Public Secrets

structure with a white steeple and little windows of stained glass. They had gone inside to pray before the little glossy casket had been carried out. Inside it had smelled strongly, and too sweetly, of flowers and incense. Candles had been burning even though the sun ran through the stained glass in colorful streams.

There had been painted statues of people in robes, and one of a man bleeding on a cross. Brian had told her it was Jesus who was looking after Darren in heaven. Emma didn’t think anyone who looked so sad and tired could take care of Darren and make him laugh.
Bev had said nothing at all, only stood, her face pale as glass. Stevie had played the guitar again, as he had at the wedding, but this time he was dressed in black and the tune was sad and quiet.
Emma didn’t like it inside the church, and was glad when they stood outside in the sunlight. Johnno and P.M., whose eyes had been red from weeping, had carried the casket, along with four other men who were supposed to be her cousins. She wondered why it had taken so many to carry Darren, who hadn’t been heavy at all. But she was afraid to ask.
It helped to look at the cows, and the tall grass and the birds that glided overhead.
Darren would have liked his farm, she thought. But it didn’t seem right, it didn’t seem fair that he couldn’t be standing beside her, ready to race and run and laugh.
He shouldn’t be in that box, she thought. He shouldn’t be an angel, even if it meant he had wings and music. If she had been strong and brave, if she had kept her promise, he wouldn’t be. She should be in the box, she realized as tears began to fall. She had let bad things happen to Darren. She hadn’t saved him from the monsters.
Johnno picked her up when she began to cry. He swayed a little, and the movement was comforting. She laid her head on his shoulder and listened to the words he spoke along with the priest.
“‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want …’”
But she did want. She wanted Darren. Blinking tears from her eyes, she tried to watch the grass move with the wind. She heard her father’s voice, thick with grief.
“‘… walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil …’”
But there was evil, she wanted to shout. There was evil, and it had killed Darren. Evil had no face.
She watched a bird swoop overhead, and followed its path. On the hilltop nearby she saw a man. He stood, overlooking the small grave and the grief, silently taking pictures.

H E WOULD NEVER be the same, Brian thought as he drank steadily, a bottle of Irish whiskey on the table near his elbow. Nothing would ever be the same. The drink didn’t ease the pain as he had hoped it would. It only made it sink its roots deeper.
He couldn’t even comfort Bev. God knew he’d tried. He’d wanted to. He’d wanted to comfort her, to be comforted by her. But she was buried so deep inside the pale, silent woman who had stood beside him as their child had been put in the ground that he couldn’t reach her.
He needed her, dammit. He needed someone to tell him there were reasons for what had happened, that there was hope, even now, in these the darkest days of his life. That was why he’d brought Darren here, to Ireland, why he’d insisted on the mass and the prayers and the ceremony. You were never more Catholic than you were at times of death, Brian thought. But even the familiar words, and scents, even the hope the priest had handed out as righteously as communion wafers hadn’t eased the pain.
He would never see Darren again, never hold him, never watch him grow. All that talk about everlasting life meant nothing when he couldn’t take his boy up in his arms.
He wanted to be angry, but he was far too tired for that, or any kind of passion. So if there was no comfort, he thought as he poured another glass, he would learn to live with the grief.
The kitchen smelled of spice cakes and good roasted meat. The scents hung on though his relatives had been gone for several hours. They had come—he wanted to be grateful for that. They had come to stand beside him, to cook the food that was somehow supposed to feed the soul. They had grieved for the loss of the boy most of them had never met.
He had pulled away from his family, Brian admitted. Because he had had his own, had made his own. Now what was left of the family he’d made was sleeping upstairs. Darren was sleeping a few miles away, beneath the shadow of a hill, beside the grandmother