Patrick lost in thought, Alice kept up a barrage of inconsequential, nonstop chatter, mostly about Widow’s Cove’s history. It helped to defuse the tension as they made their way to Jess’s.
As they neared the bar, they could hear the jukebox blasting. That, too, could be an inadvertent blessing, Patrick concluded. It was going to make real conversation difficult, if not impossible. And at this time of the evening on a typical Friday, Jess’s was usually packed and noisy. Maybe they wouldn’t even find a free table, Patrick thought, in one last hopeful bid to put this encounter off until tomorrow…or maybe forever. Maybe Daniel had it right, after all. Maybe it was better to keep his head buried in the sand. Maybe these strangers who claimed to be his brothers would go away. Sure, his curiosity wouldn’t be satisfied, but what did that matter really? He’d made it through more than twenty years without having them in his life, and vice versa.
His halfhearted hope for a quick end to the evening was promptly dashed. He wasn’t entirely sure how Alice managed it, but with a few whispered words to Molly, a table was magically cleared. Then Alice gave his hand one last reassuring squeeze. “I’ll leave you with your brothers.”
Fighting panic, Patrick gazed into her eyes. “Don’t.”
“You’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Obviously, I don’t know the whole story, but I heard enough to know that this must be a life-altering moment for all of you. I don’t belong here in the middle of it.”
“I want you to stay,” he said, needing some sort of familiar lifeline, someone from the world he’d made for himself to steady him as it rocked on its axis.
“It’s okay,” Ryan assured her. “If Patrick wants you here, it’s fine with us.”
Still, Alice shook her head and extracted her hand from the death grip Patrick had on it. “Thanks, but I need to get home. I’m glad I got to meet you, though.”
Ryan nodded. “Perhaps we’ll meet again one day,” he said, then headed over to join the others.
Still, Patrick held back. “I never thanked you for the soup,” he protested with ridiculous urgency, just to keep her there and talking.
She grinned at that, obviously seeing straight through him. “And now you have.”
She pushed him none too gently toward the table where his brothers were already seated. Patrick sighed and let her go, but his gaze followed her as she left the bar. Only then did he suck in a deep breath and go to join his brothers, pulling up a chair at the end of the booth rather than sliding into the vacant spot they’d left next to Michael.
“Pretty woman,” Ryan observed. “Is she someone special?”
“I barely know her,” Patrick said, forcing his attention to the three men seated opposite him like some sort of military tribunal. He should have slipped into the booth, he realized belatedly, made himself one of them, instead of an outsider. The symbolism was unmistakable. He wondered if they were aware of it.
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