Origin in Death (In Death #21)(100)

Roarke was in the process of serving an older woman a cup of something. She sat in one of the high-backed chairs, her head crowned with white hair, her eyes strong and blue.

There was another man standing by the fireplace having a conversation with yet another who might have been his twin if you carved way the twenty-odd years she judged came between them. They appeared to have no problem ignoring the two kids who sat at their feet and poked viciously at each other.

Another woman, early twenties, sat in the windowseat, looking dreamily out wile a baby of some kind sucked heroically at her breast.

Jeez.

"Our Eve's home," Sinead announced, and conversation trailed off. "Meet the family, won't you?" Sinead's arm tightened like a shackle, and moved Eve forward. "My brother Ned, and his oldest Connor."

"Ah, nice to meet you." She started to extend a hand, and was enveloped in a bear hug by the older, passed to the younger for the same treatment.

"Thanks for having us."

"That's Connor's Maggie there, nursing their young Devin."

"Pleasure." Maggie sent Eve a slow, shy smile.

"Scattered about on the floor would be Celia and Tom."

"She's got a blaster." Since it was the girl who made the whispered observation, Eve assumed it was Celia.

"Police-issue combo." Instinctively Eve laid her hand over it. "It's on stun. Lowest setting. I ... I'll go up and put it away."

"Somebody punched her face." Tom didn't bother to whisper.

"Not exactly. I should go up, and ..." Hide.

"My mother." Sinead tugged Eve forward another step. "Alise Brody."

"Ma'am. I'm just going to-"

But the woman got to her feet. "Let's have a good look at you. Don't you feed her, boy?" she demanded of Roarke.

"I try."

"Good face, strong jaw. Good thing if you're going to have to take a punch here and there. So you're a cop, are you now? Running about after murderers and the like. Good at it?"

"Yes. I'm good at it."

"No point in doing something and not doing it well. And your family? Your kin?"

"I don't have any family."

She laughed, hard and long. "God sake, child, like it or no, you've got one now. Give us a kiss here, then." She tapped her cheek. "And you can call me Granny."

She wasn't much of a cheek kisser, but there didn't seem to be any choice.

"I really need to just..." Eve gestured vaguely toward the doorway. "Roarke's told us you're in the middle of an investigation." Sinead gave her an easy pat. "Don't mind us if you need to be doing something."

"I just-a couple of things. For a minute."

She started out, started to take her first easy breath. Roarke caught up with her at the stairs. "How'd you get the bruise this time?"

"Minnesota backhand. I should've done something about it before I got here. I should've locked my weapon in my vehicle." The fact Roarke looked so ridiculously happy only flustered her more. "And I shouldn't have tried to get the kid-the Scan kid-to stop hammering me with questions by telling him there'd been a murder in Rockefeller Center last year."

"Certainly not to the last, as you say murder to a young boy, you've only enticed him." He slid an arm around her waist, rubbed his hand up and down her torso. "You don't have to be what you're not with them. That, at least, I've learned. I appreciate you tolerating this, Eve. I know it's not entirely comfortable for you, and the timing turned out poor."

"It's okay. It's the number of them that threw me off, especially since so many of them are kids."

He leaned in, just to brush his lips over her hair. "Would this be the best time to tell you there are several more having a swim?"

She stopped dead. "More?"

"Several. One of the uncles stayed back, along with a scatter of cousins and my grandfather. They're minding the family farm. But that leaves a number of other cousins, and their children."

Children. More. She wasn't going to panic; what was the point. "We're going to need a turkey the size of Pluto."

He turned her, drew her in, pressed his lips to the side of her neck.

"How you holding up?" she asked him.

"There are so many feelings coming and going inside me." He rubbed her arms, stepped back.

Touching her, she realized, keeping contact maybe because both of them needed it.

"I'm so pleased they're here. I never thought to have any blood of mine under my roof." He gave a quick, baffled laugh. "Never thought I had any I'd care to welcome. And still, I can't catch up with them. I don't know what to make of them, that's God's truth."

"Well, Jesus, there's so many it'd take you a couple years just to sort through and assign names to faces."

"No." But he laughed again, more easily. "That's not what I meant. I'm happy they've come, but at the same time, I can't get used to having them. They ... I can't think of the word. Flummox is closest. They flummox me, Eve, with their acceptance, their affection. And there's part of me, part that's still the Dublin street rat, that's waiting for one of them to say: 'Roarke, darling, how about a little of the ready, since you've so much to spare.' It's uncalled for, and unfair."