Running Back (New York Leopards 2)

“That’s awful.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “What can you do? You can be the best driver in the world, and it doesn’t matter if someone smashes into you.” His fingers squeezed mine. “My mother sat down on the kitchen floor and just started crying when they told her. I’d only heard her cry once before. I waited until everyone was asleep and then I broke into his whiskey collection.” He took a deep breath. “On the third night I found Lauren there, and then I poured out all of them.”

I leaned into him. “You were a good brother.”

He shook his head. “I left them six months later for college.”

I turned

my head up so I could see him, staring stony-eyed across the graves. I reached up to touch his cheek, so he turned to look at me. “And do you still feel guilty?”

His eyes tore through me, wide with remembered pain. “I feel guilty about how happy I was to leave.”

We heard the clearing of a throat and looked up, our hands falling apart. In the still, silent cemetery, it seemed only right that the only person was a thin man with thinner white hair, dressed in a well-worn brown tweed suit. He nodded at both of us, but it was clear his attention latched onto Mike. “You’ll be Brian’s son.”

Mike looked swiftly at me, and then gave the older man a bright smile. Back to normal, friendly Mike O’Connor, without any trace of sadness or discomfort. “Yeah. I’m Mike O’Connor.”

“Darrell MacCarthy. Used to give your da lifts to school.” He glanced my way. “And this young lady is...?”

“Natalie Sullivan.” I extended my hand to grip his firmly.

“Ah, you also have family here?”

“Oh, no, I’m Irish in name only.” That didn’t sound as eloquent out loud as it had in my head, so I grimaced and then wished I had some capability to keep my emotions off my face, and that the older man didn’t think I was grimacing at him.

But Mr. MacCarthy had already returned his attention to Mike, whose smile looked a little fixed to me. He wasn’t asking, as I would have, for every last hopefully rapscallion recollection Mr. MacCarthy could whip up about his father. I remembered Mike saying I don’t talk about Kilkarten when we first met, and I wondered if he didn’t talk about his father, either.

Except that he just had, with me.

In any case, the silence kept stretching, so I hurried to fill it, because who liked silences? Silences were for black holes. “I do specialize in Irish history, though. I’m an archaeologist.”

At my overly bright tone, MacCarthy focused on me. “The one Patrick hired? I thought you’d be a bit older.”

Well. Patrick hadn’t hired me. The brightness corroded. “Well, I’m not.”

Beside me, Mike’s smile eased into a slightly more natural version, and he nodded to Mr. MacCarthy. “We should get going but—it was nice to meet you.”

Mr. MacCarthy wasn’t done, even though Mike had already turned away. “Where are you off to?”

I hesitated, unwilling to walk off on this old man. “Um...”

Mike’s hand reached back and wrapped around my mine, tugging me gently after him. “To pay a call,” he said over his shoulder as I stumbled to catch up, “on my dear Aunt Maggie.”

* * *

A pair of main streets cut through the village, lined with two story buildings painted pale yellows and blues and greens. Ivy climbed up the level walls and low peaked slate roofs. All the signs were written in Gaelic as well as English, a language of curlicues and accents.

Maggie O’Connor lived at the far side of the village, so we walked past O’Malley’s Restaurant, the village pub and a café with outside seating. Several patrons looked up with curiosity as we passed, and Mike’s hand tightened on mine.

And then we were before a lavender house nestled between two off-white ones. Window boxes filled with white flowers hung beneath long, thin panes of glass, and the door itself was painted blue. I sighed happily before knocking.

The door opened immediately.

Maggie O’Connor stood five-feet tall, with thick black hair gathered at the nape and streaked through with silver. I put her somewhere in her fifties, and she gave me the same puzzled look most women her age gave me, like some dusty corner of their mind recognized my face from when they’d been seventeen and poured over fashion magazines.

“Mrs. O’Connor.” I let loose my brightest smile. “I’m Natalie Sullivan. Thank you so much for seeing me today.”

Her expression cleared of confusion and settled into polite curiosity. “Ah, the archaeologist. Would you like a cup of tea?”