on his pitching technique, too. And Walker… Had Lia noticed that he’d bent his glasses last night? Those glasses had made such a difference to him. Conall still thought baseball wouldn’t be his sport; either he still wasn’t seeing real well when he was up to bat or he was worried about breaking the glasses. He had the timing down well enough to swing at more or less the right time, and sometimes he connected, but there was still something blind about the way he swung even though his eyes were open. He was better at soccer, a natural.
A couple of times Conall had noticed Walker wasn’t wearing the glasses when he should have been. He made a mental note to say something to Lia tomorrow before he left. His initial excitement had become tinged with self-consciousness because he had to wear glasses when Brendan didn’t. Walker tried to be as much like his big brother as he could. No surprise, when he didn’t have anyone else.
Please God, don’t let them be separated.
They’d survived so much. Remembering his first impression of them as ghosts, he wasn’t sure they could survive another blow so devastating.
And Lia. He had a suspicion she hadn’t meant him to hear when she’d confessed tonight that she didn’t know how she endured loving the kids and letting them go, over and over. He hadn’t seen her saying goodbye, but he knew there’d be a smile on her face. She would hug them, and be excited for them, and cry when no one could see.
She could keep Brendan and Walker. Unlike most of the kids she cared for, they didn’t have a family to be patched back together.
Maybe she didn’t want to. Or maybe she’d be denied if she applied to adopt them. A single woman… Conall could imagine some hide-bound fool somewhere certain that boys needed a father. Never mind that they’d been raised by a mother alone.
It came to him slowly as he stared into the dark that they did need a father. Otherwise why had they latched onto him the way they had? They’d been so hungry for a role model.
So hungry, he thought bitingly, that they hadn’t seen what a piss-poor role model he was. He’d almost gotten Brendan killed. Maybe he should have been more brutally frank about it, encouraged the kid to see that Conall MacLachlan was the last man he should want to emulate.
And it was true. He’d spent twenty years or more being reckless, so cold he didn’t give a thought to anyone else’s needs or feelings, angry when he felt anything at all. God forbid Brendan should try to be like me.
He thought for the hundredth time of getting up, crossing the hall and opening Lia’s door. Would she turn him away if he walked to the bed and took her in his arms, started kissing her before she could speak a word of protest?
The old Conall would have done exactly that. He wanted her, and why shouldn’t he have her one more time?
This was a hell of a moment to make a new discovery about himself. The new Conall, it seemed, had grown a conscience. He’d already hurt her, and making love with her one more time would tear open a wound that had begun, however tentatively, to heal.
Knowing he was a bastard, wishing he was less of one, he stayed where he was even though it might be the hardest thing he’d ever done.
* * *
SAYING GOODBYE was unspeakably awful.
Jeff and Conall carefully packed their equipment in the back of the Suburban then threw in their duffel bags. Maybe with the intent of giving them a minute, Jeff went upstairs to check again that they hadn’t left anything behind, leaving Conall to face Lia and the boys.
He’d already said goodbye to Sorrel, even driving her out to the main road to meet her school bus earlier in the morning. Lia had no idea what was said, but he’d come back looking particularly blank, something she’d begun to suspect happened when he was unwilling to express what he really felt.
Now he went to the boys and stood with a hand on each of their shoulders, his head bent as he talked to them and listened to whatever they were saying. Lia stood a distance away, feeling as if she’d frozen up inside. That was a good thing; she’d melt eventually, of course, but for now this was safest. She was storing up the memory of these terrible