That was what he couldn’t bear knowing. He’d wanted to hate someone else instead of himself.
He eventually heard the Subaru and couldn’t stop himself from going to the window to watch Lia, the boys and Sorrel troop across the yard. He could see their mouths moving but couldn’t hear a word. They were all carrying bags that looked like they held clothes and shoe boxes. So she’d taken them shopping, even picked up Sorrel from school so she could join them at the mall. The sight made Conall feel disgruntled. He took himself and his bad mood back to the other side of the attic.
Tonight was Jeff’s turn to eat downstairs. Conall didn’t get a chance to see anyone but Sorrel, who delivered his dinner tray. Her face was brighter and happier than usual.
“Hey,” he said. “Good day?”
She nodded vigorously. “Lia said we needed some summer clothes so she took us to the discount mall. I got some really cool sandals and shorts and—” She eyed him and said, “I guess you don’t care about clothes, do you?”
Conall looked down at himself and laughed. “I guess I don’t.” It was stuffy up here, and he wore sacky cargo shorts and a faded T-shirt. A clothes horse he was not.
“Dinner smells really good,” she told him cheerily and left him alone.
Dinner was good. Lia had used veggies from her garden in a stir-fry on rice. Just like one of the kids, he got a big glass of milk and two home-baked cookies, thick and chewy. He ate without the pleasure he would have felt if he were sitting at the table with everyone else.
He wondered what Walker and Brendan were asking Jeff tonight. Had they started speculating about sex yet? Conall kind of thought that by age ten he had been. Were they worrying about what would happen to them, or were they still too caught up in their mother’s death for it to occur to them how uncertain their futures were? He’d have to ask Lia.
When Jeff came up, Conall said in frustration, “We’re wasting our time sitting here staring at that damned house. It’s not quite time for the utility district meter reader to make the rounds, but would those guys know the difference?”
Jeff pushed out his lower lip while he thought about it. “Maybe not.”
“Could we get their electricity knocked out and use that as a guise to go visiting?”
Knocking out phone service was a handy dandy excuse, but these guys had never signed up for a landline. In fact, it appeared any telephone communications they had with others were made using throwaway cell phones. No major service listed them as customers.
“Hell,” he said irritably, on a sudden realization, “I figured out why they were so unfriendly to Lia. Her skin probably isn’t lily-white enough to suit them.”
“She looks more Caucasian than Hispanic.”
“Not with that hair,” he argued.
“No suggestion they’ve been real chummy with any of the other neighbors, either,” Jeff said mildly.
Conall grunted and kept his mouth shut. Behind him came the rustles and thumps that indicated Jeff was disrobing and stretching out in bed. Dusk was settling, plunging the never-bright-and-sunny attic into purple-gray gloom. They didn’t turn on lights up here, which might catch someone’s attention. Maybe the hours sitting in semi to complete darkness were getting to him.
The fact that everything he believed about himself was now floating around like the sparkling bits in a snow globe, likely to form an unfamiliar landscape when they settled, was completely irrelevant.
* * *
HE CAME TO HER BED, as Lia had expected he would. She’d tensed the moment she heard the quiet click of the attic door. Even so, Conall took her by surprise, slipping into her room like a ghost. The mattress sank from his weight, and then he had her in his arms and was kissing her with intensity and need that found an instant response in her. It seemed like forever since she’d seen him. This morning when she awakened alone, she’d been both grateful and disappointed. To not see him all day was almost more than she could bear.
Ridiculous, but, oh, she needed him.
If anything, their lovemaking was more powerful than last night’s. Maybe it was the anticipation, the fact that they now knew each other’s trigger points. But Lia thought there was something about the way Conall touched her tonight, as though he’d missed her, too. Needed her.