The In Death Collection Books 16-20 - J. D. Robb [106]
The pace would be too slow to suit him for more than a short holiday, but there was a piece of him that was glad it had been left much as it had been, century by century.
Green, velvet green, and quiet.
His Ireland, the one he’d fled from, had been gray, dank, mean, and bitter. This curve of Clare wasn’t simply another part of the country, but a world away from what he’d known.
Farmers still farmed here, men still walked with their dogs across a field, and ruins of what had been castles and forts and towers in another age stood gray and indomitable in those fields.
Tourists, he supposed, would take pictures of those ruins, and scramble around in them—then drive for miles on the twisting roads to find more. And the locals would glance at them now and again.
There, you see, they might say, they tried to beat us down. Vikings and Brits. But they never could. They never will.
He rarely thought of his heritage, and had never held the grand and weepy sentiment of Ireland so many did whose ancestors had left those green fields behind. But driving alone now, under a sky layered with clouds that turned the light into a gleaming pearl, seeing the shadows dance over the endless roll of green and the lush red blooms of wild fuschia rise taller than a man to form hedgerows, he felt a tug.
For it was beautiful, and in a way he’d never known, it was his.
He’d flown from Dublin to Shannon to save time, and because the night’s dip into whiskey had given him a miserable head. Conversely, he’d opted to drive through Clare, to take his time now.
What the hell was he going to say to them? Nothing that had run through his brain seemed right. He’d never be able to make it right, and could find no logical reason for trying.
He didn’t know them, nor they him. Going to them now would do no more than open old wounds.
He had his family, and he had nothing in common with these strangers but a ghost.
But he could see that ghost in his mind’s eye, see her walking across the fields, or standing in a yard amongst the flowers.
She hadn’t left him, Roarke thought. How could he leave her?
So when the route map he’d programmed into the in-dash ’link told him to turn just before entering the village of Tulla, he turned.
The road wound through a forest, much of it new growth, no more than fifty years old. Then the trees gave way to the fields, to the hills where the sun was sliding through the clouds in a lovely, hazy way.
Cows and horses cropped, close to the fenceline. It made him smile. His cop wouldn’t be pleased with the proximity of the animals, and she’d be baffled by the little old man, neatly dressed in cap and tie and white shirt, puttering toward him on a skinny tractor.
Why? she’d wonder in an aggrieved voice he could hear even now, does anyone want to do that? And when the old man lifted his hand in a wave as if they were old friends, she’d be only more puzzled.
He missed her the way he would miss one of his own limbs.
She’d have come if he’d asked her. So he hadn’t asked. Couldn’t. This was a part of his life that was apart from her, and needed to be. When he was done with it, he’d go back. Go home, and that would be that.
DESTINATION, the ’link informed him, ONE-HALF KILOMETER, ON LEFT.
“All right then,” he said. “Let’s do what needs to be done.”
So, this was their land—his mother’s land—these hills, these fields, and the cattle that grazed over them. The gray barn, the stone sheds and fences.
The stone house with its blossoming garden and white gate.
His heart tripped a little, and his mouth went dry. He wanted, more than he wanted anything, to simply drive straight by.
She’d have lived here. It was the family home, so she’d have lived here. Slept here. Eaten here. Laughed and cried here.
Oh Christ.
He forced himself to turn the car into the drive—what the locals would call the street—behind a small sedan and a well-worn truck. He could hear birdsong, and the