“I prefer the real thing.”
“I know. That’s another odd piece of you. You like old stuff. You’d rather read a book than scan a disc, rather go to the trouble to come out here when you could have programmed a simulation in your holoroom.” Her lips curved a little, dreamily. “I like that about you.”
“That’s handy.”
“When you were a kid, and things were bad for you, is this what you dreamed about?”
“I dreamed about surviving, getting out. Having control. Didn’t you?”
“I guess I did.” Too many of her dreams were jumbled and dark. “After I was in the system, anyway. Then what I wanted most was to be a cop. A good cop. A smart cop. What did you want?”
“To be rich. Not to be hungry.”
“We both got what we wanted, more or less.”
“You had nightmares while I was gone.”
She didn’t have to open her eyes to see the concern in his. She could hear it in his voice. “They aren’t too bad. They’re just more regular.”
“Eve, if you’d work with Doctor Mira—”
“I’m not ready to remember it. Not all of it. Do you ever feel the scars, from what your father did to you?”
Restless with the memories, he shifted and sank deeper in the hot, frothy water. “A few beatings, careless cruelty. Why should it matter now?”
“You shrug it off.” Now she opened her eyes, looked at him, saw he was brooding. “But it made you, didn’t it? What happened then made you.”
“I suppose it did, roughly.”
She nodded, tried to speak casually. “Roarke, do you think if some people lack something, and that lack lets them brutalize their kids—the way we were—do you think it passes on? Do you think—”
“No.”
“But—”
“No.” He cupped a hand over her calf and squeezed. “We make ourselves, in the long run. You and I did. If that wasn’t true, I’d be drunk in some Dublin slum, looking for something weaker to pummel. And you, Eve, would be cold and brittle and without pity.”
She closed her eyes again. “Sometimes I am.”
“No, that you never are. You’re strong, and you’re moral, and sometimes you make yourself ill with compassion for the innocent.”
Her eyes stung behind her closed lids. “Someone I admire and respect asked me for help, asked me for a favor. I turned him down flat. What does that make me?”
“A woman who had a choice to make.”
“Roarke, the last woman who was killed. Louise Kirski. That’s on my head. She was twenty-four, talented, eager, in love with a second-rate musician. She had a cluttered one-room apartment on West Twenty-sixth and liked Chinese food. She had a family in Texas that will never be the same. She was innocent, Roarke, and she’s haunting me.”
Relieved, Eve let out a long breath. “I haven’t been able to tell anyone that. I wasn’t sure I could say it out loud.”
“I’m glad you could say it to me. Now, listen.” He set his glass down, scooted forward to take her face in his hands. Her skin was soft, her eyes a narrow slant of dark amber. “Fate rules, Eve. You follow the steps, and you plan and you work, then fate slips in laughing and makes fools of us. Sometimes we can trick it or outguess it, but most often it’s already written. For some, it’s written in blood. That doesn’t mean we stop, but it does mean we can’t always comfort ourselves with blame.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing? Comforting myself?”
“It’s easier to take the blame than it is to admit there was nothing you could do to stop what happened. You’re an arrogant woman, Eve. Just one more aspect of you that I find attractive. It’s arrogant to assume responsibility for events beyond our control.”
“I should have controlled it.”
“Ah, yes.” He smiled. “Of course.”