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“I don’t even want to think about it,” Daniel said, clearly shaken to his core by the implications.
“We have to ask Mom and Dad. You know that,” Patrick told him, feeling sick. “We can’t leave it alone.”
“Why not? Obviously, it’s something they don’t want to talk about,” Daniel argued, far too eager to stick his head right back in the sand.
It had always been that way. Patrick liked to confront things, to lay all the cards on the table, no matter what the consequences. Daniel liked peace at any cost. He’d been the perfect team captain on their high school football squad, because he had no ego, because he could smooth over the competitive streaks and keep the team functioning as a unit.
“It doesn’t matter what they want,” Patrick had all but shouted, as angered now as Daniel had been a moment earlier. “If those boys are related to us, if they’re our brothers, we have a right to know. We need to know what happened to them. Did they die? Why haven’t we ever heard about them? Kids don’t just vanish into thin air.”
“Maybe they’re cousins or something,” Daniel said, seeking a less volatile explanation. It was as if he couldn’t bear to even consider the hard questions, much less the answers.
“Then why haven’t we seen them in years?” Patrick wasn’t about to let their folks off the hook…or Daniel, for that matter. This was too huge to ignore. And it could explain so many things, little things and big ones, that had never made any sense. “You said it yourself, the folks have never once mentioned any other relatives.”
Even as he spoke, he searched his memory, trying to find the faintest recollection of having big brothers, but nothing came to him. Shouldn’t he have remembered on some subconscious level at least? He scanned the pictures again, hoping to trigger something. On his third try, he noticed the background.
“Daniel, where do you think these were taken?” he asked, puzzled by what he saw.
“Around here, I guess. It’s where we’ve always lived.”
“Is it?” Patrick asked, studying the buildings in the photos. “Have you ever noticed a skyscraper in Widow’s Cove?”
Daniel reached for the photo. “Let me see that.” He studied it intently. “Boston? Could it be Boston?”
Patrick shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ve never been to Boston. You went there with some friends last Christmas. Does it look familiar to you?”
“I honestly don’t know, but if it is Boston, why haven’t Mom and Dad ever mentioned that we took a trip there?”
“Or lived there?” Patrick added. “We have to ask, Daniel. If you won’t, then I will.”
Patrick remembered the inevitable confrontation with their parents as if it had taken place only yesterday. He’d been the one to put the photos on the kitchen table in front of their mother. He’d tried to remain immune to her shocked gasp of recognition, but it had cut right through him. That gasp was as much of an admission as any words would have been, and it had stripped away every shred of respect he’d ever felt for her. In a heartbeat, she went from beloved mother to complete stranger.
“What the hell have you two been doing digging around in the attic?” his father had shouted, making a grab for the pictures. “There are things up there that are none of your business.”
But all of Connor Devaney’s blustery anger and Kathleen’s silent tears hadn’t cut through Patrick’s determination to get at the truth. He’d finally gotten them to admit that those three boys were their sons, sons they had abandoned years before when they’d brought Patrick and Daniel to Maine.
“And you’ve never seen them again?” he’d asked, shocked at the confirmation of something he’d suspected but hadn’t wanted to believe. “You have no idea what happened to them?”
“We made sure someone would look after them, then we made a clean break,” his father said defensively. He looked at his wife as if daring her to contradict him. “It was for the best.”
“What do you mean, you made sure someone would look after them? Did you arrange an adoption?”
“We made a call to Social Services,” his father said.
“They said someone would go right out, that the boys would be taken care of,” his mother said, as if that made everything all right.
Even as he’d heard the words, Patrick hadn’t wanted to believe them. How could these two people he’d loved, people who’d loved him, have been so cold, so irresponsible? What kind of person thought that making a phone call to the authorities made up for taking care of their own children? What parents walked away from their children without making any attempt to assure beyond any doubt that they were in good hands? What kind of people chose one child over another and then pretended for years that their family of four was complete? My God, his whole life had been one lie after another.
Patrick had been overwhelmed with guilt over having been chosen, while three little boys—his own brothers—had been abandoned.
“How old were they?” he asked, nearly choking on the question.
“What difference does it make?” his father asked.
“How old?” Patrick repeated.
“Nine, seven and four,” his mother confessed in a voice barely above a whisper. Tears tracked down her cheeks, and she suddenly looked older.
“My God!” Patrick had shoved away from the kitchen table, barely resisting the desire to break things, to shatter dishes the way his illusions had been shattered.
“Let us explain,” his mother had begged.
“We don’t owe them an explanation,” his father had shouted over her. “We did what we had to do. We’ve given the two of them a good life. That’s what we owed them. They’ve no right to question our decision.”
