“Laughing’s good. Alive then, I am.” Her lids drooped, and she fought them back. “Promise me… ye’ll stay inside… stay safe until… catch him. And Rafe… be good to him. Kick his ass if he’s a wanker.”
“I will.” Her hands were cold when Quinn touched them. Tsking, he folded his mother’s arms under her blankets, tucking them around her shoulders.
“Not the feet,” she admonished, her words burbling to sandy mumbles at the end.
“I know, Mum.” He left a kiss on her temple, thankful for the strong thump of her heartbeat beneath his lips. “Your feet get hot.”
“M’feet get hot.” Brigid sniffed, snuggling down into the bed. “Ye know….”
A shadow fell across Brigid’s bed, and Quinn turned, expecting his father.
It was Ian.
So not their father.
There were traces of Donal in Ian. Physically, he ran to the same mold used for most of the Morgan brothers, thickly muscled, tall, and a thatch of black hair that, using Donal as a guess, would be flecked with silver in their fifties. Emotionally, Ian was all Finnegan.
Ian stood uneasily at the end of Brigid’s bed, his fists punched into the pockets of his jeans and his head bowed down low enough for his chin to almost brush his chest. Smaller than Quinn—something that often surprised him—Ian still held the promise of heft to his frame, unlike Quinn’s more lean body. They were nearly ten years apart, each with different childhoods, with different sets of siblings, really, something Quinn’d never truly understood until he looked into his baby brother’s barely-out-of-teens face and saw the fear and confusion in his eyes.
“I saw Da outside.” Ian shuffled his feet a bit, dragging his sneakers over the tile. “Thought I’d come see her, you know? Just… they won’t let us all in, but… I needed to see her.”
“Yeah, I know. Come in quick,” Quinn replied. Hooking his hand in the crook of Ian’s arm, he dragged his brother over to the chair. A quick, fierce one-armed hug, then Quinn pushed Ian down into the seat, smoothing the hair from his face. “We look enough alike. Nurse’ll think you’re still me. Just don’t cover her feet—”
“They get hot.” Ian nodded. He looked lost, more like the little boy Quinn remembered standing on the front porch waving good-bye when they all headed off to school… then to college… then to their own lives.
“She’ll wake up in a bit. It’ll be good for her to see you.” Quinn grinned at Ian’s wrinkled nose. “What? You’re her favorite.”
“You’re off in the head,” he snorted back. “We all know that’s you.”
“You’re the one most like her—well, of the boys.” The correction came quickly once he figured Kiki into the equation.
“Yeah, but you’re the one she sighs over,” Ian refuted. Inching the chair closer to the bed, he rested his elbows on the mattress. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” Quinn rested his hip against the bed’s metal bars.
“Did they—Da and Mum—were they mad when you told them you weren’t going to be a cop?”
“I never wanted to be one.” He crouched next to Ian, bringing himself in close. “I don’t think we ever even talked about it.” Cocking his head, Quinn caught the flicker of something unsure in Ian’s expression. “Ian, let me tell you something, then. If you don’t want to wear the badge, you don’t have to. Brae doesn’t. I sure as hell don’t. Ryan’s probably going to go off and buy world domination, so she’ll not be wearing the blues. If you don’t think that it’s for you, then you shouldn’t do it.”
“Not like I can go to school. Not after you—” Ian stumbled over his words. “I know. Not a competition, but there’s so fecking many of you ahead of me. I get lost, you know? I wonder if Mum even remembers my name half the time.”
“It doesn’t matter who you are. I grew up thinking my name was Con-Ka-Quinn.” He squeezed his brother’s arm, rubbing at the spot before sighing. “Just be you.”
“Easier said than done,” Ian grumbled. “I don’t know who me is.”
“I’ll tell you a truth, brother mine—no one ever really knows who their me is.” Quinn took one last look at his mother, then stood, the tear on his arm wrenched apart when his shirt rode over the muscle. “Mum made me promise to see a doctor. So I’d better be going before she tears my face off.”
“Hey, Quinn,” Ian called out to Quinn just as he reached the break in the glass partitions separating Brigid from the rest of the ICU ward. He turned, and Ian gave him a wry smile. “I’m sorry I was an asshole to you. Back there. I just get… scared and angry. I mean it, though. I am sorry. I just don’t think.”
“Then you lash out.” It was a common trait among them, especially when they were younger. “It’s just a bit of Mum stuck in our teeth.”
“Hah.” Ian grinned. “Not Da?”
“Nope,” Quinn shot back, winking at his younger brother. “The bit of Da is when you apologize because you mean it.”