Bonds of Earth (18 page)

“I didn’t expect to be here.” Seward hesitated, then extended his hand. The young man took it and shook it briefly. In the few seconds before the next explosion, Michael realized that he recognized both men. The younger was the fishmonger at the grocery, and the elder was the proprietor of the feed and grain store from which he’d bought his seeds. More than that: Reilly, Michael could see now, looked a great deal like the young blond man in Seward’s paintings. Could they be father and son?

Before he could speculate further on this, however, Reilly decided to lunge at Seward again. The younger man held on to him, and he missed his target. “Don’t even think about it,” Michael advised lowly.

“He killed my boy!” Reilly shouted, straining forward futilely. Behind him, Michael could hear Seward draw a sharp breath.

“Dan, I’ve told you a hundred times that Patrick’s death was not his fault,” the young man said. “We were ordered to hold our positions, and retreating wouldn’t have done us any good. They were shelling the support trenches as much as the forward ones.”

“You didn’t see it happen,” Reilly snapped, anguished.

“I was there before the smoke cleared,” the younger man gritted. “I helped to dig them out.”

Michael glanced at Seward, whose eyes were now fixed and unseeing, as though he had been transported back to another time. Suddenly every one of Seward’s injuries—and his reaction to the dirt that day in the garden—made sense.

Christ, he’d been buried alive. During artillery barrages—hell, even in severe rainstorms—the trenches had been prone to collapse, and men could easily be crushed under tons of thick, suffocating mud. That Seward had made it out alive was nothing short of miraculous.

“Come on, Dan,” the young man said again, nodding his head at the Abbotts. “This is not the place to be discussing this.” He tugged at Reilly, who shrugged him off once more and faced Seward. When the older man spoke this time, though, his voice was low, almost a whisper.

“Why couldn’t it have been you instead of him?” he breathed. “Why couldn’t you have been the one to die?”

“If it’s any comfort,” Seward answered brokenly, “I wish to God I had.” And before Reilly or anyone else could respond, he was striding off across the park as quickly as his legs could carry him.

Michael turned to Reilly. “Get him out of here before I do,” he snarled. The young man nodded, finally getting a firm hold on Reilly’s bulk and dragging him off.

When they were a good distance away, Michael turned to the Abbotts. “Did you know about this?”

Mary exchanged glances with Abbott, then nodded. “Johnny has never spoken of it, but we heard enough when we were in town.”

Abbott glared at Reilly’s retreating back. “That old drunk is no good at keeping his mouth shut.”

Mary squeezed his arm. “He lost his son.”

“And so did we,” Abbott said fiercely. “Any man who’s lost a child and can still wish for anyone else’s to come to harm is no longer a man.” He peered into the darkness. “Did you see which way Johnny went?”

“I did,” Michael said grimly. “Will you be all right here?”

“We’ll be fine,” Mary assured him. “Go after him. Please.”

Michael required no more encouragement. He immediately took off across the park after Seward. Catching up to him proved more difficult than he’d imagined, since there was a sizeable crowd assembled to see the fireworks. He threaded his way through the knots of families and excited children, finally closing the distance between them just as the first firework burst over their heads.

Resisting the urge to fling himself to the ground, Michael couldn’t help flinching violently at the sound and light; just ahead of him, he saw Seward do the same, stumbling as he did so. Michael reached out and wrapped a strong hand around his forearm, steadying him as the second explosion made them both jump.

“Let’s get the hell out of this,” Michael breathed, and Seward nodded. Following his lead, he allowed Seward to guide them to a small boathouse a few dozen feet away.

The interior was nearly dark, the only light coming from the high windows as the show continued outside. Michael could make out a few canoes, a couple of them occupied by spooning couples who glared at them as they walked past. They found a relatively private corner and sank down against the wall, shoulders touching. Michael could feel Seward twitch at every fresh explosion, though he wasn’t sure how much of the reaction was also his own.

“How long were you at the front?” Seward asked quietly.

“Off and on, about two and a half years.” At Seward’s surprised stare, he remembered that most Americans would not have experienced much more than a year in the trenches. “I was in Ireland in ’14. I volunteered as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross as soon as the war broke out.”

Seward flinched at another burst. “I would have gone mad.”

Michael shrugged. As horrific as it had been, it wasn’t nearly as terrible as the life of a soldier. And the clean, quiet ward back in England had been a thousand times worse.

Curiosity getting the better of him, he asked, “Why did you join up?”

Seward tipped his head back against the wall. Eyes staring upward, he murmured, “When I was growing up, I wanted very little to do with the boys who—shared my background. I never felt that I had much in common with them.”

“Why not?”

Seward shrugged. “They wanted to grow up and become their fathers.” Hands molding to his bent knees, he added, “I ended up making friends with the young fellows from the village. And when Wilson declared war, they all wanted to go over. Thought it would be a damned adventure, even though by then everyone should have known better.”

“You didn’t have to go with them.”

Seward shook his head. “No. Not until Patrick told me he was joining up.”

Michael could fill in the gap easily enough; he’d seen the paintings in the attic. Pitching his voice for their ears only, he murmured, “Did you ever tell him you were in love with him?”

Seward flinched as if another firework had gone off directly in front of him. Michael held his breath, waiting. This was the first time either of them had spoken of it directly, and it seemed strangely illicit to him, here in the middle of this small-town celebration, surrounded by canoodling couples. For a moment, he worried that he’d misread the signs, and he had been sure of the signs ever since he’d been sixteen years old.

“No,” Seward said finally. “He was only interested in women.”

Michael nodded sympathetically, unsure of what to say. It was useless—not to mention cruel—to point out that in his doubtless much broader experience, very few men were interested exclusively in women, especially when the right inducements were offered. In his view, Seward’s loss was magnified by the fact that he had never confessed his feelings to his friend, but the idea of his giving opinions on love was as ridiculous as the town drunk lecturing on the virtues of temperance.

