Quinn's Deirdre (10 page)

His blue eyes stared out at the still
waters of the lake, placid except when the wind gusted and made ripples across
the surface.
 
She couldn’t read his
expression, but his stiff posture warned her to keep her distance.
 
Deirdre longed to touch him, to take his hand
and hold it or cuddle against him, but she didn’t dare.
 
His silence lasted a long while, and she
listened to the sweep of the breeze as it rattled the few remaining
leaves.
 
The quiet surrounding them was
so deep she could hear the whine of steel-belted tires riding the pavement on
the highways and the sound of a truck releasing a jake brake.
 
If she spoke now, it would be wrong so she
waited, uneasy and upset.

“Did ye not think I’d worry when ye
didn’t come back from the mall?” His voice had a rough, ragged edge to it,
sorrow, she thought, and anger too.

“I did.” Deirdre forced the words up
through her throat with difficulty.

“Aye?
And did
ye think how I’d feel when you went missing, then turned up burned alive or so
I thought? Jaysus Christ, woman! I could spend a century in hell being tortured
by demons with knives and pitchforks and never hurt so much! The day we laid ye—but
it wasn’t ye after all—in the ground was the worst of my life and I wasn’t at
all sure I’d survive it.
 
My sister came
from Ireland and stayed awhile, fearful I’d do myself in or drink meself to
death.
 
Those first months, I could
barely get out of bed and face life.
 
I
didn’t care if I ate or slept.
 
Drink was
me one comfort and a poor one at that.”

Each word he spoke stabbed through her
heart, sharper than any knife, harsher than any caustic acid.
 
Pain grew from a small wound, one she’d
carried since she left Kansas City and expanded until her soul hurt.
 
Deirdre hurt in body, too, the physical
affected by the spiritual.
 
He painted
such a vivid picture and she shared his grief.
 
If she’d thought him dead, she’d have felt much the same.
 
It was too easy to imagine.
 
“Oh, Quinn,” she said and her voice broke on
a sob. “I didn’t know they’d fake my death until it was too late.
 
I was so stupid.
 
I thought I’d leave so you’d be safe and then
maybe in a few weeks, I could call you and you could come to me, wherever I
might be.
 
But when I found out they
faked my death as part of the plan, I couldn’t.
 
I thought I would only hurt you more if I did.
 
And, I was afraid I’d put you into danger.”

Quinn exhaled a long, harsh sigh.
 
“I can almost understand all that.” The word ‘almost’
slashed through her mind, sharp as a dagger. He paused and then asked, his
voice as broken as shattered glass after an accident. “Were ye happy at all
when ye were away?”

“Never.”
Deirdre
spit out the word without hesitation. “I was miserable, Quinn.
 
I missed you and cried every night.
 
I got so tired of pretending to be Mallory.”

He turned toward her, eyebrows raised.
“Who the feck is that?”

She’d forgotten he wouldn’t know. “Mallory
Marsh was the identity WITSEC gave me. Mallory wasn’t me.
 
I acted differently, dressed in another
style, and played the part.
 
Mallory was
such a milk toast, whey-faced little pious bitch that I hated her almost
instantly.”

“Why’d ye wait until now to come back?
Three years is a long time,
acushla.”

His robotic tone upset her, but when he
used one of his familiar endearments, Deirdre relaxed a little. “I don’t know,
really, except I couldn’t stand being apart any more.
 
I used to check the pub’s Facebook page every
day.
 
I would pick up the phone and want
to call you so much.
 
I wrote letter
after letter, but I never sent them.
 
Then, the other day, the wind blew so fierce and hard it made me see how
false my life had become.
 
It blasted
over me, cold and sharp, and I felt like I awoke from a nightmare or a coma or
something.
 
And I decided to come home,
to you.”

Quinn nodded but said nothing.
 
His jaw tightened and she longed to stroke
his cheek.
 
Instead, she said, “Once I
decided, I didn’t hesitate.
 
I grabbed
what I wanted and started driving.
 
I
worried all the way.
 
I didn’t have any
idea what I’d do if I came into the pub and you had a woman or if you didn’t
want me.
 
But I came anyway.”

He shook his head.
 
Quinn stood up and turned away from her, his
gaze fixed on the lake. Deirdre shuddered as a chill wracked her.
 
Since they’d sat down, she hadn’t felt the
cold even thought they hadn’t sat close or touched, but watching him stand
lonesome turned her blood into ice.
 
As
much as she wanted to rise and join him, she couldn’t seem to make her feet
obey her brain. She sat, frozen and waiting.
 
A minute passed and then two, then five.
 
When he spoke, his voice emerged so low-pitched she strained to hear.

“All this long time,” he said in a voice
so soft and filled with emotion it didn’t sound like Quinn except for his
brogue. “I thought ‘twas my fault, Deirdre.
 
I mourned
ye
hard and deep, ‘tis true, but I
tortured myself with a terrible guilt.
 
I
thought I’d caused your death.”

Confusion clouded her thoughts and
mangled her tongue. “Huh? What? I don’t understand,” she stammered.

Quinn turned around to stare at
her.
 
His face had gone pale, an awful
grayish-white.
 
When he lifted his eyes
to meet her gaze, Deirdre realized they brimmed full with tears. “Ye went to
the mall and a few hours later, Gerry sent word to me that a man was asking
after ye in the bar.
 
I checked him out
and I could tell he was of the same cut as yon
amadans
who ye testified against, a bad one.
 
I listened to his questions and I could see
he carried a gun beneath his jacket.”

Deirdre gasped and Quinn’s eyes
narrowed.
 
