“Who says he has?” Brigid flashed him a smile. “The question I have for you, son, is why did you think you had to be your da? Where did I go wrong in raising you there? That you’d think—even after you’ve seen us love your brothers, that you’d hide this?”
“Ach, you raised me fine. I just took a wrong turn in my own head. Maybe Quinn’s right, and I was too much of a coward to face the truth until I had something—someone—to lose.”
“So Quinn too?” She snorted. “That one’s worse than your da. I’m pretty sure he knows why Stonehenge was built, and someone asked him not to tell.”
“Mad at me?” Con asked softly. “For not… shite, that’s not what I want to say. I know you want me to be happy. I know that in my bones, Mum. I guess I should apologize for not listening to what you were telling me all these years. To do the right thing, even if it’s difficult. Because that’s what this is going to be—hard. For me. For people I work with. I’ve been a lie, Mum. Pretty much.”
“Your life’s not been a lie, Connor Donal Morgan,” Brigid scolded tartly. “You’re the same man you always were. You’ve just expanded your horizons, as it were. And if anyone should apologize, it’s me. I failed you. In some way I failed to teach you how to know yourself. I’m sorry for that. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry.”
“Well, now we’ll both be wearing matching hair shirts,” Con teased his mother, who slapped his knee.
“Your Forest—his family? Are they nice to him?”
“He was adopted by a man—the man in the RV. I told you about him.”
“Oh God, then he lost his da.” Her face softened, and Connor briefly sent a prayer to the heavens for Brigid to go easy on Forest once she got her hands on him.
“His mother’s… I get the feeling she’s a shitty piece of work. He’s reclusive a bit, Mum. Quiet, then you get him going and he shines up, like a sun out of the clouds. I live for that smile of his. And when he laughs at something I’ve said, it makes me warm inside,” Connor admitted. “I just was too stupid to see it. Not until it was almost too late.”
She grabbed him into a fierce hug, and Connor choked on his mother’s curls until he could get her red hair out of his mouth. Turning his head, he held her tightly, rocking the woman who’d given birth to him and sent him on his way, always shadowing his footsteps but holding back when he fell. She’d waited for him to stand up, reaching to give him a hand when he’d needed one. He fell less as he got older, and somewhere along the way he’d forgotten she’d always be there, following his path and watching, looking for the times when Connor needed her—even if he wasn’t man enough to admit it.
“I want to fix him, Mum,” Connor admitted. “And I know I can’t, but damned if it’s not what I want to be doing.”
“Aye, I want to fix all of the ones you boys seem to be bringing home,” Brigid replied.
“Well, maybe with this one, you’ll get the chance. He needs love, Mum. Like no one I’ve ever seen. Frank Marshall tried, I can see that, but it wasn’t what Forest needed. Not all of it. He needs to know the world’s not going to be yanked out from under him. Because he keeps waiting for it. That feeling of it… it fills him.”
“Then you and I, we’ll have to change that.” Brigid let him go and craned her neck, looking up and past Connor’s shoulder. “Is that door supposed to be open? The one at the top of the stairs?”
Connor turned, nearly twisting in half to look. The door to Forest’s tiny apartment was ajar, enough of a crack for Con to see the bilious green paint someone’d painted the frame. He reached for his gun, dislodging it from its holster, and slowly stood up.
“Go get Kane and Keeks, Mum. Tell them to call it in, and one of them needs to get their ass over here to back me up.” Connor took a step up and motioned his mother back when she opened her mouth. “Go. Please. No arguing. And if you could please keep Forest to the front. If someone’s broken into his place, I want to see how bad they left it.”
He climbed the rest of the way, taking the stairs carefully. Keeping his Glock down, Connor eased into the apartment, using his shoulder to push the door open. It gave him just enough light to see the former storeroom, and Connor didn’t like what he saw inside.
The place was trashed. Anything edible in the fridge was lost. Its contents had been emptied out onto the floor and smeared over the walls and counters. The air was ripe with sour and something else—a metallic taint Connor knew all too well.
No shadows jumped out at him. No one came out of the corner of the room in a rage, holding one of the dull kitchen knives Connor’d used to make them breakfast. If anything, the place was too still—too quiet. The futon littered the carpet, pulled off its frame and ripped to shreds. The drum kit dominating the room didn’t go unscathed, and Connor’s heart twisted at the sight of its stabbed skins and buckled rims.