by Sierra Rose
“You know everything that goes on in this house, with this house and the people in this house, so I’m pretty damn sure you know what I’m going to ask you.” Kerry saw her lower her eyes slightly but she gave no inclination. “What else did Kathleen say or do those days and weeks after we buried our folks?”
At his use of the former matriarch of the family’s first name Deirdre looked up quickly and pursed her lips. “You shouldn’t be so disrespectful of your grandmother, lad.”
“That’s not disrespect,” Kerry corrected evenly. “That’ll come when she shows up and I tell her to get the hell off my property. Now, did she tell you to do it or did you just not give them to me?”
Again, the brothers were exchanging wary looks as Kerry faced off with the housekeeper.
“I think you better tell your new girlfriend to split for awhile,” Ryan told Mac softly, watching this scene with interest but also positioning himself that he could move quickly if he had to.
Mac hadn’t taken his seat again but did slide a look at his brother blandly. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
As Ryan was rolling his eyes at that, Maggie was watching the kitchen get tenser as Kerry took two more steps, but halted when Mac just coughed.
“What happened to the letters Roarke sent to me the two years he was in that hellhole in Mayo where she put him?” he demanded, slamming a hand on the butcher block table in a rare form of anger. “Damn it, Deirdre! Did you know what she did?” Kerry demanded. “Did you know that our grandmother told those bloody bastards to torture and rape her eleven year old grandson and destroy the letters he sent?”
Silence hit the kitchen with this explosive comment and Maggie decided it was time she slipped out, doubting if anyone would even notice her leaving, except Mac’s fingers had grasped her hand under the table and only she heard the silent ‘Stay’ request.
Ryan looked between the older woman and his brother, needing to be sure he’d heard right, but he could tell by the way her face had fallen that it was true.
“Kerry, ye have to believe that I certainly didn’t know that,” Deirdre grabbed his wrist but let go with one smoking look from him and, with a sigh, she went to a tiny cabinet in the small room off the kitchen, unlocked a drawer, and removed a carefully wrapped bundle of yellowed letters and postcards.
“Mrs. Fitzgerald ordered me and all the house staff to destroy anything that came to you from any of the lads, but especially from Roarke.” She pulled a stool to the table and sat, suddenly very tired after keeping this secret for so long. “The day of the funeral, after you and she had spat so violently, she ordered Mick and some of the others to destroy all your parents’ things and the boys’ stuff, and told me to destroy all letters.”
Ryan pushed the coffee away, suddenly not wanting it. “Why? Why would she do that?” he demanded.
“She never said boyo,” Deirdre sighed, seeing the pain in their eyes but avoiding looking at Kerry. “Just that so long as she was mistress of this house her will was to be obeyed and many of the folk here feared your Gran’s power.”
“I told her the last day she spent in this house that she wasn’t its Mistress any longer and hadn’t been in years,” Kerry scowled, his temper still high as he eyed the bundle. “Are these all from him?”
Deirdre O’Connor nodded silently. “The maid who got the mail would have burned them but I took them and hid them away. Just as I had the staff put aside much of your Mum and Da’s stuff that I knew would be important to you lads one day, including the Family Book of Shadows.”
“Did you know?” he asked her one more time, taking the bundle of letters in his hands and instantly feeling the emotions from them.
“Saints, no, I didn’t know that,” Deirdre breathed, startled. “Kerry, I worked for your Da’s folks since I was a girl but my loyalty was to Toryn and Brenna. I loved your parents and you lads like you were my own. Had I known anything like that was going on I would have risked her ire and told you.”
Kerry stared from the letters in his hand back to his housekeeper. “I hope so, Deirdre. Mac, show Miss Cavanaugh where her room is. I’ll be in the office.”
He walked out without another word and all Maggie could do was try to comfort.
“Can I get you some tea?” she asked the distraught woman, whirling as glass broke and Ryan stormed out. “Mac?”
Mac scrubbed his face, really too tired to handle this right then. “Ian, stay with Maggie and get Deirdre settled,” He spoke to his youngest brother since he knew he was the most upset right then.
“Is what he said true?” the boy asked, not understanding how any of this could have happened. “Why would someone related to us want to hurt him so much? I mean, I grew up in a wonderful place so why would…?”
“Don’t know, Ian,” Mac sighed, hearing the thunder build. “Stay with Maggie.” He just looked at her and got an understanding nod before he left the kitchen.
Ryan was about to the front door when Mac caught up to him. “Are you looking for fresh air or you running?”
“You’re the bloody empath so you picked up more from Kerry in there but it was practically screaming at me and it still is from him, from upstairs.” His dark haired brother kept a hand on the door handle. “Dealing with an ancient wizard looking to kill us is one thing; coping with the past is something else but this… No, I won’t deal with this.”
“Why? You blame Roarke for Mum and Da dying since they were on the island with him and we weren’t, so why should learning some of what happened afterwards bother you?” Mac asked casually, seeing the flash in the opposite set of eyes.
Again, thunder blasted but this time it shook the house and Mac groaned, this time having no trouble picking up his older brother’s anger. “Go, Ry,” he sighed. “We’ll manage it fine.”