He asked, “Ye know about him?”

“I didn’t but when I called WITSEC to
tell them I was out of the program, they told me about a man found dead in an
alley near here.
 
It’s the same man?”

“Aye, it would be,” Quinn told her. “I
fetched Uncle Des and told him.
 
He
agreed with me that the fella was out after
ye
.
 
So, I asked Des to get rid of him and he
did.”

“He killed him.”

He nodded. “He did, indeed.”

“Did you know he would?”

His shoulders shrugged. “I didn’t.
 
I gave it little thought except to be shed of
the bastard.
 
I thought he might rough
him up a bit, but then ye know my uncle was once IRA, part of the Border
Campaign back in the Fifties.
 
He did
prison time for it, too.
 
He may be an
old man now, but he’s tough.
 
When he
told me what he’d done, I helped him move the body. He told me he did so
because he thought ye were in grave danger.
 
I believed him and thought no more about
it.
 
But ye didn’t come home, not at all
and I was wild, darlin’.”

It fit into place, as tight and neat as
puzzle pieces in proper position.
 
“So
you thought they took me and killed me because their goon had been killed?”

Quinn’s voice was little more than a
breath. “Aye, I did and so blamed myself.
 
I thought a million times if I’d not told Des to get rid of him, ye’d be
here, beside me and alive. It ate at my soul like acid.
 
Not only had I lost ye, woman, I thought I
was the cause of it.”

She watched as he walked forward to the
edge of the water where he bent, picked up a stone, and skipped it across the
surface. When his shoulders began shaking, Deirdre thought he wept, so she
summoned up the strength to walk to him.
 
“Quinn?” she said as she put one hand on his back.
 

He whirled about, laughing but without
mirth.
 
The dry noise echoed in her ears
like the eerie twitch of a rattlesnake’s tail. His lips were set in grim lines.
“My auld Granny used to say there’s at least two sides to every story and a
dozen or more versions of every song,” he said after a long pause.
 
“Although she said it in Irish, not
English.
 
Now we’ve two versions and
maybe together, we can make them into one story.”

His still, tense manner concerned her.
“Are you very angry with me, Quinn?” she asked.
 
Deirdre’s greatest fear was that he’d walk away from her, tell her to go
and stay gone. “I didn’t mean to cause all the trouble or hurt.”

In the cold air, his breath steamed from
his mouth in a tiny cloud as he sighed. “Aye, I know well ye didn’t.
 
Neither did
I
,
Deirdre but what’s done is done.”

It sounded so final.
 
“Do you still love me?”
 
If he said ‘no’, her heart would crack and
her spirit would break past fixing.

Quinn stretched out his hand and she
took it.
 
He wrapped his fingers around
hers. “I never stopped lovin’ you,
mo
ghra,
not when I thought ye dead and buried, not when ye came back and I
thought you were a drunken hallucination, and not now.
 
I’ll love ye as long as I draw breath and
beyond.
 
I could no more stopping lovin’
ye
than I could tell my heart not to beat or blood to
flow.
 
Ye’re part of me, woman, and well
ye should know it.”

He had a way with words, a poetic turn
of phrase and she adored it.
 
Her heart
fluttered as she grasped his hand tight. “I do, Quinn. I love you so and I
missed you very much.”

“Ah, don’t I know?” he said. “I see it
in your eyes when you look at me and taste the loneliness on your lips when I
kiss
ye
.
 
We’ve
still much to tell and share, three years worth but we’ve made it through the
worst of it.
 
Well, until I tell my
sister ye’re not dead.
 
Eileen’ll want to
kill
ye
with her two hands.”

Somehow she didn’t find it amusing
because Eileen would. Deirdre shivered, thinking of his sister’s reaction and
Quinn put his arms around her. “Ye’re freezing.
 
Let’s go.
 
We can get a meal
somewhere together. Would ye like that?”

“I’d love it.”

“Yer hands are like ice, woman,” he
scolded. “Ye should have said something.”

Deirdre hadn’t.
 
She would gladly have frozen where she stood
until they finished talking. “Okay, I’m cold.”

“Come on, then,” he said as they linked
hands and headed for the car together.
 
As they reached it, Quinn halted. “There’s just one thing more I need to
ask.”

“What is it?”

His forehead crinkled and his blue eyes
narrowed.
 
“Will you be in danger when
the bad fellas realize you’re not dead?”

She wanted to lie but couldn’t. “I don’t
know.
 
When I called WITSEC, they didn’t
know either.
 
It depends on who holds a grudge,
for how long, and what they might want to do about it.”

Quinn frowned. “I don’t like the sound
of that.
 
Maybe we should go home
awhile.”

“Home?”
Deirdre
didn’t think he meant the pub.

“Ireland,” Quinn said as if it were
obvious. “I might’ve gone long since if I hadn’t hated so very much to leave
your poor bones in the black grave.
 
It’s
just as well I didn’t or ye’d had much further to come to find me. Though, it
might not have been such a bad thought—
Dungannon
is far
enough away I doubt anyone lookin’ would find
ye
.”

“Probably not,” she said. “I don’t want
to think about it now.
 
If I were in
danger, then you’d be, too.
 
Let’s agree
not to worry, not now and not today.”

He grinned and some of the harsh lines
vanished from his face.
 
“All right, woman,
then let’s go somewhere and get a bite.
 
What would
ye
like?”

Deirdre didn’t need to think.
“Winstead’s,” she said. “I want a double steak burger.”

“Winstead’s will do for now,” Quinn
replied. “There’s something more I want later, love.”