Patrick hadn’t been able to silence all the questions still churning inside him. “What about what you owed your other sons?” he had asked, feeling dead inside. “Did you ever once think about them? My God, what were you thinking?”
He hadn’t waited for answers. He’d known none would be forthcoming, not with his mother in tears and his father stubbornly digging in his heels. Besides, the answers didn’t really matter. There was no justification for what they’d done. He’d whirled around and left the house that night, taking nothing with him, wanting nothing from people capable of doing such a thing. It was the last time he’d seen or spoken to either one of his parents.
Daniel had found him a week later, drunk on the waterfront in Widow’s Cove. He’d tried for hours to convince Patrick to come home.
“I don’t have a home,” Patrick had told him, meaning it. “Why should I have one, when our brothers never did?”
“You don’t know that,” Daniel had argued. “It’s possible they’ve had good lives with wonderful families.”
“Possible?” he’d scoffed. “Separated from us? Maybe even separated from each other? And that’s good enough to satisfy you? You’re as bad as they are. The Devaneys are a real piece of work. With genes like ours, the world is doomed.”
“Stop it,” Daniel ordered, looking miserable. “You don’t know the whole story.”
Patrick had looked his brother in the eye, momentarily wondering if he’d learned things that had been kept from Patrick. “Do you?”
“No, but—”
“I don’t want to hear your phony excuses, then. Leave me alone, Daniel. Go on off to college. Live your life. Pretend that none of this ever happened. I can’t. I’ll never go back there.”
He’d watched his brother walk away and suffered a moment’s regret for the years of closeness lost, but he’d pushed it aside and made up his mind that he would spend the rest of his life living down the Devaney name. Maybe what that meant wasn’t public knowledge, but he would live with the shame just the same.
That was the last time he’d gotten drunk, the last day he’d wandered idly. He’d gotten a job on a fishing boat and started saving until he’d been able to afford his own trawler. His needs were simple—peace and quiet, an occasional beer, the infrequent companionship of a woman who wasn’t looking for a future. He tried with everything in him to be a decent man, but he feared that as Connor and Kathleen’s son, he was a lost cause.
He spent a lot of lonely nights trying like the very dickens not to think about the three older brothers who’d been left behind years ago. He’d thought about hunting for them, then dismissed the notion. Why the hell would they care about a brother who’d been given everything, while they’d gotten nothing?
He heard about his folks from time to time. Widow’s Cove wasn’t that far from home, after all. And in the past twenty-four hours, he’d heard far too many references to his family, first from Caleb Jenkins, then from Loretta Dowd. As for Daniel, Patrick knew his brother was in Portland much of the time, working, ironically, as a child advocate with the courts. Daniel had found his own, less-rebellious way of coping with what their parents had done.
Patrick sighed at the memories crashing over him tonight. He concentrated harder on the soup he was heating, then ladling into bowls, on the crusty loaf of homemade bread he sliced and set on the table with a tub of margarine.
Over the past few years of self-imposed isolation, Patrick had lost his knack for polite chitchat, but he quickly discovered that tonight it didn’t matter. Alice was a grand master. From the moment he sat down opposite her, his presence at the table seemed to loosen her tongue. Maybe it came from spending all day talking to a bunch of rowdy five-year-olds, trying desperately to hold their attention. She regaled Patrick with stories that kept him chuckling and filled the silence better than the TV he usually kept on as background noise. In his day, Ricky Foster would obviously have been labeled a teacher’s pet, because his name popped up in the conversation time and again. Alice clearly had a soft spot for the boy.
“Then today wasn’t Ricky’s first act of rebellion?” he asked when she’d described another occasion on which the boy had gotten the better of her.
“Heavens, no. I’m telling you that boy will be president someday.” She shrugged. “Or possibly a convicted felon. It depends on which way his talents for leadership and conning people take him.”
“His daddy always lacked the ambition for either one,” Patrick said. “I suppose in retrospect a case could be made that Matt had attention-deficit disorder. He couldn’t sit still to save his soul. Maybe that’s Ricky’s problem, too.”
Alice regarded him with surprise. “You know about ADHD?”
Patrick leaned closer, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “Why? Is it a secret?”
She blushed prettily. “No, it is not a secret. I just didn’t expect…” Obvious embarrassment turned her cheeks a deeper shade of pink as her words trailed off in midsentence.
“Didn’t expect a fisherman to know anything about it?” he asked, trying not to be offended.
“I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.”
“Making assumptions about people is usually the first step toward getting it totally wrong,” he replied. Then, because he couldn’t resist teasing her, he added, “For instance, right now I am trying really, really hard not to assume that you’re here because you want to seduce me.”
