Maureen Child - Lonergan's Secrets - Expecting Lonergan's Baby / Strictly Lonergan's Business / Satisfying Lonergan's Honour

Sam didn’t trust himself to speak. Guilt roared through him with a sound so thunderous it surprised the hell out of him that the others couldn’t hear it. The doc was right. Jeremiah had been punished for something that wasn’t his fault. Sam and his cousins had each cut this ranch and the old man out of their lives to make living with that summer easier on themselves. But they’d never stopped to consider how their actions affected their grandfather. And what kind of bastards did that make them?

He scrubbed one hand over his face and turned away, suddenly unable to face the accusatory glare in Doc Evans’s eyes. He walked across the yard in long, hurried strides until he reached the edge of the field. Then he stopped and stared. Stretched out for miles in front of him, open land raced toward the horizon. The breeze whistled past him, lifting his hair, tossing dirt into his eyes. Midday sun beat down on him like a fist and made him feel as though he were standing at the gates of hell, feeling the heat reaching out for him.

Appropriate.

Behind him, he absently listened to Maggie thanking Bert for coming and then to the soft sounds of the doctor’s footsteps as he left. Shame still rippled inside Sam and he had no defense against it. The bottom line was he and his cousins had forced their grandfather into faking a serious illness just to get them home.

“Are you okay?”

Maggie came up beside him and laid one hand on his arm. The simple heat of her touch, the gentleness of her voice, eased back the knot of pain lodged in the center of his chest.

“No,” he admitted, never taking his gaze from the horizon. “I don’t think I am.”

She sighed. “What Jeremiah did wasn’t right. He shouldn’t have worried you and your cousins—or me.”

Finally then Sam looked at her, caught the worry in her dark eyes and warmed himself with it. “He shouldn’t have worried you. We had it coming.”

“You’re being really hard on yourself.”

He laughed at that. “Aren’t you the one who’s been telling me that I should never have stayed away?”

“Yes,” she said. “But if anyone should have understood what you were feeling, it should have been Jeremiah.”

“No.” Sam turned to face her and laid both hands on her shoulders. “He couldn’t. Because he doesn’t know all of it.”

“Tell me,” she said, reaching up to cover his hands with her own. “Tell me what happened.”

His fingers tightened on her shoulders, his grip clenching as if holding on to her to steady himself. Maggie sensed the pain radiating from him and wished she could do something to ease it. But there was nothing—not unless he could talk to her. Tell her what it was that kept him in pain. Kept him from the home and the grandfather that he loved.

“Sam…”

He inhaled sharply, deeply, and blew the air out again in a rush. “Every summer we came here. There were four of us. All of us born within a year or two of each other. Our fathers were brothers and we were more like brothers than cousins ourselves.”

His eyes misted, and she knew he was staring into the past, not seeing her at all, though his grip on her shoulders remained strong.

“Me, Cooper, Jake and Mac.” A wistful smile curved one corner of his mouth. “I was the oldest, Mac the youngest. Not that it mattered,” he admitted.

The wind kicked up again, twisting dirt into tiny tornadoes that raced across the yard in front of them.

“Mac was brilliant. Seriously smart. He was only sixteen, but he had some great ideas.” Sam smiled now and Maggie felt the tension in him climb. As if talking about that last summer brought it all even closer. “That year Mac had come up with some gizmo he said would make us all rich.”

“Really?” Maggie smiled up at him, trying to make this easier. “What was it?”

He smiled back at her and shook his head. “Hell if I know. Mac and Jake were big into motorcycles, though—always tinkering with some damn thing or another. And that summer the two of them said they’d come up with something that was going to improve engine performance and make us all millionaires.” His smile faded slowly. “They were right. The royalties on that invention have been incredible. But Mac never lived to see them.”

“Tell me what happened.”

He let her go and shoved both hands through his hair as he took a step back. Distancing himself from her? Or from the memories gathering around him?

“It was a contest,” he said bitterly, his mouth twisting as if even the words had a foul taste. “We took turns jumping off the ridge into the lake. We got ‘points’ both for how far out we were able to jump and for how long we stayed underwater before surfacing.”

Maggie’s stomach fisted and sympathy washed through her. She reached for him, but he shook his head.

“Just… let me get it out.” He swallowed hard and stared off into the distance again, seeing the past unroll in front of him. “It was Mac’s turn. Jake had already outjumped all of us.” A choked-off laugh grumbled from his throat. “Mac hated to lose. He took a running start, jumped off the ridge and landed farther out than any of us had gone before. Jake was pissed, but to win, Mac had to stay down longer than he had, too.”

“Oh, God.” She knew what was coming. Knew that Mac had died that long-ago summer day and, in dying, had set his cousins on a path that had kept them from everything they’d ever cared about.

Sam kept talking as if Maggie hadn’t spoken. “I was timing him. Had Jeremiah’s stopwatch. Mac had been under two minutes when I started worrying.”

“Two minutes? Isn’t that an awfully long time?”

“Not for him. He’d done it before. But this time…” Sam shook his head. “It felt… different. Don’t know why. I told Cooper we should go in after him, but Cooper wanted Mac to beat Jake, so he said to give him another few seconds. We waited. We should have gone in after him, but we waited.” His eyes filled with tears that he viciously rubbed away a moment later. “Not we. Me. I should have gone in after him. I knew something was wrong. Knew he was in trouble. Felt it. But I waited.”

“Sam.” Her heart ached for him. For the pain he’d carried for so long.

“I waited, stood there on the ridge timing him, for God’s sake, while Mac was dying.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself. You always have been.”

He snapped her a furious glare. “Weren’t you listening? I knew he was in trouble.”

“You had a bad feeling. You were a kid, too.”

He brushed off her attempt at understanding and said, “I was the oldest. I should have known better. It was stupid to jump off that damn ridge. At two minutes and fifteen seconds, I couldn’t take it anymore. I ran and jumped in. The others were right behind me. The lake water was cloudy.” He squinted, as if still trying to see his cousin through the murky water. “Took us too long to find him. Took forever. He was lying on the bottom. We grabbed him and dragged him out. Laid him on the bank and pushed the water out of him, but it was too late. He was dead. Mac was dead.”

She reached for him, taking hold of his forearm, and his tensed muscles felt like steel beneath her palms. “I’m so sorry, Sam. But it wasn’t your fault.”

“That’s what everybody said,” he told her on a sigh. “Doc Evans examined the… body. He said Mac broke his neck when he jumped in—and unconscious, he drowned. And after that nothing was ever the same again.”

“You stayed away, Sam,” she said, sensing somehow that he didn’t want her sympathy now any more than he had before. “You made that choice. You and the others. You didn’t have to. No one blamed you.”