Portrait in Death (In Death #16)(62)

"Go ahead." He closed his eyes. Rage had passed, leaving him raw and empty. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Not going to hurt me?" She lifted his head an inch by the hair, then let it thump on the floor. "You're tired of me, don't want me around, want to shake me loose, and you're not going to hurt me?"

"Tired of you?" He opened his eyes, and saw for the first time that hers weren't simply angry. Tears sparkled in them. "Where the hell do you get these things? I never said that. I've a great deal on my mind, that's all. Nothing that has to do with you."

He saw her face, the ripple of hurt that had her flinching as if he'd slapped her. Then she shut it down, so that her eyes went dry, went flat as she sat back on her heels.

"What a stupid thing to say," he murmured. "What a sublimely stupid thing to say." He lifted his hands, scrubbed them over his face. "I'm sorry for it. I'm sorry for last night, sorry for this. I'm bloody sorry."

"I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to tell me what the hell's going on. Are you sick?" Tears were rising in her throat when she cupped his face in her hands. "Please, tell me. Is there something bad wrong with you?"

"No. There's not, no, not the way you mean." Gently, he closed his hands over her wrists, over bruises he'd put there. "I've hurt you."

"Forget it. Just tell me. If you're not going to die, and you haven't fallen out of love with me-"

"I couldn't fall out of love with you if I fell all the way to hell." Emotion was storming back into his eyes, and with it some of the misery she'd seen there before. "You're everything."

"For God's sake, tell me. I can't stand seeing you like this."

"Give me a minute, will you?" He touched her cheek where a tear had spilled over. "I want a drink."

She got up, held out a hand to help him to his feet. "Is it something to do with business? Did you do something illegal?"

The faintest hint of a smile touched his mouth. "Oh, Lieutenant, all manner of things. But not for quite some time." He walked over to the panel in the wall, pressed, and opened the wide, recessed bar. He chose whiskey and had her stomach churning again.

"Okay. What, did you lose all your money?"

"No." He nearly laughed. "I'd have handled that better than I've handled this. You. All of it. Christ Jesus, I've mucked this up." He took a drink, took a breath. "It has to do with my mother."

"Oh." Of all the things that had gone through her mind, this hadn't been so much as a blip on the radar screen. "Did she contact you? Does she want something? If she's giving you grief I can help-flash the badge, whatever."

He shook his head, drank. "She didn't contact me. She's dead."

She opened her mouth, shut it again. Shaky ground, she decided. Family deals were always shaky ground. "I'm trying to figure out what to say. I'm sorry if you are. But... you haven't seen her since you were a kid, right? You said she walked, and that was that."

"That's what I said, yes, and that's what I believed. All this time believed. But it happens the woman who walked wasn't my mother. I thought she was and that was that. I've learned differently."

"Okay. How did you learn about it?"

Calm, he thought. Calm and cool, his cop, when she had something to puzzle out. And how foolish he'd been not to tell her right off. He stared into the glass, then walked over to sit on the sofa.

"I met a woman at the shelter, a counselor there. She's from Dublin, and she told me a story I didn't believe at first. Didn't want to believe. About a young girl she'd tried to help. A young girl and her child."

Slowly, Eve walked over to sit beside him. "You?"

"Me. She was very young, this girl, and from the west. A farm in the west. She'd come to Dublin for the adventure, and to work. And she met Patrick Roarke."

He told her the rest.

"You've verified it? The counselor, everything she told you. You're sure it's not some scam."

"Very sure." He wanted another whiskey, but didn't have the energy to get up and pour. "This girl who was my mother tried to give me a family, to do what was right. She loved him, I imagine, and was afraid of him. He had a way of making women love, and fear him. But she loved me, Eve."

Eve's fingers linked with his, and gave him comfort. Steadied by it, he brought their joined hands to his lips. "I could see it in the picture of us. She never left me. He killed her. Another thing he was good at was destroying beauty and innocence. He killed her, and brought Meg back."

He laid his head back, looked up at the ceiling. "They were married. I found those records. Married before he met and ruined my mother, but there were no children. Maybe Meg couldn't give him a son, so he cast her out. Or she'd had enough of his whoring and scheming and left him. Hardly matters why."

He gave what passed for a shrug, keeping his eyes closed as fatigue dragged at him. "A girl like Siobhan Brody would have appealed to him. So young and malleable, so ripe for plucking. And when she had me, he'd have little use for a young girl like her, nagging at him to marry her and make a proper family."

"She was with him for, what, under two years. But wouldn't someone have told her about Meg? Wouldn't someone have told her he was already married?"