Blood Fugue by Joseph D'Lacey Page A

years. Cold and broken.’
    She collapsed against Kerrigan. This time there was no iron in her embrace. She was barely able to support herself. He looked over at the nurse.
    ‘Can we go in and sit with him together?’
    ‘Of course.’
    He held Kath and she guided him back to the room where Burt was. The old man looked frail but he looked peaceful too. There was no tension in his face, no anger. A monitor tracked his heart, betraying its erratic rhythm and hesitant beats. They took a seat on either side of him and each held one of his hands.
    It wasn’t a long vigil. Sometime in that next hour Burt’s heart stopped. They’d already resuscitated him once and the doctor on duty and Kath had quietly agreed that he should not be resuscitated again, considering how destructive the first infarction had been. They held his hands as the monitor sounded an alarm signalling no heartbeat. A nurse came in, switched the monitor off and left them alone. Kerrigan whispered goodbye and kissed Burt’s cooling hand but for a long time he couldn’t let go of it.

Chapter 10
    Kerrigan spent the night in his old room with Dingbat sleeping at the end of the bed.
    He rose early but Kath was already up and dressed, busying herself in the kitchen. When he hugged her she pulled away. He reached for the cereal cupboard but she steered him to a chair at the kitchen table. Despite his protests, she made pancakes and fried eggs with vegetarian sausages for him. He wasn’t hungry, but he ate as much as he could.
    That time in the kitchen was hard to bear. He watched Kath begin several little routines that were meant for Burt before stopping and tidying away whatever it was she’d started on. He saw how little of what she did was for herself. After a while she stood at the kitchen sink, lowered her head and wept, shaking silently. This time she let him hug her.
    When the tears had passed, a squall that signalled a whole season of storms, Kath sat down at the table and withdrew an envelope from her apron pouch. The envelope was ivory with age and fat, as if it was stuffed with money. She laid it on the table in front of her.
    ‘Oh, Jimmy. We shouldn’t have waited so long to do this.’ She sniffed and blew her nose. ‘We just never wanted to face up to it, I guess.’
    Was she talking about his adoption? They’d been through all this when he was a little boy. He understood perfectly well that they weren’t his real parents. It had never spoiled anything for him. He’d always been certain that if his own parents had kept him, he’d have had a worse life; a life with less love, one in which all opportunity was closed to him. Burt and Kath had been the best thing that ever happened to Kerrigan. They pointed the way, let him make his mistakes and respected his aspirations. Even when he left for New York they didn’t complain or make him feel he was making the wrong decision.
    Kerrigan stared at the envelope.
    ‘What more is there to know, Kath?’
    She pressed a tissue to her mouth to stifle a sob and pushed the envelope towards him.
    He reached out, froze for a moment, and then picked up the envelope with care, not wanting to damage its pristine smoothness and perfect lines. ‘For James Kerrigan’ was all that was written on it. Its touch filled his mind with images — a hundred stills passing in an instant — he tried to hold on to them and couldn’t, except for one. It was a vision of a tall figure dressed in fraying clothes. The figure was gaunt like a starving hermit and he — Kerrigan felt it was a man, an old man — stood beside a huge tree. The trunk was so thick, its branches so vast; Kerrigan could only imagine its size. The image stayed with him.
    ‘You have to open it,’ said Kath.
    He took his knife, cleaned it on his napkin and placed the blade in the space between the flap and the body of the envelope. He hesitated for a moment longer then slit it open in one sharp movement.
    He took out the carefully folded, handwritten