Hard Irish Read Online Free PDF Page A

at least.  You know Mack and your dad got on pretty good as of late.  Maybe he might have an idea about what had Rory so worried.”
    Rocky nodded and swallowed hard.  Her divorce from Collin and her father’s help in forcing Collin out of the business had put a rift between her father and Pat.   Pat turned to leave, but then swung back.  “I mean it, lass.  You’re young and beautiful.  Life is too short.  Don’t waste any more of it on hurts from the past and us old geezers.  Rory will either heal or pass in God’s own time and there’s not much you can do to change that.”
    Pat left before she could respond.  Part of her realized that he was right. Seeing her father was important, but being at his side every spare moment wasn’t necessarily going to make him recover faster.  If he did recover.
    Stepping to the window for good reception, Rocky called Steve Vance, her father’s attorney.  She received a voice mail that said he was away on business until Tuesday.  As directed, she left a message for him to call her back.  She let him know that she knew her father had things for her.  She told him that her father had tried to tell her something important and couldn’t.  Then she suggested that knowing what her father wanted her to have after his death might help him now.
    Rocky stayed with her father throughout the day and by evening time, there had been no change.  She went over and over in her mind what her father was referring to, trying to remember some point in her parents’ lives where there’d been a rift great enough for her mother to be Unforgivable and beyond prayer, but came up blank.  The more she thought about it, the less sense her father’s words made.  Her father had loved her mother deeply until her dying breath.  There was nothing unforgiven between them.  By the time dark descended, her gut was a knotted mess of questions with no answers.  She decided to take Uncle Pat’s suggestion to see the crew at Sally’s Roadhouse, hoping Mack could tell her something.

C HAPTER T HREE
     
     
    “It’s never been this bad before,” Jared said under his breath, as he sat on the picnic bench next to James.  The condemnation and tension hanging in the air was thicker than the BBQ smoke and choking the life out of the “after ceremony” celebration.  “Why in God’s name did you go and pass out?  I didn’t realize you were that fried or I would have left your ass with the planking Aussie.”
    White-faced and more wretched than ever, James continued to stare at his untouched plate.  “It wasn’t that.  Swear to God himself,” he whispered, voice raw.  “I don’t know what in the hell happened, Jare.  I was standing there, looking at everyone.  You holding Jake and Jason, Alexi next to Jesse and Nan beside Jackson, and vowing on my life that I’d do whatever it took to care for the tykes, when all of a sudden Jesse and Jackson disappeared as if Scotty had beamed them up to the Enterprise.  Something bad is going to happen to them, Jare.”
    Jared couldn’t believe his ears or his eyes.  James’s hands were shaking and he’d turned from white to a sickly shade of green.  “James, bro.  You’re losing it. You’re tripping after the night we had, a hallucination brought on by extreme pressure and you’re blowing it way out of proportion.”
    James turned and stared at him head on, his blue eyes bleaker that Jared believed possible.  “No.  I’m not.  It’s happened before.”
    Jared leaned in close.  “What do you mean, it’s happened before?”
    “Our graduation party?  Remember we were all standing there getting ready to have our picture taken?  Do you remember who was with us?”
    “Of course, Cal...Tyler, and Steve... and you passed out a second after the picture was taken.”
    James nodded.  “The same thing happened then.  Tyler and Steve completely disappeared from my vision.  They died that night in a car accident.”
    “Surely you