The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page B

Declan had come to accuse, let him. She was tempted to cry out, “Do it and be done!”
    But before she could act on this latest impulse, she saw that something else was not right. Declan dead looked not at all like Declan living. This was truly his ghost. Gone was the amused invitation that dared the onlooker to search out the secrets implicit in his knowing smile. Apparent no more were the unsettling stares that had promised the presence of mysteries in the depths of his dark, dark eyes. Even the arched brows, full and black, seemed to have lost the sense of amazement that had unfailingly suggested that the object of his gaze possessed enticements that he could not be expected to resist. And the entire face, ever alive and eager, hungering to dispense pleasures as yet undreamed of, had fallen into disrepair—not aged, but lacking the upkeep that his indomitable spirit had always provided, the expectation of a profitable encounter, the offer of thrills heretofore inexperienced by the recipient of his attention.
    The eyes were the most troubling of all. Still of unfathomable depths, they seemed to have taken into themselves a great sorrow, not drowning it, but giving it a refuge where it could dwell, guarding an implacable grief. The eyes’ one source of life was a bewilderment, a searching, a quest that held fast a forlorn hope that might yet be fulfilled—should the gods bestow a blessing that could be well beyond even the powers of their divinity. His voice seemed tentative where it had been so self-assured before. A note of pity sounded somewhere in its depths, a complement to the sorrow in his eyes. And before Kitty could fend it off, a corresponding pity welled up within herself, already reaching out with a longing of its own that, if she weren’t insistent, could summon again an old arousal.
    â€œAnd none of the house,” Declan said. “I mean not the house, that couldn’t possibly happen, stones being what it was made of, but, well, anything that fell into the sea—nothing surfaced? Nothing came ashore? Or did you never bother to look?”
    â€œNothing,” Kieran said.
    â€œAnd Kitty, you … ?” Declan was looking at her with such needful pleading that she had to look down at her shoes, actually a pair of sneakers, footwear she had long disdained. So mundane, so insufficient to the moment were they that, ashamed, she looked up again and into the man’s mournful countenance. “No,” she whispered. “I’ve looked. And still do from time to time, but no, nothing.”
    She wanted to add, “Not even your bones, if that’s what you’re wondering.” But she lacked the courage to introduce the one subject that hovered over everything being said: that he was dead. He was a specter. And then came an obvious afterthought: Perhaps he didn’t know this simple fact. If so, how could she bring herself to tell him? How could she add, to the sufferings already too apparent, the stunned amazement, the unavoidable acceptance of his own death and eternal expulsion from the land of his birth? Perhaps it was himself he was mourning. The sorrows of Taddy and of Brid were as nothing to what death and insufficient resurrection had inflicted upon this man who had once stood indomitable astride all the bent world.
    Again a surge of pity threatened to topple Kitty into a familiar abyss. She had not long since surrendered to the dangerous sympathies awakened by the mournful ghost of Taddy. And now she was being tempted by another urging toward an idiocy similar to the one she had so recently renounced: a helpless attraction to Taddy, to the ghost of Taddy. She loved her husband. He was magnificence made flesh. There could not possibly be a need for any other. Foolish she might be, but mad? The hapless victim of every needful spirit that might come to haunt her castle? Again she protested. This could not be allowed. It was enough that she was subject