If Michael had been in Seward’s place, he would have pushed the pretty blond boy up against the nearest wall and sucked him off so thoroughly he would have never looked at a woman again. But then, putting forth that amount of effort seemed odd to him. He’d never been in a position where one man’s regard mattered more than another’s.

After a few moments, Michael felt Seward shift against him. Glancing over, he saw the glint of metal in Seward’s hand as he tipped a small flask to his lips.

“No,” Michael snapped, wresting the flask from Seward’s hand before he could resist and flinging it away. He heard it clatter hollowly on the floor, followed by a feminine yelp of surprise as a pair of lovers was startled by the sound.

“God damn it,” Seward growled, rounding on him, but before he could get another word out, Michael grabbed for his hand in the dark.

“This,” he said fiercely, fingers squeezing, “just this. Hold on.”

Another flash of light, another
bang
that rattled the windows in their panes, and Seward’s eyes glittered with reflected fire. “And what the hell do I do when you’re not there to prop me up?” he demanded bitterly.

“Stand on your own,” Michael told him flatly.

Seward snorted. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m not terribly successful at that.”

Michael looked down at the fingers that were gripping his tightly enough to cut off the circulation. “You’re using your right hand.”

Seward stared at his own hand. His grip eased, but Michael continued to hold on, the elation of the moment taking him back to a time when he used to touch to give comfort as well as pleasure. It was addictive, seductive, dangerous.

Seward’s gaze rose slowly to his, green eyes illuminated by another flash from outside. This time neither of them reacted to the explosion.

“You didn’t kill him,” Michael whispered into the ensuing silence.

Seward’s eyes widened. “I can’t—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Michael insisted.

“You don’t know a damned thing about it,” Seward breathed.

“I know you blame yourself for his death as much as his father does.”

“Four,” Seward gritted. “There were four of them who died on that day. And there were others before that.”

Michael shook his head slowly, deliberately. “It doesn’t matter. You were as trapped in that hell as the rest of them.”

“I could have retreated. I could have—”

“And they might have shelled that trench, too, or it might have happened the next day, or the next week. And they would have court-martialed you and put another officer in charge who likely would have managed to get even more of them killed.”

“Please,” Seward said, though Michael could tell it only by the shape of his mouth, because in that instant the sky split open, caught fire, and poured in through the windows. In the conflagration of light and sound, Seward’s pale, silenced face resembled the frozen mask of a corpse.

Everything spun away until the few square inches where their fingers twined together were all that Michael could feel, all that he could reliably call his own. The accompanying realization staggered him: he’d spent the last few months running as swiftly as he could from reminders of the war, and to find a sense of belonging in the very thing he’d sought to escape was simultaneously terrifying and reassuring. Instinctively seeking a more secure connection, he wrapped his free arm around Seward’s shoulders and hauled him in close as the last firework fell to its death and the blackness enveloped them.

Seward resisted for a moment, then suddenly pressed his face to the juncture of Michael’s neck and shoulder, breath gusting unevenly in the heated space between them. Michael felt the body he held shudder beneath his arm, felt the warm tickle of tears against his skin, soaking into his shirt. Seward squeezed his hand convulsively, his grip strong and fierce. Eyes pricking, Michael buried his own face in Seward’s soft hair, while around them the boys and girls sighed into one another’s mouths, making promises to eternal love in the dark.

11

“
D
ARLING
, this proves how much I care for you,” Millie sighed as Michael enfolded her in a crushing hug. “Only you could get me out of bed at this unholy hour.”

Michael grinned and slid into the booth across from her. “It’s half past ten.”

“Exactly,” Millie—or rather, Henry—said, pointing a strangely unpainted finger at him. Michael had seen Millie only once before without her makeup and wig, and it was somewhat disconcerting to see her as a slight, balding man in his late forties. The Child’s restaurant here in the Village was tolerant of the fairy crowd after midnight, but in the unforgiving light of day, they were expected to don less flamboyant garb.

As if sensing his thoughts, Henry raised a plucked eyebrow. “If you want me to be beautiful, you must come down and visit me in my natural habitat,” he said tartly. One of the girls sauntered over carrying thick ceramic cups filled with black coffee. Henry blew her a kiss. “You’re an angel,” he enthused. She didn’t bat an eye, but then she’d been working there for as long as Michael could recall.

“God, I remember you here as a boy,” Henry sighed. “Three o’clock in the morning when your shift ended, you’d order a stack of flapjacks and bury your nose in a book until the sun came up.”

Michael smiled in spite of himself at the memory. “You used to test me. Your Latin pronunciations were horrible, by the way. Everyone laughed at me my first semester at Trinity.”

“Oh, shut up,” Henry shot back, feigning annoyance. Michael grinned at him, and they both chuckled; then without warning, Michael’s throat tightened.

“I’ve missed you, Millie,” he rasped. “You’re the only one
who—”

Henry looked stricken. Reaching across the table, he took Michael’s hands in his own and said earnestly, “You too, love. You, too.” In a hushed voice, he demanded, “What was the real reason you left town? Did you have trouble with the law? You know I could have fixed that for you.”

“I would have had, if I’d stayed,” Michael murmured, looking at his hands. “But that wasn’t the reason I left.”

“Darling, please tell me,” Henry implored. “You know you can trust me.”

Michael stared at his hands, the invitation to share his secret finally too tempting to resist. “One of the cops you pay off is my cousin. I ran into him a few months ago when I was finishing my shift, and he went straight to Uncle Paddy and told him. Paddy, in turn, threatened to have me arrested. I told him to go to hell. Then he threatened to tell my sister.”