J. Robb - Portrait In Death

She handed him one of the bottles. "It happened I was working the lines when your mother called. I could tell she was young. I could hear that. Even younger than me, and hurt, and scared to death."

"From what I know of her, that's unlikely."

"What do you know of her?" Moira shot back. "You were a baby."

"A bit older when she walked."

"Walked, my arse. Siobhan wouldn't have left you if there'd been a knife at her throat."

"Her name was Meg, and she dusted her hands of me before my sixth birthday." Finished with this nonsense, he set the bottle down. "What's your game?"

"Her name was Siobhan Brody, whatever the bastard told you. She was eighteen when she came to Dublin from Clare, looking for the adventure and excitement of the city. Well, the poor thing got more than her share. Bloody hell, sit down for five minutes."

She ran the cold bottle over her brow. "I didn't know this would be so hard," she murmured. "I always thought you knew, and after this place, was sure of it. Though the fact you built it changed my opinion of you entirely. I figured you for another Patrick Roarke."

A good act, he thought. The sudden distress and weariness of tone. "What you think, what you figure, means nothing to me. Nor does he. Or she."

She set the bottle down, as he had. "Does it matter to you that I know, as sure as I'm standing here, that Patrick Roarke murdered your mother?"

His skin flashed hot, then cold again. But he never flinched. "She left."

"Dead was the only way she'd have left you. She loved you with every beat of her heart. Heraingeal, she called you. Her angel, and when she did, she all but sang it."

"Your time's moving quickly, Ms. O'Bannion, and you're not selling anything I'm buying."

"So, you can be hard, too." She nodded, picked up the bottle and sipped as if she needed something to do with her hands. "Well, I expect you can be, and have been. I'm not selling anything here. I'm telling you. Patrick Roarke killed Siobhan Brody. It couldn't be proved. Why should the cops have listened to me if I'd had the courage to go to them? He had cops in his pocket back then, and enough of the scum he ran with would've sworn to it when he said she'd run off. But it's a lie."

"That he killed is no news to me. And that he had pocket cops to cover his murdering ass isn't a bulletin either." He lifted a shoulder. "If you're toying with blackmailing me for his sins-"

"Oh, bloody hell. Money doesn't drive every train."

"Most of them."

"She was your mother."

He angled his head as if mildly interested, but something hot was roiling in his belly. "Why should I believe you?"

"Because it's true. And I've nothing to gain by telling you. Not even, I'm afraid, a lightening of my conscience. I did everything wrong, you see. With all good intentions, but I handled it wrong because I thought I was so wise. And because I cared about her. I got wrapped up in it all."

She drew a deep breath, and set her lemonade aside again. "The night she called the crisis line, I told her where she could go. I soothed and I listened, and I told her what she could do, just as I was trained, just as I'd done too many times before. But she was hysterical, and terrified, and I could hear the baby crying. So I broke the rules, and went to get her myself."

"I might believe you went to get someone, but you're mistaken if you think she was connected to me."

She looked up at him again, and this time her eyes weren't so canny, but swamped with emotion. "You were the most beautiful child I'd seen in my life. Breathtaking little boy, dressed in blue pajamas. She'd run out, you see, snatching you right out of your crib, and not bringing anything along. Nothing but you."

Her voice broke on the end, as if she saw it all again. Then she drew in, went on. "She held you so close, so tight, though three of the fingers of her right hand were broken, and her left eye was swollen shut. He'd given her a few good kicks, too, before he'd stumbled off, already half-pissed, to get more whiskey. That's when she'd grabbed you up and run out. She wouldn't go to the hospital or a clinic, because she was afraid he'd find her there. Afraid he'd hurt her so bad she wouldn't be able to take care of you. I took her to a shelter, and they got her a doctor. She wouldn't take the drugs. She wouldn't have been able to tend to you. So she talked to me, talked through the pain of it, and through the long night."

Though Roarke continued to stand, Moira sat now, gave a long sigh. "She got work in a pub when first she came to Dublin. She was a pretty thing and fresh with it. That's where he found her, her only eighteen and innocent, naive, wanting romance and adventure. He was a handsome man, and it's said charming when he wanted to be. She fell in love, girls do with men they should run from. He seduced her, promised to marry her, pledged his true love, and whatever it took."

She gestured, then walked to stare out of the window while Roarke waited. While he said nothing. "When she came up pregnant, he took her in. He said he'd marry her by and by. She said she'd told her family she was married as she was ashamed to tell them the truth of it. That she was married and happy and all was well, and she'd come home for a visit when she could. Foolish girl," she said quietly. "Well, she had the baby, and he was pleased it was a boy, and still said by and by for marriage. She pushed for it, as she wanted her child to have a true father. And that's when he began to beat her, or knock her about."

She turned back, facing him now. "It wasn't so bad at first-that's what she said to me. A lot of them say that. Or it was her fault, you see, for nagging or annoying him. That's part of the cycle this sort of thing takes."

"I know the cycle, the statistics. The pathology."

"You would, wouldn't you? Wouldn't have done what you've done here without taking the time to know. But it's different, entirely, when it's personal."

"I don't know the girl you're speaking of." A stranger, he told himself. A fantasy, more like. A tale this woman wove with some cagey endgame in mind. It had to be.

"I knew her," Moira said simply.

And her quiet voice shook something inside him. "So you say."

"I do say. The night she called the crisis line, he'd brought another woman into the house, right under her nose, and when she'd objected, he broke her fingers and blackened her eye."

His throat was dry now, burning dry. But his voice stayed cool. "And you have proof of all this?"

"I have proof of nothing. I'm telling you what Iknow. And what you do with it is your business. Maybe you're as hard as him after all. But I'll finish it out. She stayed a week at the shelter. I saw her every day. I'd decided she was my mission. God help us both. I lectured her, and used my fine education on her. She had family back in Clare-parents, two brothers, a sister-a twin she told me. I convinced her to write to them, for she refused to call. Said she couldn't bear the shame of speaking it all out loud. So I pressured her to write, to tell her family she was coming home and bringing her son. I posted the letter for her myself."

Her desk 'link rang, and she started like a woman coming out of a dream. After a quick, trembling breath, she ignored it, and went on.

"I pushed her into this, Roarke. Pushed her too hard and too fast because I was so flaming smart. I was so right. And the next day she was gone from the shelter, leaving a note for me that she couldn't run off and take a man's son away from him without giving him the chance to do what was right. Her son should have a father."

She shook her head. "I was so angry. All my time, my precious time and my efforts wasted because this girl was clinging to her romantic foolishness. I stewed about it for days, and the more I stewed the madder I got. I decided I'd break more rules, and go to the flat where she'd been living with him and talk to her again. I'd save her, you see, and that beautiful little boy, in spite of herself. So I took my self-righteousness and my high-flown principles to the slum where he'd kept her and knocked on the door."