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 grief.
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 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, graceful. Why had he never noticed before?
“It was a fine funeral,” Liam said, groping. “Your mother’d be pleased you brought him here to lie with her.” He poured, then thirstily downed three fingers.
Outside the soft rain of Ireland began.
They’d never drunk together before, Brian realized. He poured more whiskey into both glasses. Perhaps, at last, they would find some common ground. With a bottle between them.
“Here’s a farmer’s rain,” Liam said, soothed by the sound and the whiskey. “A nice soft soaker.”
A farmer’s rain. His little boy had dreamed of being a farmer. Had he passed that much of Liam McAvoy into Darren?
“I didn’t want him to be alone. I thought he should be back in Ireland, with family.”
“It’s right. You done right.”
Brian lit a cigarette, then pushed the pack toward his father. Had they ever talked before, the two of them? If they had Brian couldn’t remember. “It shouldn’t have happened.”
“There’s a lot that happens in this world shouldn’t.” Liam lit the cigarette, then picked up his glass. “They’ll catch the bastards who did this, boy. They’ll catch them.”
“It’s been a week.” It already seemed like years. “They’ve got nothing.”
“They’ll catch them,” Liam insisted. “And the bloody bastards will rot in hell. Then the poor little lad’ll rest easy.”
He didn’t want to think of vengeance now. He didn’t want to think of his sweet little boy resting easy in the ground. Time had passed, and was lost. There had to be reasons for it.
“Why didn’t you ever come?” Brian leaned forward. “I sent you tickets, for the wedding, when Darren was born, for Emma’s birthday, for his. For God’s sake, you never saw him until his wake. Why didn’t you come?”
“Running a farm’s busy work,” he said between swallows. Liam was a man filled with regrets so that one easily melded into another. “Can’t go larking