Darknight(22)

The green eyes seemed to darken almost to black. “You really don’t want to hear all this.”

“Actually, I do.”

He poured some more wine into his glass, then topped mine off as well. “Why?”

“Because….” I had to stop myself from saying, Because I think I’m starting to like you a lot more than I should. Instead, I told him, “Because I think it will help me to understand what’s going on here a little better.”

Another pause. The steel-string guitar played in the background, fast and intense, accompanied by equally intense drumming. Connor let the music spool out for a moment, then sighed as he reached for his wine glass. “It’s not a pretty story.”

“I figured it probably wasn’t. You want mine first, just to break the ice?”

He gave me a smile with little humor in it. “I already know it — at least, about your mother dying when you were a baby, and how you don’t know who your father is.” His fingers tightened around the stem of his glass. “There are times when I wish I had that luxury.”

I remained silent, waiting for him to go on. My heart, though, had begun to beat a little more quickly.

“Do you know about the Wilcox curse?” he asked abruptly.

“A little.”

“Then you know the marriages in the direct line aren’t exactly happy ones.”

Mouth tightening, I nodded again.

“For a while it seemed like it might be different for my father and my mother. She was an artist, too — did a few shows, I guess, but she mostly liked to paint for herself.”

“Those are hers, aren’t they?” I murmured.

“What?”

“The paintings in your room. They don’t look like your work. They’re hers?”

“Yes.” He drank some more wine, a large gulp, but I wasn’t about to give him grief over that. Not when I could tell how difficult this must be for him. “She had Damon, and everyone started watching her carefully, because usually once the primus’s wife has a son, the trouble starts. But she seemed fine. She was fine, for years and years. Then she got pregnant again.” He gave me a humorless smile. “Me. Damon’s almost ten years older than I am, and everyone thought it was a sort of miracle, and maybe for some reason the curse had finally been broken. Then….”

The word trailed off and I held my breath, wondering if this was where he would stop, if this was the point where he couldn’t make himself say any more.

But then he drank a little more wine, a much more measured swallow this time, and continued. “It started with little things. At least, that’s what Damon tells me. I didn’t notice that much at the time. I mean, I was barely three. But she stopped painting, and then there were days when she couldn’t even be bothered to comb her hair or get out of bed. One of the women from the clan started coming over to help with meals and tidying up and all that, since my mother just…stopped doing it.”

All this was said in an almost expressionless voice, as if he were relating events that had happened to someone else, but I could see how tense the fine lines of his jaw were, how he couldn’t quite look at me. I wanted so much in that moment to reach out and touch his hand, to give him some kind of reassurance, but that would only cause a whole new set of problems. I could only wait and hope that he would go on.

Which he did, although he had to take another fortifying sip of wine before that happened. “It was sometime in late spring. I remember that because Damon was at Little League practice.”

Despite everything, I had to smother a smile at the thought of a thirteen-year-old Damon Wilcox in a baseball uniform. I didn’t think the Wilcoxes ever did anything that normal. Then again, I wouldn’t have believed they had Christmas potlucks, either, if Connor hadn’t told me. But again I didn’t comment, only waited for him to continue.

“Deirdre was the one who was supposed to be watching me that day. She was there for a while, but then she got a phone call and had to go out. Some kind of emergency, Damon told me later — her own son was out riding his bike with some friends and fell and broke his arm, although I guess when she first got the call, she didn’t know it was that serious. I suppose she figured she could go handle it, get him to the healer and then come straight back, but instead she ended up spending hours at the ER because the coach had taken Ethan to the hospital directly and she couldn’t get him out without stirring up too many questions. Anyway, I was left alone in the house with my mother. And for some reason she decided that was a really good time to take me down to the garage and have us both sit in the car with the engine idling.”