Leaving his brother at the door, he headed toward the office with some hesitance. The room had once been their father’s private retreat and the one place the boys had rarely bothered him. Mac wondered if it still felt the same.
Having left the kitchen and his clearly disturbed brothers, Kerry had closed himself off in his office and carefully laid the letters and little cards out on the hand-carved desk before finally picking one to read.
He had very little trouble recognizing his younger brother’s shaky handwriting since Roarke had been the one who had the hardest trouble learning to write English well. He’d been diagnosed early on with a mild form of dyslexia.
Kerry found the first letter which had very little to say of the trouble to come for his dark haired little brother, except that he missed home and promised not to fight with Ryan so much if Kerry could only come get him.
“Oh, bloody hell, Roarke,” he whispered, continuing to read as the letters become more urgent and his writing harder to read as they were written in what he guessed was hurried sessions of fear, to finally the later ones where he wrote to beg his brother to come to Mayo for him.
The one letter that Kerry stared at the longest was the one stained with faded red blotches. This one had some of what was happening but Kerry knew that his brother would never ever have written of his full ordeal.
Lightning flashed outside the bay window as he could picture his younger brother and the events that he endured.
“Locals are gonna start wondering about all this lightning,” Mac spoke from the door, closing it as he came to sit on the edge of the desk and picked up a faded letter. “So, how bad is it?”
“His back is nothing but scars and from what Jessica says his chest and the rest of him probably isn’t much better,” Kerry replied after a long while, leaning back in the leather chair that had once been their father’s. “I honestly don’t think he remembers everything because I had to push to see some of it.”
Mac considered that, knowing that he could probably ease some of the pain, but that would have to be after their brother learned to trust them again. “He had retrograde amnesia after the island so it stands to reason that he’d push the worst of this
back too.”
“He believes I abandoned him, Mac,” Kerry muttered, throwing a postcard on the desk. “Upstairs, in his sleep, he asked why I didn’t come for him. How the bloody hell do I tell him and expect him to believe that we didn’t know it was happening when we’ve always been linked?”
That was something else that Mac had been considering. “Our link hasn’t been as strong since the funeral, since she broke us up, so odds are good that either being apart dimmed that link or…” he stopped as his brother’s eyes flashed.
“Or she did something to block us from feeling,” Kerry finished for him having gotten the hidden meaning.
“Bridgett and Padric both asked her to let Roarke come live with me since they had plenty of room but she refused.” Mac thought on this and mentally kicked himself. “She told them it was better if we were apart and that the Walshes was the perfect place for him.”
The office was silent was Kerry began to pace, finally turning to face his brother. “Why, Mac?” he had to ask. “You and I were older and caught the strain between Da and his mother in those last few months but why the bloody hell would she do this to Roarke? He was eleven years old and still traumatized as it were.”
Hating to admit it, Mac had to be honest. “Could be she felt like Ry did and blames Roarke for them dying. A lot of people did and may still do.”
“We were all supposed to go with Mum that day but Ian had a cold and you, Ryan and I all made excuses to go later,” his brother shot back, a small part still feeling the guilt of that since if he had been on time, things may have been different.
Recalling that it had been his younger brother’s wish for months to go Skelling Michael to see the island and the sights, Brenna Fitzgerald had finally agreed to take her fourth born son and after the other boys all made proper noise to come over later, their father had suddenly decided to go too. Something that he hadn’t been supposed to do.
“Da wasn’t supposed to be there, Mac,” Kerry murmured, an uneasy feeling going through him as something bothered him about that. “Remember, Kathleen was coming that day so Da was supposed to stay home.”
“He said Grandmother could wait because he wanted a few hours with his family in peace.” Mac did remember that, fingers twirling the pen on the desk. “She made you late from catching the boat over to meet them.”
Both brothers exchanged looks. “Oh, God, Kerry,” Mac muttered, horror dawning on him. “Tell me you aren’t thinking that…”
“Guess I’ll be asking her that when she shows up.” Kerry’s voice was cold but even he couldn’t deny how much sicker this was making him when another thought hit him. “Damn! I thought he’d stay asleep.”
Knowing what that meant, Mac figured it would be a long while before he got sleep this night and wondered if he shouldn’t have told Kerry that odds were high that Ryan had left.
It was the silence and peace of the room that cause Roarke Fitzgerald to wake up.
Usually, even when things were calm, he woke up agitated until he got his bearings but this time he woke slowly, but not anxious like normal.
Lying still, he thought of the last things he could recall and remembered the airport, then fleeting images of pain, fear, and hearing voices filtered in.
Cautiously he opened his eyes to see where he was since his instincts said this wasn’t a hospital room, and blinked several times.
The room was large with a fireplace that had a low flame going in it, decorated in a casual way with semi-modern furniture, but the quilt that he ran his fingers over gave him the first inkling, then the blue-flamed candle going on the windowsill.
Roarke slowly moved his arms and looked next to him to see he had been holding onto Jessica as he had… He quickly sought to blank that out as he eased away but gently laid his friend down on the pillows and under the quilt.
