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. God 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 mass 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
passion. So if there was no comfort, he thought as he poured another
glass, 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 glass, 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 glass, 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-stitches of broken
capillaries under his skin. He had the blue, dreamy eyes that had been
passed 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,