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He smiled now. “Especially when you didn’t.”
“You’re part of my life, even the parts I wanted you clear of. So, same goes, Roarke. For better or worse, or all the crap that’s in between, I love you.” She scooped up eggs. “We straight on that?”
“As an arrow.”
“Good.” And so were the eggs, she discovered. “Why don’t you tell me about these people?”
“There’s a lot of them to start. There’s Sinead, who was my mother’s twin. Her husband, Robbie, who works the farm here with Sinead’s brother Ned. Sinead and Robbie have three grown children, who would be my cousins, and between them, there are five more children, and two more on the way.”
“Good God.”
“Haven’t even gotten started,” he said with a laugh. “Ned, he’s married to Mary Katherine, or maybe it’s Ailish. I’m good at names, you know, but all these names and faces and bodies were coming down like a flood. They’ve four children, cousins of mine, and they’ve managed to make five—no I think it might be six more. Then there’s Sinead’s younger brother, that’s Fergus, who lives in Ennis and works in his wife’s family’s restaurant business. I think her name’s Meghan, but I’m not entirely sure.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Already feeling crowded, Eve waved her fork.
“But there’s so many more.” He grinned now, and ate as he hadn’t been able to do for days. “My grandparents. Imagine having grandparents.”
“I can’t,” she said after a moment.
“Neither can I, though I appear to have them. They’ve been married nearly sixty years now, and they’re hearty. They live now in a cottage over the hill to the west. They didn’t want the big house, I’m told, when their children were grown and married, so it came to Sinead as she was the one who wanted it most.”
He paused, and she said nothing. Just waited for him to finish.
“They don’t want anything from me.” Still puzzled by it, he broke a slice of toasted brown bread in two. “Nothing that I expected them to want. There’s none of this, ‘Well now, we could use a bit of the ready since you’ve so much and we’re in the way of being family.’ Or ‘You owe us for all the years that’ve gone by.’ Not even the ‘Who the hell do you think you are, coming around here, you son of a murdering bastard.’ I’d expected any of those things, would have understood that. Instead it’s ‘Ah, there you are, it’s Siobahn’s boy. We’re glad to see you.’ ”
With a shake of his head, he set the toast down again. “What do you do with that?”
“I don’t know. I never know how to act, or feel, when somebody loves me. I always feel inadequate, or just stupid.”
“We never had much practice at it, did we, you and I?” He covered her hand with his, rubbed it as though he needed the feel of her skin against his. “Two lost souls. If you’re done there, I’d like to show you something.”
“I’m overdone.” She pushed the plate away. “She made enough food for half the residents of Sidewalk City.”
“We’ll walk some of it off,” he said and took her hand.
“I’m not going back with the cows. I don’t love you that much.”
“We’ll leave the cows to their cow business.”
“Which is what, exactly? No, I don’t want to know,” she decided as he pulled her out the door. “I get these weird and scary pictures in my head. What’s that thing out there?” she asked, pointing.
“It’s called a tractor.”
“Why’s that guy riding around with the cows? Don’t they have remotes, or droids, or something?”
He laughed.
“You laugh”—and it was good to hear it—“but there are more cows than people around here. What if the cows got tired of hanging around in the field and decided, hey, we want to drive the tractor, or live in the house, or wear clothes for a while. What then?”
“Remind me to dig out Animal Farm from the library when we get hom
e, and you’ll find out. Here now.” He took her hand in his once more, wanting the link. “They planted this for her. For my mother.”
Eve studied the tree, the lush green leaves and sturdy trunk and branches. “It’s . . . a nice tree.”
“They knew, in their hearts, she was dead. Lost to them. But there was no proof. Trying to find it, to find me when I was a baby, one of my uncles was almost killed. They had to let go. So they planted this for her, not wanting to put up a stone or marker. Just the cherry tree, that blooms in the spring.”
Looking at it again, Eve felt something click inside her. “I went to a memorial for one of the victims last night. This job, you go to too many memorials and funerals. The flowers and the music, the bodies laid out on display. People seem to need that, the ritual, I guess. But it always seems off to me. This seems right. This is better.”
