built by horrendously burned hands. Once again, against impossible odds, one of the extraordinary men known as Alaska’s Denali fliers had accomplished an incredible feat.
Devlin O’Hara had beaten the mountain. But fate had played the last hand, sending a second freak storm to the lowlands, grounding the Lama’s desperate last-ditch search for an hour.
An hour too long, a grieving Jock Bohannon thought as he caressed his wife’s still face. An hour too late.
One
“Mayday! Mayday! We’re going down.”
As sweat beaded his forehead and plastered shaggy hair to his rigid throat, Devlin O’Hara shivered. Muscles tensed. Scarred hands curled into fists. “We’re breaking up.” His tone turned guttural. His body arched, from a straining throat rose a desperate cry. “Fire! We have a fire.”
Then the night was still. In utter calm, a waning moon cast pale patterns over a rippled expanse of white. Silence deepened.
Then it began. The shivering, the hushed plea.
“Please.” Shivering became shudders. “Oh, God! Too high, too cold.” A body honed to muscle and sinew tensed.
“No!” Lurching upright, his eyes flickered open, ending a remembered nightmare. As he stared through the birth of dawn, a frozen mountain slope faded, becoming his childhood bedroom.
Throwing a soaked sheet aside, unmindful of his nakedness, he walked to the open window. Flinging the curtain aside, bathed in the nuance of daybreak, Devlin O’Hara watched as crimson streaked across the horizon, painting the bay in dark fire.
An autumn sunrise over the Chesapeake, one of his favorite memories, in his favorite place, his favorite season.
The house was tranquil, but its dignified repose would be short-lived. His family would be waking with the sun, eager for the adventure of a new day. The joyful adventure of coming together.
In growing numbers, with various names, but O’Haras still, they had come. And, for a while, they would be simply family. Mavis and Keegan asked nothing more of their unique brood than this time.
He hadn’t planned this visit. He hadn’t planned anything beyond making it through each minute of each day for months. Yet, on the eve of the appointed time, he found himself packing, then taking leave of many friends…and one nemesis.
But now he knew there was no escape. The deadly beauty and tragedy of the mountain went with him wherever he might go. Even here. This sanctuary of sanctuaries was no longer his.
Denali lived in his days and nights. And Joy died.
They always would.
Wearily, Devlin closed the curtain on a new day on the Chesapeake. He didn’t deserve this place or this family.
He shouldn’t have come.
“So, what do you think?” Leaning against the antique frame of leaded windows, Valentina O’Hara Courtenay stared through polished panes, pondering her own question.
Anyone but an O’Hara would have been awed by the house and the charm of the view. But to the five siblings gathered for the annual reunion, it was simply home. And, sometimes, sanctuary.
From the look of the man who walked the shore that lay beyond the lawn, it was the latter he needed. If he didn’t flee, he would be here two weeks. But could an autumn fortnight spent by the Chesapeake resolve the troubles plaguing Devlin?
“I don’t care what he says, he isn’t fine,” she declared, facing her younger sister. “He’s too quiet. Too alone.”
“Val, no one walks away from the loss of a friend unscathed,” Patience reminded gently. “Five months isn’t nearly long enough to console one who cares as deeply as Devlin.”
“Of course not,” Val conceded. “It’s natural he still grieves. But you can’t believe that’s all it is any more than I do.”
“No.” Patience sighed. “And it isn’t his hands. His next lady love should find the scars interesting more than ugly.”
“If there is one,” Val drawled as she prowled the room.
“There’s always a lady in Devlin’s life, Val.”
“Precisely.” Val leaped on the comment. “Until now.”
The point made, both fell silent. Restlessly, Valentina paced, only to pause before a wall of family portraits. Studying each, she named them in order, eldest to youngest. “Look at us. Devlin, Kieran, Tynan, Valentina, Patience, eternally sixteen.”
“Only in portraits.” Far into her third pregnancy, Patience felt much older than sixteen.
Valentina hardly heard. “No more than a year or two separates either of us from the next. We look and think alike, up to a point. With Devlin as our standard. We wanted to be like him. Beautiful Devlin, of the blackest hair, the bluest eyes.”
“Yet it was never as much that he was oldest, or how he looked, as his kindness and caring, and courage.” Patience smiled, remembering. “Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
“Superman,” Valentina agreed fondly. “Bigger than life. His smile quicker, his passion greater, his heart most tender.”
“Now he rarely smiles,” Patience observed sadly. “If he feels anything, it doesn’t show.”
“Or the reverse?” Valentina ventured. “Is what he’s feeling so awful, he dares not let us see?”
“But we’re family, Val. If he’s hurting, we can help.”
“Can we?” Valentina turned from the window. “Perhaps the mountain took something from him only he can get back.”
Patience understood her sister’s logic, Devlin’s behavior was strange. They were accustomed to his solitary disappearances. But if there was ever trouble, he found a way to communicate, to reassure his family. With the crash, there had been only silence.
Months later, he’d written, saying he wouldn’t make the family gathering. Only then had he spoken of the crash and Joy.
Despite their worry about his uncharacteristic behavior, keeping a childhood rule that still guided their lives, no one questioned, no one interfered. No one understood.
Until he’d walked through the door two days before, weary, thin, dreadfully haggard, no one expected to see him. In a way, Patience thought, none of them had. The real Devlin bore little resemblance to the grim specter who haunted the shore.
“He’s like a stranger.” Devlin had moved from sight, but Valentina knew he hadn’t gone far. His reluctance to leave the house and grounds, or to mingle with his own, was patent. “I suspect he feels like a stranger even to himself.”
Patience sighed. “I don’t understand.”
“Hopefully we will soon.” Val grimaced. “I broke the rule.”
