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“I wouldn’t mind the company, since you’re up. Or I can walk you back to your room if you’d rather.”
She walked over to his desk in her pale pink pajamas. “Is she with the dead people?”
“No. She’s working for them.”
“But my mom and dad, and Coyle and Linnie, and Inga, they were dead first. She said she would find out who. She said she—”
“She is.” Out of my sphere, he thought. Out of my bloody so
lar system. “Finding out who is her priority. It’s the most important thing she’s doing. And she’ll keep doing it until she knows.”
“What if it takes years and years?”
“She’ll never stop.”
“I had a dream that they weren’t dead.” The tears spilled over, slid down her cheeks. “They weren’t dead, and we were all there like we’re supposed to be, and Mom and Inga were in the kitchen talking, and Dad was trying to sneak a snack and making her laugh. Me and Linnie were playing dress-up, and Coyle was teasing us. And they weren’t dead until I woke up. I don’t want them to be dead. They left me alone, and it’s not fair.”
“It’s not, no. It’s not at all fair.” He came around, picked her up so she could lay her head on his shoulder while she cried. This, he thought, was something a man could do. He could hold a child while she wept, while she grieved. And later he could do what he could to help piece her broken life back together.
“They left me alone.”
“They didn’t want to. Still, I imagine all of them are so glad you weren’t hurt.”
“How can they be glad when they’re dead?”
Terrifying logic, he thought, and carried her around the desk, sat with her in his lap. “Don’t you think that when you die you might go to another place?”
“Like heaven.”
“Aye, like that.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” She turned her head, sighed. “But I don’t want them to be there. I want them to come back, like in my dream.”
“I know. I never had a brother. What’s it like?”
“They can be mean sometimes, especially if they’re bigger than you. But you can be mean back. But sometimes they’re fun and they play with you and tell jokes. Coyle played baseball, and I like to go to the games and watch. Is there baseball in heaven?”
“I think there must be. It could hardly be heaven if it wasn’t fun.”
“If I’d been in bed, I’d be in heaven with them. I wish—”
“You mustn’t.” He drew her back so she could see his face. “You mustn’t wish for that, and they wouldn’t want you to wish it. There was a reason you didn’t go with them. Hard as that is, you have to live your life and find out what it is. It hurts to be alone, I know.”
Her face bunched up like a fist. “You don’t. You’re not.”
“There was a time I was. Someone took my mother from me before I was old enough to know her.”
“Is she in heaven?”
“I’m sure she is.”
“That’s not fair either.” She laid her head on his chest again, patted him with her hand in a gesture of comfort that moved him, amazingly. She could offer him comfort, Roarke thought. Even now she had the heart in her to give solace. How did she come by that? Was it born in her or had it been instilled by her parents?
“I won’t tell you I know how you’re feeling, but I will tell you I know what it is to be alone and angry and afraid. And I’ll tell you it’ll get better, however much you don’t think so, it will get better.”
“When?”
“Bit by little bit.” He touched his lips to her head.
