The Mighty Quinns: Rourke by Kate Hoffmann

breath she drew. Was this what love felt like?
    After so much loss in her life, Annie had hardened herself against such a dangerous emotion. First her mother, then her father, had abandoned her, leaving her to fend for herself, watched over by a grandmother who refused to even acknowledge the existence of her parents.
    This was how love began. Even she knew that. With desire and passion, with emotions raging out of control. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be swallowed up, just like her mother and father, so consumed with it that she’d rather die than live without it.
    Her fingers trembled as she reached for her coffee mug. Maybe it would be best to send him on his way. As soon as the storm calmed, she’d find some excuse to get him out of the house and back on the road.
    “What are you going to do when you get back home?” she asked. “I mean, if you don’t have a job?”
    “I don’t know,” Rourke replied. “I suppose I’ll have to look for a new job.”
    “What do you do? I mean, for a living?”
    “I’m a civil engineer. My father was president of a consulting firm. We help to retrofit buildings to be safer during natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes. My dad and I were really close. And he was so proud that I wanted to be a part of the business he started.”
    “What about your mom?”
    Rourke shrugged. “She took the money from my father’s life insurance and found herself a new husband. She was quite a bit younger than he was. Actually, she was his secretary before she was his wife.” He reached out and took her plate, then wandered back to the kitchen. “We see each other at Christmas and we usually go out to dinner on my birthday, but she’s really more interested in her new husband than me. Trying to keep him happy, I guess.”
    “I’m sorry to hear about your father. And I was sad when I heard Buddy had died. He was a nice man. He was always kind to me. Whenever he saw me on my bike, he’d pull over and insist on giving me a ride. He’d toss my bike in the back of that old red pickup and off we’d go. I used to ride over to his house during the summer and I’d help him weed his garden. He grew the best tomatoes. We’d sit on his porch and eat them, warm from the sun.”
    Rourke sat down on the hearth, stretching his legs out in front of him. “I didn’t know that.”
    Annie nodded. “We were both kind of lonely, I guess.”
    “I should have come to see him more often,” he said, shaking his head. “I just figured he’d live forever, he was such a tough old guy.”
    She reached out and pressed her hand to his cheek. “I saw you at the funeral,” Annie murmured.
    “You were there?”
    “Yeah. I watched from the woods.”
    “Why?”
    She shrugged. There were always explanations and justifications for her odd behavior. But with Rourke, she felt as if, with every question, he was peeling away a layer of protection, searching for the soft center inside of her. “It’s complicated,” she said.
    “Tell me.”
    “Well, I wanted to grieve privately,” she began. “I don’t like showing my emotions in front of people, especially the people on this island. And most of the folks in town would be watching me for a reaction, wondering if I was suddenly going to start screaming and pulling my hair out.”
    “They don’t think that,” Rourke said.
    “Don’t kid yourself,” Annie countered. “They think I’m like my mother, that I take after her side of the family. They remember how she was— irrational, emotional.”
    “You know what? I think you like it that way. I think you like keeping them at a distance, letting them think you’re just a little bit crazy. That way you don’t have the responsibility of friendship or the chance at love.”
    “I have friends,” she said.
    “But only friends who maintain their distance. I’d call them acquaintances.”
    Annie pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. “Maybe that’s true.