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He watched her now as she studied his mother’s tree. “Is it?”
“The flowers just die, you know? And the body gets buried or burned. But you plant a tree and it grows, and it lives. It says something.”
“I can’t remember her. I’ve searched back, making myself half-mad trying, somehow thinking if I could remember something, some small thing, it would make it better. But I can’t. And that’s that. So this tree here, it’s something solid, and more comforting to me than a stone marker. If there’s more than whatever time we have bumbling around here, then she knows I came. That you came with me. And that’s enough.”
When they went back in, Sinead was in the kitchen clearing breakfast away. Roarke walked to her, touched a hand to her shoulder.
“Eve needs to go back. I need to go with her.”
“Of course.” She lifted her hand, touched his lightly. “Well then, you’d best go up and get your things. I’ll have just a moment here with your wife, if she doesn’t mind.”
Trapped, Eve slid her hands into her pockets. “Sure. No problem.”
“I’ll only be a minute.”
“Ah . . .” Eve searched for something appropriate to say when she was alone with Sinead. “It means a lot to him that you let him stay.”
“It means a lot to me, to us, to have had this time with him, however short. It was difficult for him to come, to tell us what he’d learned.”
“Roarke’s no stranger to doing the difficult.”
“So I gather, and neither would you be, if I’m a judge.” She wiped her hands on a cloth, set it aside. “I was watching him from the window before, sort of gathering up pictures of him you might say. Ones I can share with Siobhan when I speak with her. I talk to her in my head,” Sinead explained at Eve’s blank look. “And right out loud now and then when no one’s about. So I’m gathering up my pictures, and there’s one I’ll never forget. The way he looked—the change in his face, in his body, in the whole of him when he saw it was you. The love was naked on him when he saw it was you, and it’s one of the loveliest things I’ve ever seen. It’s a fine picture to have in my head, for he’s my sister’s child, grown man or no, and I want what’s good for him. You seem to be.”
“We seem to be good for each other, God knows why.”
She smiled now, bright and pretty. “Sometimes it’s best not to know all the reasons. I’m glad you came, so I had a chance to look at you, and see the two of you together. I want more chances with him, and you’ll be a large part of letting that happen, or preventing it.”
“Nobody prevents Roarke.”
“Nobody,” Sinead said with a nod, “but you.”
“I wouldn’t do anything to get in the way of something he needed. He needed to come here. He’ll need to come back. Maybe you weren’t looking in the right place when he introduced me to you, when he looked at you. He already loves you.”
“Oh.” Her eyes filled up before she could stop them, and she blinked, wiping at them quickly when she heard him coming back in. “I’ll fix you some food for the journey.”
“Don’t trouble.” Roarke touched her shoulder again. “There’s plenty of it on the shuttle. I’ve made arrangements to have the car I drove here picked up.”
“Well that’ll be sad news for my Liam, who thinks it’s as fine and fancy a machine as ever built. I’ve something for you.” She reached in her pocket, closing her fingers over the treasure as she turned to him. “Siobhan didn’t take all her things when she went to Dublin. She was going to come back and get them, or send for them, but, well, one thing and another.”
She pulled out a thin chain and the rectangle of silver that dangled from it. “It’s just a trinket, but she wore it often. You see this is her name, in Ogham script. I know she’d want you to have it.”
Sinead pressed it into Roarke’s hand, closed his fingers around it. “Safe journey then, and . . . ah, damn it.”
The tears beat her, plopped onto her cheeks as she wrapped her arms around him. “Come back, will you? Come back sometime, and keep well until you do.”
“I will.” He closed his eyes, breathed her in. Vanilla and wild roses. He murmured in Gaelic as he pressed his lips to her hair.
She gave a watery laugh, pulled back to swipe at her cheeks. “I don’t have that much of the Gaelic.”
“I said thank you for showing me my mother’s heart. I won’t forget her, or you.”
“See that you don’t. Well, be off then before I start blubbering all over you. Good-bye to you, Eve, keep yourself safe.”
“It was a pleasure to meet you.” She took Sinead’s hand in a firm grip. “A genuine pleasure. The shuttle runs both ways, if you decide to come to New York.”
Roarke pressed a kiss to her temple as they walked to the field, and the waiting copter. “That was well done.”
“She’s a stand-up.”
