parents were migrant workers, but legal. He was warm and funny and we had something in common.”
There was a small silence. “But?”
“But it turned out he was also really traditional. He assumed we’d get married and there wouldn’t be any reason for me to go to grad school, would there, although it would be okay if I worked for a couple of years until he was making enough to buy a house and start a family. I panicked.”
He chuckled. That vibration felt so nice, Lia kissed his chest. Muscles flexed and his arms tightened.
“What about you?” she asked. “Your brothers are both married. Is it your job?”
At first she didn’t think he was going to answer at all. “No,” he said finally. “Although it would be tough, doing the kind of work I do.”
Lia had no trouble imagining how awful it could be—him disappearing for weeks or months on end, her having no real idea where he was or what he was doing, knowing only that he was probably in danger. Yes, that would be hard on a relationship.
“Jeff’s married, though. You knew that.”
She nodded.
“I know other guys who are. A couple of female agents, too.” Again he was quiet and she had the sense of him collecting himself. “I vowed years ago I was never going there.”
The heaviness in her chest felt a lot less like happiness now.
“My parents weren’t a shining example. Dad wasn’t abusive, nothing like that. I picture him now and I can see that he was handsome, maybe charming. He was good at making people laugh. He didn’t really like working for a living, though. Mom and he fought bitterly. It got physical sometimes, which scared the crap out of all of us. They’d break stuff, put holes in the walls.” He was silent for a moment. “She ended up doing everything around the house and holding down a job, too. Sometimes we’d suddenly have money. Later I realized it was when he was dealing. Mom kept making him swear to go straight, and he’d try, but it didn’t last long. He wasn’t…reliable.”
“He must have loved her, to try.”
“Maybe.” The way his muscles twitched felt involuntary. “I didn’t see anything that looked like love.”
His voice never gave much away, but she couldn’t possibly mistake this kind of searing pain. Lia lifted her head, wishing she could see him. She would have sat up and reached for the lamp switch except that she guessed he, too, was talking more freely because the darkness hid so much. In a way, she hoped he didn’t realize how much he’d revealed.
“But you…” she whispered. “They must have loved the three of you.”
His laugh hurt to hear. “I was nine years old when I heard my parents fighting. My father called me a pathetic excuse for a boy and said I was Mom’s fault. They were screaming at each other. She said she’d never wanted me, that Dad was the one who’d insisted they have another kid.”
Lia listened in horror. She didn’t move even the tiniest bit, even though she wanted to throw herself on top of him and hold him and tell him that his parents were idiots, that he was lovable. So lovable she hadn’t had a prayer of resisting him.
But his body was utterly rigid. She could tell that he was talking to the ceiling, maybe hardly aware she was there. She doubted that he’d ever told this story to anyone.
“Dad said I didn’t have the makings of any kind of man. He asked whether I was even his.” He gave another ugly laugh. “Mom started throwing things. I shut myself into my room. It wasn’t a good day, anyway. I got in a lot of fights, and I’d just had the crap beat out of me. My eyes were swollen shut.” His voice had noticeably relaxed; he was okay with telling her about this part. But then that quiet tension reintroduced itself. “It was seeing me that set them off. I didn’t exactly make them proud.”
“Oh, Conall.” She couldn’t stand it another second. She climbed on top of him and squeezed him with both arms. She burrowed her face against his neck. “They didn’t deserve you. I want to hurt them. I swear I’ll never say anything bad about my parents again. Even Dad loves me, I know he does. How did you turn into such a good man?”
“Hey, hey!” His arms had closed tightly around her, too, but he was laughing. Only then he said, “Are you crying? Lia?”
Damn it, she was. She never cried.
“Oh, hell. For me? Lia, that was a lot of years ago. It’s water under the bridge. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No,” she cried. “I’m glad you did. And it does matter. When I think of you not having anyone—”
“Shh,” he said against her head. “Shh, Lia, you’ll wake up one of the kids.”
“I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do.” He was smiling, she could hear it. His hands moved over her, soothing, kneading, calming her. “And I did have someone. I had Duncan.” There was the smallest of pauses. “I had both my brothers.”
Lia went still. “Then why…?”
His pauses were hard to interpret but deep and dark with the things he chose not to say.
At last his shoulders jerked. “That’s the complicated part. I’ll say this much, though. That day, Duncan found me in my room. He brought me an ice pack and he talked to me. He was…there.”
“I may have to hug him the next time I see him.” She rubbed her wet cheeks on his shoulder and sniffed. Maybe she should feel foolish, but she didn’t. Mostly, she was mad.
“All I ask is that you don’t kiss him.” He was joking, she could tell. “Keep the kisses for me,” he said, and he didn’t sound humorous anymore. He sounded like he meant it, and her heart squeezed.
No wonder he was so damaged. Too damaged, maybe, to ever love a woman—her—the way she wished he could. Although she’d never really felt violent, Lia wanted to kill his parents, two selfish people who never should have had children.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” Conall said again, softly.
“I’m glad you did,” she repeated. And then they were kissing, first with astonis
hing tenderness, then with some of the earlier ferocity. They made love, and she wished he wouldn’t slip out of the room when they were done, that she’d wake to find him beside her come morning. But she knew that wouldn’t be, and that the kids weren’t the only reason.
Which hurt.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE SCREEN DOOR slammed and Conall looked up. Sorrel.
“Hi,” she said.
Had she known he was out here? Conall smiled lazily at her. It was good timing; he’d had in mind to catch her alone and impress on her for the eighty-ninth time that she could not mention him and Jeff at school, online or anywhere else. Truthfully, he wasn’t worrying that much, not the way he had at the beginning. The targets were pretty anti-social; Henderson had noted that even when they were grocery shopping and the like, they didn’t make conversation with locals. Conall couldn’t imagine them prowling a teenager’s Facebook page. Still, it would be better if Sorrel kept quiet in the first place.
He couldn’t claim to understand her the way he did Walker and Brendan, which made him nervous. She was different than girls he’d known—mostly in a Biblical sense—when he was a teenager. Sometimes she acted no older than the boys, then a minute later would eye him in a way that suggested she was on the cusp of being a woman. The girl part he could handle; the woman, not so much.
“Hey,” he said. He sat on the top porch step, his plate of potato salad balanced on his knee, a sandwich in his hand, a can of soda next to him.
Sorrel settled carefully a few feet away. That was something he’d noticed about her; she held herself in tight. None of a teenager’s usual expansive, dramatic body language.
“What’s up?”
“My caseworker called.” Her voice was tight, too. “She says I have to go to counseling with my parents.”
He’d heard the phone ring a few minutes ago and could tell somebody had grabbed it. Sorrel didn’t seem to get many calls, he’d noticed, unlike the typical teenager. Partly, he supposed, because she’d gone to school here for only a couple of months.
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