Stroking a finger down her face, he saw how pale she was and felt the weakness. “Sleep now, muirnin (sweetheart),” he whispered. Still partially asleep himself, he wandered out of the room to see where he was and went on feeling, knowing where he was on instinct.
The house was quiet but had an uneasy feeling to it even in his current half-sleep state as he entered the living room, looking around to see it had only slightly changed.
It still held the elegance but the furniture was more modern, not as cold or sterile as it had once been as he ran a hand over the soft suede of the couch, and memories took him back to laying on it to study or falling on it when he and his brothers would have play fights in this room.
Instinct had him looking on the mantle shelf for the vase his mother had kept there that had been broken during one of those fights. He recalled vividly as he did the bad things in his life how that vase had come crashing down to shatter when he’d been playing with Ryan and Mac, and knowing his normally gentle mother’s punishment would be swift.
“One of the very few times I took the blame for something you did,” Ryan spoke from the corner of the room.
Having debated with himself on leaving or not, Ryan Fitzgerald had decided he wasn’t coward enough to run from this fight, so he’d retreated to the privacy of the living room to find a drink of some kind.
He’d been nursing the same Scotch and water for well over an hour when he felt his younger brother waking up and had stayed still to see if normal routine would have him coming to the living room.
Ryan sat and waited, watching as his younger brother looked around the room, and remembered that day the vase had broken. “I couldn’t sit down right for nearly three days because of that,” he finished, seeing the boy was still half-asleep when he whirled at the voice. “Hey there, brat, long time no see.”
The voice made Roarke blink as it slowly registered whom it was. “Ryan.”
“Well, nice to see you remember me.” Ryan countered, still using the cocky tone he always did when dealing with this brother. “In the hospital I wasn’t sure you knew any of us, or do you even remember trying to kill us and your girlfriend?”
The words sank in but he only focused on one. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“What is with you and Mac?” Ryan felt like smacking someone but settled for slapping his own forehead as he motioned with his glass. “The little red-haired reporter, wait until you get a load of her, is all gooey eyed when she looks at him and he gave me the back off look when I flirted tonight and little Jessica,” he paused to smile, deciding to test the waters on this one. “She really did grow up nice so if you aren’t interested, despite the fact she hovers over you. Let me know, huh?”
Roarke’s eyes were hazy but still sparked slightly. “Back off, Ry. I’ve told you before,” he warned evenly, body aching from the airport attack and everything else that he couldn’t recall. “What happened at the hospital?”
“You got your butt possessed and used Mac, Kerry and the lass for target practice until I got there,” Ryan replied easily, drinking the rest of his Scotch down before standing slowly.
A professional gambler, he could read the body language of others like a book and he could read his baby brother as easily as before, except his brother’s way of protecting himself now was the ‘back off’ signals he was reading. “That was sloppy work on that one, brat, getting possessed in the first five seconds of the job,” he jabbed, knowing that to get what he wanted he needed to do this fast.
“Sorry, you try arguing with Cam and getting hit with a cheap shot magical bird, then we’ll talk,” Roarke threw back, easing down to the couch and wincing as wounds pulled but he hid that. “Is Jess alright, Ryan?”
He heard the concern and this time didn’t play as he answered. “Mac and her medic said she’s weak but should be fine.” He watched as his brother eased forward to rest his head in his hands. “What about you, brat, how are you?”
“Fine, I’m just bloody great.” However, Roarke’s tone was clipped and low as he looked at his hands. “Why didn’t he stay gone?”
“Spells are only good for so long at times,” Ryan
shrugged, sitting on the back of the sofa to eye his brother and looked for himself. “Sebastian’s too strong for whatever they did to have worked forever.”
“No. Not forever, I never wanted forever. I would have preferred until I was dead and buried,” Roarke muttered, wincing as he felt the buzz. “Back off, Ryan, I don’t need you…” he snapped, trying to close his mind but knew he wasn’t quick enough when he heard the breath his brother released blow out hard. “Damn it, Ryan!”
He started to move, not wanting to face this yet but his brother was still quicker and Ryan moved like a snake, rolling over the back of the couch and grabbing him by the back of the neck.
“Stop it, brat,” Ryan ordered lowly, knowing his brother was still too weak when his feeble attempts to break free didn’t even budge him as he held him still. “Roarke let me look.”
The more careful tone caused the younger man to settle down but his mind wasn’t clear yet and being grabbed and restrained, even slightly was causing his emotions to spike and his mind to cloud more.
Keeping his fingers firm on his neck, Ryan used his other hand to lift the T-shirt up to see what had set Kerry off and felt his mouth go dry.
He’d been expecting some casual scarring but hadn’t been expecting to see the massive amount of scars on his younger brother’s tanned skin. He counted well over thirty just on his upper back before he felt Roarke jerk under his hand.
“Why’d they do this, brat?” he asked lowly, letting go and expecting the boy to bolt but all he did was turn to draw his legs up on the couch.
“I was bad,” the tone caught Ryan off guard since it wasn’t his brother’s voice. This tone was dull, flat and emotionless, almost a monotone. “Always doing something stupid or wrong, just like you always said I did. I brought it on myself or else Kerry wouldn’t have left me.”