The color staining her cheeks turned a fiery red. “I see your point. And in case there’s any doubt, you would definitely be mistaken about my intentions.”
Something about the hitch in her voice told him he wasn’t nearly as far off the mark as she wanted him to believe. “Is that so?” he asked, tucking a finger under her chin and forcing her gaze to meet his.
“I came to thank you for saving Ricky,” she insisted. She swallowed hard as he traced the outline of her jaw. “And for going to see Mrs. Dowd.”
“I’m sure you believe that,” he agreed, noting the jump in the pulse at the base of her throat when he ran his thumb lightly across her lower lip.
“Because it’s true,” she said.
Patrick deliberately lowered his hand and sat back, noting the sudden confusion in her eyes. He shrugged. “Sorry, then. My mistake.”
Confusion gave way to another one of those quick flashes of anger that had stirred him earlier in the day.
“That sort of teasing is totally inappropriate, Mr. Devaney,” she said in a tone she probably used when correcting a rambunctious five-year-old.
Patrick imagined it had the same effect on Ricky Foster that it had on him. It made him want to test her.
He stood up, picked up his empty soup bowl, then reached for hers. He clasped one hand on her shoulder as he leaned in close, let his breath fan against her cheek, then touched her delicate earlobe with the tip of his tongue. She jumped as if she’d been burned.
“Mr. Devaney!”
Patrick laughed at the breathless protest. “Sorry,” he apologized, perfectly aware that he didn’t sound particularly repentant. Probably because he wasn’t.
She frowned at him. “No, you’re not. You’re not the least bit sorry.”
“Maybe a little,” he insisted, then ruined it by adding, “But only because I didn’t go for a kiss. Something tells me I’m going to regret that later tonight when I’m lying all alone in my bed.”
“You would have regretted it more if you’d gone for it,” she assured him, drawing herself up in an attempt to look suitably intimidating. “I know a few moves that could have put you on the floor.”
He caught her gaze and held it, barely resisting the urge to laugh again. “I’ll bet you do,” he said quietly.
“Mr. Devaney…”
“Since we’re old schoolmates, I think you can call me Patrick,” he said.
“Maybe the informality is a bad idea,” she suggested. “You tend to take liberties as it is.”
He did laugh again then. “Darlin’, when I really want to take liberties with you, you’ll know it.” His let his gaze travel over her slowly. “And you’ll be ready for it.”
“Is that some sort of a dare?”
“Do you want it to be?”
“No, of course not.” She shook her head. “I really don’t know what to make of you. I expected you to be more…”
“Difficult,” Patrick supplied.
“Distant,” she corrected.
“Ah, yes. Well, there’s still a little life left in the hermit. You’d do well to remember that, before you come knocking on my door again.”
“I won’t be back,” she said emphatically.
“You think soup and bread are sufficient thanks for me putting my life on the line to bail you out of a jam?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” she said. “And your life was never on the line.”
“That water was damn cold,” he insisted.
“And you were in and out of it in ten seconds flat.”
He gestured toward the outside. “You want to dive in and see how long ten seconds becomes when you hit those icy waves?”
She shuddered. “No, thanks. I’ll take your word for it. You were very brave. I am very grateful. Let’s leave it at that.”
Probably a good idea, Patrick thought, given the way she tempted him. Fortunately, before he could ignore his good sense, he heard voices and yet more footsteps on the dock. Apparently, no one in the whole blasted town could read, or else, like Alice, they were all starting to assume that the No Trespassing sign didn’t apply to them.
Alice apparently heard the noise at the same time. “You obviously have company coming. I should go,” she said a little too eagerly.
Given the choice between the company he knew and the uninvited guests outside, he opted for the familiar. “Stay,” he commanded. “I’ll get rid of whoever it is.”
But when he stepped onto the deck, he saw not one or even two people who could be easily dismissed, but three, all dark-haired replicas of the man he’d come to hate—Connor Devaney.
“Patrick Devaney? Son of Kathleen and Connor?” one of them asked, stepping forward.
Patrick nodded reluctantly, his heart pounding. It couldn’t be that these three men who looked so familiar were really his brothers. Not after all these years. And yet, somehow, he knew they were, as surely as if they’d already said the words.
“We’re your brothers,” the one in front said.
And with those simple yet monumental words, his past and present merged.
Chapter Four
A part of Patrick wanted to slam the door and pretend he’d never seen the men on the other side. He wanted to go on living the life he’d made for himself without family ties, without complications. These three men represented all sorts of uncomfortable complications.
