Page 8 of Breaking Rules

Maybe what I needed to do was get my mind off things. Focus on something I could do. Someone I could help.

Soleil.

She hadn’t said anything to me about why she’d called me in the first place, and she wasn’t the sort of person I could push into revealing what was going on with her. She was wary, even more than I had been at her age. I’d gotten a shit hand in life, knocked around a time or two, went hungry more than I cared to remember, but my gut told me that this poor girl had been through more.

Evanne had Alec to support her, and while he was doing that, I would offer my support to someone who needed it but didn’t have anyone else. I wasn’t Soleil’s mother or sister or family in any way, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be someone she could rely on and confide in. It would take time, but I was confident that I could eventually show her that she didn’t have to go through life alone.

Maybe, one day, I’d accept the same about my own life.

Five

Alec

Noise and voiceswoke me up, and for several seconds, I couldn’t remember where I was.

Since Evanne had come to live with me, I’d come to give up my quiet life. I didn’t miss it most of the time, even when privacy occasionally became…tricky. It hadn’t taken long for me to recognize her sounds, though. What it was like when she got into the cabinets and refrigerator. The shows she watched. Her footsteps on the stairs.

These sounds didn’t match.

They echoed strangely. Came through the floor in a way that didn’t make sense. Only when I heard additional voices that I realized where I was and then remembered how I’d gotten here.

And why.

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. My bedroom had become a guest room after I’d bought a place of my own. Actually, Theresa and Da had done that for each of us, giving us all a place to stay whenever we needed it, but without keeping our childhood bedrooms as unchanging shrines.

Evanne had a room of her own. As the only grandchild – a sore point for my very Catholic parents – she’d been spoiled from moment one. According to Da, Evanne would continue being spoiled until other grandkids came along, but I had my doubts that the spoiling would ever stop. At least when the others finally started having kids, Da and Theresa would spoil mine less. I also planned to finally get revenge for the last eight years of loud presents and too much sugar.

By the time I made my way downstairs, breakfast was ready, and the kitchen table was crowded. When Da and Theresa had first bought this house, they’d knocked out a wall to expand the dining room and commissioned a massive table, adding chairs as we added new family members. Once we’d started moving out, they’d eventually moved into the kitchen for ‘small’ gatherings. Considering there were sixteen of us, eighteen with Da and Theresa, ‘small’ was a relative term.

“Mornin’,” I greeted the others.

“Bit of a late morning for you, isn’t it?” Brody asked as I took the seat between him and Evanne. His blue-green eyes sparkled with good humor. A little under a year-and-a-half younger than me, we’d always been close. Some people thought it was in spite of our different personalities, but Brody and I had always understood that our friendship was because of our differences. We balanced each other well.

“I’m surprised to see you up at all,” I replied, “what with all the scotch you must be drinking. Sampling the wares?”

“Lads.”

“Sorry, Da.”

We said it together, our accents thickening in response to Da’s. Brody had lost a bit more of it than I had, but whenever we were around another Scot, it was as if we’d never left.

I turned my attention from Brody to my other two siblings at the table. Eoin had been home for nearly four months, but I’d only seen him the once when we’d had a welcome home party for him. The scar that ran down his left cheek from his temple to just under his mouth had been ragged and pink then. Now, it looked smoother, lighter. The other scars he’d received while overseas were hidden under his clothes. One day, all of them might fade until they were barely noticeable.

The shadowed, haunted look in Eoin’s usually vivid green eyes, however, might never heal.

“How have you been?”

Eoin shrugged, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught our parents exchanging concerned looks. He’d always been the quiet, brooding one, sullen, actually, but the army had changed him. Now that he’d been discharged, we were all worried that the troubled Eoin would come back.

I didn’t press the question. I loved my brother and I hated what had happened to him, but I had my own problems to deal with at the moment.

“Paris, it’s good to see you.”

At twenty-eight, Paris and Eoin were a little under four months apart in age, with Paris being the elder of the two by seven months. How their birthdays fell meant they were in the same class at school, but it had taken kids a while to realize that they were siblings since Theresa’s kids from her first marriage had kept their late father’s last name – Carideo. Oddly enough, both names basically meant the same thing:grace.

“You too, Alec.” She smiled at me. “And it’s even better to see Evanne.” She winked at her niece, who giggled.

“Did you get to be Indiana Jones?” Evanne asked.