Night Music

He hadn’t planned this visit. He hadn’t planned anything beyond making it through each minute of each day for months. Yet, on the eve of the appointed time, he found himself packing, then taking leave of many friends…and one nemesis.

But now he knew there was no escape. The deadly beauty and tragedy of the mountain went with him wherever he might go. Even here. This sanctuary of sanctuaries was no longer his.

Denali lived in his days and nights. And Joy died.

They always would.

Wearily, Devlin closed the curtain on a new day on the Chesapeake. He didn’t deserve this place or this family.

He shouldn’t have come.

“So, what do you think?” Leaning against the antique frame of leaded windows, Valentina O’Hara Courtenay stared through polished panes, pondering her own question.

Anyone but an O’Hara would have been awed by the house and the charm of the view. But to the five siblings gathered for the annual reunion, it was simply home. And, sometimes, sanctuary.

From the look of the man who walked the shore that lay beyond the lawn, it was the latter he needed. If he didn’t flee, he would be here two weeks. But could an autumn fortnight spent by the Chesapeake resolve the troubles plaguing Devlin?

“I don’t care what he says, he isn’t fine,” she declared, facing her younger sister. “He’s too quiet. Too alone.”

“Val, no one walks away from the loss of a friend unscathed,” Patience reminded gently. “Five months isn’t nearly long enough to console one who cares as deeply as Devlin.”

“Of course not,” Val conceded. “It’s natural he still grieves. But you can’t believe that’s all it is any more than I do.”

“No.” Patience sighed. “And it isn’t his hands. His next lady love should find the scars interesting more than ugly.”

“If there is one,” Val drawled as she prowled the room.

“There’s always a lady in Devlin’s life, Val.”

“Precisely.” Val leaped on the comment. “Until now.”

The point made, both fell silent. Restlessly, Valentina paced, only to pause before a wall of family portraits. Studying each, she named them in order, eldest to youngest. “Look at us. Devlin, Kieran, Tynan, Valentina, Patience, eternally sixteen.”

“Only in portraits.” Far into her third pregnancy, Patience felt much older than sixteen.

Valentina hardly heard. “No more than a year or two separates either of us from the next. We look and think alike, up to a point. With Devlin as our standard. We wanted to be like him. Beautiful Devlin, of the blackest hair, the bluest eyes.”

“Yet it was never as much that he was oldest, or how he looked, as his kindness and caring, and courage.” Patience smiled, remembering. “Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

“Superman,” Valentina agreed fondly. “Bigger than life. His smile quicker, his passion greater, his heart most tender.”

“Now he rarely smiles,” Patience observed sadly. “If he feels anything, it doesn’t show.”

“Or the reverse?” Valentina ventured. “Is what he’s feeling so awful, he dares not let us see?”

“But we’re family, Val. If he’s hurting, we can help.”

“Can we?” Valentina turned from the window. “Perhaps the mountain took something from him only he can get back.”

Patience understood her sister’s logic, Devlin’s behavior was strange. They were accustomed to his solitary disappearances. But if there was ever trouble, he found a way to communicate, to reassure his family. With the crash, there had been only silence.

Months later, he’d written, saying he wouldn’t make the family gathering. Only then had he spoken of the crash and Joy.

Despite their worry about his uncharacteristic behavior, keeping a childhood rule that still guided their lives, no one questioned, no one interfered. No one understood.

Until he’d walked through the door two days before, weary, thin, dreadfully haggard, no one expected to see him. In a way, Patience thought, none of them had. The real Devlin bore little resemblance to the grim specter who haunted the shore.

“He’s like a stranger.” Devlin had moved from sight, but Valentina knew he hadn’t gone far. His reluctance to leave the house and grounds, or to mingle with his own, was patent. “I suspect he feels like a stranger even to himself.”

Patience sighed. “I don’t understand.”

“Hopefully we will soon.” Val grimaced. “I broke the rule.”

There were few rules within the family, and Patience knew instinctively which her sister had broken. “What have you done?”

“I’m interfering. I called Simon.”

Patience nodded. Who else would Val call? Simon McKinzie, commander of The Black Watch and the most powerful man in covert operations, could unearth the problem. “When will you know?”

“He promised by two.”

Patience glanced at a clock. “Less than five minutes.”

Valentina caught an uneven breath. “Was I wrong? None of us has ever intruded so blatantly before.”

“You weren’t wrong. Even though he needs someone, Devlin’s shut us out. No,” Patience repeated firmly. “You weren’t wrong.”

“He might hate me.”

Stretching out her hand, Patience waited until Valentina clasped it in her own. “Devlin could never hate you. He may not be happy with this at first, but in the end, he’ll thank you for having the wisdom to know when a rule should be broken. As I do.”

In concert, the clock boomed the hour, and within a cabinet housing instruments of modern technology, a fax machine chattered. Both women froze, hands clenched. It was only when the machine fell silent that their fingers drifted apart.

Valentina moved to the cabinet to take out the printed sheet. Turning, she came to Patience and, in deference to the concern she saw on her sister’s face, laid the document before her.

Patience read slowly, carefully, with the gleam of tears in her eyes before she was half through. When she finished, wordlessly, she returned the single sheet to Valentina.

Valentina absorbed each word. Contained here were the facts that had changed her brother into a man she didn’t know. As Patience had, she read slowly, carefully. Finally, with a heavy heart, she tucked away the report that changed all the rules. “I’m not sorry anymore. Now I know what to do.”

“How can I help?”

Valentina’s lips lifted in a smile. “You’ve done enough by listening and supporting my choice. But there is one more favor.”

“Anything.”

“If you would make my excuses, for the rest of the day.”

Patience nodded shrewdly. “You’re leaving the island.”