Part 66 (2/2)

hung on though his relatives had been gone for several hours. They had

come-he wanted to be grateful for that. They had come to stand beside

him, to cook the food that was somehow supposed to feed the soul. They

had grieved for the loss of the boy most of them had never met.

He had pulled away from his family, Brian admitted. Because he had had

his own, had made his own. Now what was left of the family he'd made

was sleeping upstairs. Darren was sleeping a few miles away, beneath

the shadow of a hill, beside the grandmother he had never known.

Brian drained his gla.s.s, and with oblivion on his mind, poured another.

”Son?”

Looking up, Brian saw his father hesitating in the doorway. He wanted

to laugh. It was such a complete and ironic role reversal. He could

remember, clear as a bell, creeping into the kitchen as a boy, while his

father sat at the table getting unsteadily drunk.

”Yeah.” Lifting the gla.s.s, Brian watched him over the rim.

”You should try for sleep.”

He saw his father's eyes dart and linger on the bottle. Without a word,

Brian pushed it toward him. He entered then, Liam McAvoy, an old man at

fifty. His face was round and ruddy from the cross-st.i.tches of broken

capillaries under his skin. He had the blue, dreamy eyes that had been

pa.s.sed on to his son, and the pale blond hair now wiry with

gray. He was gaunt, brittle-boned, no longer the big, powerful ' I man

he had seemed in Brian's youth. When he reached for the bottle, Brian

felt a jolt. His father's hands might have been his own, long-fingered,

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