Portrait in Death (In Death #16)(63)

"If they did, he'd have lied his way around it. He had a quick and clever tongue, and was always ready with the credible be."

"Or, you have a girl, not even twenty, gone over this guy and pregnant by him-maybe already a little afraid of him. Could be she just didn't hear what people said."

"True enough. Though there'd have been those back in that day, back in his prime, who'd have risked speaking of him in a way he'd dislike. But if Meg's name came to her ears, she may have pretended not to hear."

He fell silent for a moment, thinking it through. "Meg was more his match, if you understand me. Hard, with a liking for drink and a fast pound. Siobhan, she'd have irritated him eventually, simply because of what she was. But nobody walked out on Patrick Roarke-and to take his son, the symbol of his virility? No, indeed that wouldn't be permitted. So she had to be punished for trying. I can see how it was, see exactly how it would have been. He'd pull Meg back to deal with me. A man can't spend his time fussing over a baby, after all. Work to do, business to run. Get a woman to handle the dirty work. He was a right bastard, no doubt of it."

"No one ever mentioned her to you? Your mother."

"No one. I'd have found out about it myself, but I never bothered to look. It wasn't closed off in my mind, as yours was, I just never bothered. I dismissed her, you see."

He squeezed his eyes tighter, then forced them open. "Not worth my time or trouble. I never gave her so much as a passing thought in all these years."

"You never gave Meg Roarke a passing thought," she corrected. "You didn't know."

"I never even troubled myself enough to hate her. She was nothing to me."

"You're talking about two different women."

"She deserved better, that's the point. Better all around, and better from me. I ask myself if she'd gone back to him if not for me. If not for thinking my son needs his father. Would she be alive now?"

Worried, she wanted to yank him out of this maze of guilt he was circling. But she went with instinct, with training, and spoke quietly, as she would to a victim, a survivor on the verge of shock. "You can't blame yourself for that. Or punish yourself for it."

"There should be some payment. Goddamn it, Eve, there should be something. I feel... helpless, and I don't like it. Here's something I can't fix-can't fight with my fists, can't buy or steal or talk my way around. No matter how I line it up, she's dead, and he never paid."

"Roarke, I don't know how many times-you can't keep them in your head or you go crazy-I don't know how many times I've knocked on someone's door and ripped apart the whole fabric of their life by telling them someone they loved is dead."

Hoping to comfort, she brushed her fingers over his hair. "They feel what you're feeling now. And no matter how you line it up, the one who caused it never pays enough."

"You won't like to hear it, but I'll say it anyway. There have been moments, countless moments through my life that I wished I'd been the one to do him in the end. But I've never wished it more than I do now, even knowing it means nothing, changes nothing. Maybe that's one of the reasons I didn't tell you. How can you understand that I think I'd feel more of a man right now if I had his blood on my hands."

She looked down at his hand, and the gold ring, their symbol, that shone on his finger. "You're wrong if you think I don't understand. I understand because I've got my own father's blood on mine."

"Oh Christ." It sickened and infuriated him-he'd wallowed so deep into the mire of his own life that he'd so carelessly thrown that in her face. He drew her against him. "I'm sorry. Baby."

"It wouldn't help." She eased back so he could see her. "Take my word. And believe me, you're more of a man than any other I've known."

He rested his forehead on hers. "I can't do without you. I don't know how I ever got by before you."

"We'll just go from here. You've had a rough couple of days, so I'll try one of your favorite sports and make you eat something."

He smiled, finally, when she rose to go to the AutoChef. "Tending to me, are you?"

Glancing back she studied him. He wore nothing but the trousers. Though there were hints of amusement in his eyes now, the shadows under them still dogged them.

And he was pale yet, pale from worry and fatigue.

Well, she would damn well fix that.

"I think I can figure out how, since I've been on the receiving end often enough." She went for soup. "I don't know much about mothers-neither do you-but from everything you've just said she'd hate you blaming yourself for what happened. If she loved you, she'd want you happy. She'd like knowing you got away from him. That you grew up to be successful and important."

"However I managed it."

"Yeah." She fiddled with the soup, then brought it to him. "However you managed it."

"He's in me, you know."

She nodded, sat beside him again. "I guess it works that way, which mean she's in you, too. Gives you a big one up on me, on the DNA chart."

"I've been shuffling the past behind me all my life. It doesn't shadow me the way it does you." He ate, without much interest, because she'd gone to the trouble for him. "I didn't want to bring you into this, or anyone. I wanted to sort it out for myself, that's all. But it's eating at me. I can see her face now, and I always will. I have family I didn't know of, people who lost her. I don't know what the hell to do about it. So I find myself guilty and churned up and frustrated."