“Oh, now look what you’ve done, making me cry.”
He drew her to him, murmured in Irish. As tears spilled, she pressed her face to his shoulder, murmured back.
“Go on, go on out, get the air. We’ll pack some food. Come and kiss me before you go. No, Sean, you leave them be for now.”
The kids were back—Eve had already noted—and this one, the boy she remembered very well, stopped his charge toward them, deflated.
“I’m just after asking if they—”
“You’re after sitting down until you’re excused, Sean Lannigan.”
When Roarke winked at him, opened the back door, Eve turned to the boy. “Got him cold, full confession. Details later.”
He grinned at her, ran back to the dining room.
“That was kind of you,” Roarke commented.
“Kid’s got an interest in law and order, why not feed it?”
“Jesus, let’s not make a cop out of him.” He took her hand. “A bit of a walk would do me. Everything’s going stiff as plank boards on me.”
She thought, but didn’t say, how his Irish rose up whenever he was here, or around his family.
“I can’t stay.”
“Oh, I know. We’ll likely leave within the hour, and be home again by …” He checked the time. “By half-two anyway.”
“It makes no sense, and I don’t want to hear about the screwy time deal and the rotation of the Earth. You did good down there with Cobbe. You don’t want to hear it, but you did cop good.”
“I don’t, and say it again, you’ll hear all about the rotation of the Earth.” But he kissed her fingers. “I told you I didn’t need it, to be down there. I thought I’d gotten all I needed, my way, out here.”
He walked her beyond the thriving kitchen garden as thin spots of blue pushed free of gray clouds, as the light went pearly with the soft glow of sun pushing behind the stacks of them.
“I was wrong there as well, because I did need it. It was your way, down there, the cop way, and I needed to be part of that. Thrashing the bastard, well, that was fine, and it helped close something in me I forgot was there until he showed up again.”
He walked her out toward the fields, toward the hills that rose beyond them, into the green and the green under the gray and the spots of hopeful blue.
She hoped like hell he didn’t intend to walk where the cows were.
“Up here, outside, that was a payment, long due—between him and me. But down there? That was justice. There was a time, before you, when the payment would’ve been enough. But justice, it’s come around in me, it’s justice matters more—and it sets the payment.”
He paused at the big tree, one rioting with pink blossoms—and she knew why. They’d planted it for his mother. And he’d stood there looking out when she’d come to him, when he’d needed her.
“You earned the payment. And you played a major part in getting that justice. He was telling the truth about doubling his kills. It’s going to take a long time to identify them, and they’ll never find all of them. So, even for those whose names we’ll never know, you helped bring them justice.”
“I was telling the truth when I said the old man would be shamed of him being afraid to stand up for what he was.”
“ ‘Feared,’ you said—you got so Irish. Anyway, it rang true, and that’s why it got him to own it.”
“If she can—Alicia Privet—she’ll find a way to have him killed in prison. And he knows it.”
“That’s not our problem.”
“I want him to live, and live long.” As they stood, he draped an arm over her shoulder, looked toward the hills. “There’s another that’s come from you. Once I’d have wished him dead and done. But I’ve come to see it’s the justice of a long life that’s true.
“Ah, look there, would you? We’ve a rainbow.”
She looked out over the fields, toward the rise of hills, and saw the shimmering arc of it against the bluing sky.
“Isn’t there something about a bag of money in a rainbow?”
“A pot of gold at the end of it.” Laughing, he turned her into his arms. “And I’ve better than that right here.”
He held her there, his ribs throbbing, his eye aching, and felt as content as he ever had in his life.