J. Robb - Portrait In Death

"And is there justice?"

"If you keep at it long enough."

"You closed this one quickly," Roarke began, then stopped when he saw her face. "You didn't close it."

"Not yet."

For a moment, there was only the sound of the meat frying in the skillet. "Lieutenant, I wouldn't have pulled you away from your work."

"You didn't. I pulled myself away."

"Eve-"

"Why are you badgering the girl, and here she's not even had her breakfast." To settle a matter that looked to her would heat up as quickly as the bacon, Sinead heaped food on plates, set them down. "If she's as brilliant as you say, she ought to know what she's about."

"Thanks." Eve picked up a fork, exchanged her first comfortable look with Sinead. "Looks great."

"I'll leave you to it then, as I've some things to see to upstairs. Don't worry about the dishes when you're done."

"I think I like her," Eve commented when they were alone, then poked a fat sausage with her fork. "Is this from Pig?"

"Most likely. Eve, I want to be sorry you felt it necessary to leave in the middle of an investigation, but I'm so bloody glad you're here. I haven't been able to find my balance, haven't been able to settle myself since I found out about my mother. I've handled the entire business badly. Bungled it, top to bottom."

"Guess you did." She tried a bite of sausage, approved. "It's nice to know you can screw up now and again, like the rest of us mortals."

"I couldn't find my balance," he repeated, "until I stood out there in the mist of the morning and saw you. Simple as that for me, it seems. There she is, so my life's where it should be, whatever's going on around it. You know the worst of me, but you came. I think what's here, though I don't understand it all yet, haven't taken it all in, may be the best of me. I want you to be part of that."

"You went to Dallas with me. You saw me through that, even though it was about as rough on you as it was on me. You've shuffled your work and your schedule around more times than I can count to help me out-even when I didn't want you to."

He smiled now. "Especially when you didn't."

"You're part of my life, even the parts I wanted you clear of. So, same goes, Roarke. For better or worse, or all the crap that's in between, I love you." She scooped up eggs. "We straight on that?"

"As an arrow."

"Good." And so were the eggs, she discovered. "Why don't you tell me about these people?"

"There's a lot of them to start. There's Sinead, who was my mother's twin. Her husband, Robbie, who works the farm here with Sinead's brother Ned. Sinead and Robbie have three grown children, who would be my cousins, and between them, there are five more children, and two more on the way."

"Good God."

"Haven't even gotten started," he said with a laugh. "Ned, he's married to Mary Katherine, or maybe it's Ailish. I'm good at names, you know, but all these names and faces and bodies were coming down like a flood. They've four children, cousins of mine, and they've managed to make five-no I think it might be six more. Then there's Sinead's younger brother, that's Fergus, who lives in Ennis and works in his wife's family's restaurant business. I think her name's Meghan, but I'm not entirely sure."

"Doesn't matter." Already feeling crowded, Eve waved her fork.

"But there's so many more." He grinned now, and ate as he hadn't been able to do for days. "My grandparents. Imagine having grandparents."

"I can't," she said after a moment.

"Neither can I, though I appear to have them. They've been married nearly sixty years now, and they're hearty. They live now in a cottage over the hill to the west. They didn't want the big house, I'm told, when their children were grown and married, so it came to Sinead as she was the one who wanted it most."

He paused, and she said nothing. Just waited for him to finish.

"They don't want anything from me." Still puzzled by it, he broke a slice of toasted brown bread in two. "Nothing that I expected them to want. There's none of this, 'Well now, we could use a bit of the ready since you've so much and we're in the way of being family.' Or 'You owe us for all the years that've gone by.' Not even the 'Who the hell do you think you are, coming around here, you son of a murdering bastard.' I'd expected any of those things, would have understood that. Instead it's 'Ah, there you are, it's Siobhan's boy. We're glad to see you.'"

With a shake of his head, he set the toast down again. "What do you do with that?"

"I don't know. I never know how to act, or feel, when somebody loves me. I always feel inadequate, or just stupid."

"We never had much practice at it, did we, you and I?" He covered her hand with his, rubbed it as though he needed the feel of her skin against his. "Two lost souls. If you're done there, I'd like to show you something."

"I'm overdone." She pushed the plate away. "She made enough food for half the residents of Sidewalk City."

"We'll walk some of it off," he said and took her hand.

"I'm not going back with the cows. I don't love you that much."

"We'll leave the cows to their cow business."

"Which is what, exactly? No, I don't want to know," she decided as he pulled her out the door. "I get these weird and scary pictures in my head. What's that thing out there?" she asked, pointing.

"It's called a tractor."

"Why's that guy riding around with the cows? Don't they have remotes, or droids, or something?"

He laughed.

"You laugh"-and it was good to hear it-"but there are more cows than people around here. What if the cows got tired of hanging around in the field and decided, hey,we want to drive the tractor, or live in the house, or wear clothes for a while. What then?"

"Remind me to dig outAnimal Farm from the library when we get home, and you'll find out. Here now." He took her hand in his once more, wanting the link. "They planted this for her. For my mother."

Eve studied the tree, the lush green leaves and sturdy trunk and branches. "It's… a nice tree."

"They knew, in their hearts, she was dead. Lost to them. But there was no proof. Trying to find it, to find me when I was a baby, one of my uncles was almost killed. They had to let go. So they planted this for her, not wanting to put up a stone or marker. Just the cherry tree, that blooms in the spring."

Looking at it again, Eve felt something click inside her. "I went to a memorial for one of the victims last night. This job, you go to too many memorials and funerals. The flowers and the music, the bodies laid out on display. People seem to need that, the ritual, I guess. But it always seems off to me. This seems right. This is better."

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."