Lonergan's Secrets. Maureen Child

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      “Finally. Have you seen him yet?”

      “No,” he admitted, shoving both hands into his pockets as he shifted his gaze to the lake behind them. “I haven’t. I had to come here first. Had to face this place first.”

      And just like that, Maggie’s heart twisted. She knew what he was seeing when he looked at the small lake. She knew what he was remembering because Jeremiah had told her everything there was to know about his grandsons. The good, the bad and the haunting.

      “I’m sorry,” she blurted, wishing she could pull at least some of her harsher words back. “I know how hard this must be for you, but—”

      He cut her off with a look. “You don’t know,” he said tightly. “You can’t. So why don’t you go back to the house. Tell my grandfather I’ll be there soon.”

      He walked away to stand at the water’s edge, staring out over the black, still surface of the lake. His pain reached out to her and she flinched from it. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him. Didn’t want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Though even if he did have his reasons for avoiding the Lonergan ranch, she thought, that didn’t make it all right for him to avoid the old man who loved him.

      Her sympathy evaporated and Maggie left him there, alone in the shadows.

      Jeremiah just had time to shove the blood-curdling horror novel he’d been reading under his covers before Maggie opened his bedroom door after a brief knock. He watched the girl he’d come to think of as a granddaughter and smiled to himself. Her dark brown hair was wet, trailing dampness across her T-shirt. Her long, flowing skirt was wrinkled and dotted with dried bits of grass, and her sandals squeaked with the water seeping into the leather.

      “Been down to the lake again, eh?” he asked as she came closer and straightened the quilt and sheet covering him.

      She smiled but couldn’t quite hide the flash of something else in her dark eyes.

      “What is it, Maggie?” He grabbed her hand, making sure to be as feeble as possible, as she reached for the glass pitcher on his bedside table. “Are you all right?”

      “I’m fine,” she said, pulling her hand free and giving him a pat before carrying the carafe to the adjoining bathroom to fill it with fresh water. She stepped back into the bedroom and walked quickly back to his side. “I met your grandson, that’s all.”

      Jeremiah’s heart lifted, but he remembered just in time that he was supposed to be a dying man now. Keeping his voice quiet, he asked, “Which one?”

      “Sam.”

      “Ah.” He smiled to himself. “Well, where is he? Didn’t he come back with you?”

      “No,” she said, frowning as she turned the bedside lamp with the three-way bulb down to its lowest setting. Instantly the room fell into shadows, the pale night light hardly reaching her, standing right at his bedside. “He said he wanted to stay at the lake for a while first.”

      Jeremiah felt a twinge of pain in his heart and knew that it was only a shadow of the pain Sam must be feeling at the moment. But damn it, fifteen years had gone by. It was time the Lonergan cousins put the past to rest. Long past time, if truth be told. And if he’d had to lie to get them all to come here, well, then, it was a lie told with the best of reasons.

      “How’d he look?”

      Maggie fidgeted quickly with his pillows, then straightened up, put her hands on her narrow hips and said thoughtfully, “Alone. Like the most alone man I’ve ever seen.”

      “Suppose he is.” Sighing, Jeremiah let his head fall back against the pillows that Maggie had plumped so neatly. He should feel guilty about tricking all of his grandsons into coming home. But he didn’t. Hell, if you couldn’t be sneaky when you got old, what the hell good were you?

      “It’s not going to be easy,” he said. “Not on any of ‘em. But they’re strong men. They’ll make it through.”

      Maggie gave the quilt covering him one last tug, then leaned down and planted a quick kiss on his forehead. “They’re not the ones I’m worried about,” she said, then stood up and smiled down at him.

      “You’re a good girl, Maggie. But you don’t need to worry about me. I’ll be fine once my boys are home.”

      Sam entered the house quietly, half expecting the old man’s bodyguard to leap at him from the shadows, teeth bared. When there was no sign of Maggie Collins, though, he surrendered to the inevitable and glanced around the room he’d once run wild through.

      Two lamps had been left burning, their soft glow illuminating a room he would have been able to find his way through blindfolded. Nothing had changed. Oak floors, scarred from years of running children and booted feet, were dotted with faded colorful throw rugs. Four dark brown leather sofas sat arranged in a huge square, with a table wide enough to be a raft in the dead center of them. Magazines were stacked neatly in one corner of the table and a vase of yellow roses sat center stage.

      Had to be the bodyguard’s doing, he told himself, since he knew damn well Jeremiah wouldn’t have thought to cut fresh flowers. Maggie Collins’s face rose up in his mind, then faded away as Sam looked around the house, familiarizing himself all over again with his past.

      A river-stone hearth wide and high enough for a man to stand in dominated one wall, and a few embers still glowed richly red behind a fire screen of scrolled iron. The walls were adorned with framed family photos and landscapes painted by a talented, if young, hand. Sam winced at the paintings and quickly looked away. He wasn’t ready just yet to be smothered by ghosts. It was enough that he was here. He’d have to swallow the past in small gulps or he’d choke on them.

      Dropping his duffle bag by the door, he headed for the stairs at the far end of the room. Each stair was a log, sawn in half and varnished to a high sheen. The banisters looked like petrified tree trunks, and his hand slid along the cool surface as he mounted the stairs to the bedrooms above.

      His steps sounded like the slow beating of his own heart. Every move he made took him closer to memories he didn’t want to look at. Yet there was no going back. No avoiding it anymore.

      At the head of the stairs he paused and glanced down the long hall. Closed doors were all that greeted him, but he knew the rooms behind those doors as well as he knew his own reflection in the mirror. He and his cousins had shared those rooms every summer for most of their lives. They’d crashed up the stairs, slid down the banisters and run wild across every acre of the family ranch.

      Until that last summer.

      The day when everything had changed forever.

      The day they’d all grown up—and apart.

      Scowling, he brushed away the memories as he would a cloud of gnats in front of his face and walked to the door at the head of the stairs. His grandfather’s room. A man he hadn’t seen in fifteen years.

      Shame rippled through him and he told himself that Maggie Collins would be proud if she knew it. She was right about one thing. They shouldn’t have stayed away from the old man for so long. Should have found a way to see him despite the pain.

      But they hadn’t.

      Instead СКАЧАТЬ