Page 52 of The Final Cut

“Too young. Younger than she should have been for that kind of work. Old enough to carry the syringe. Old enough to know what room she was walking toward.”

Reva turns toward the water, her throat moving.

“I take it Shiloh saw?”

“He came in as she reached the hall. Saw enough.”

“And he’s not okay.”

“No.”

The answer is simple because the thing is not. Shiloh can wear charm over almost any wound. He can laugh around terror, flirt through rage, turn sorrow sideways until a room breathes again. Last night, he looked at the dead nurse and saw a girl where I saw an active threat.

Both things were true. That is what will gut him.

Reva presses her thumb under the rubber band, then stops before snapping it. Her hand falls to her lap.

“That’s why he snapped at me this morning,” she says.

“If I had to guess.”

“I thought he was angry because I was being difficult.”

“He was angry because a young woman tried to kill Cal, and he could not make that fit inside the version of himself he gives you.”

Her brow creases.

“He wants to be your soft place,” I say. “Soft things bruise.”

She watches the water for a long time after that.

The heron appears again farther down the channel, or another one like it. Impossible to say. It steps through the shallows with priestly patience, stabbing once at the water, coming up with something silver and wriggling in its beak.

Reva’s shoulders lower another fraction. A breeze slides across the marsh, damp and cooler than before. The smell of rain thickens.

She looks up through the branches. “Does it look like rain to you?”

The question is so ordinary it almost hurts.

“I think it might rain,” she adds.

As if in agreement, a drop hits my forearm, then another.

Reva looks at the small dark spots on my skin. For the first time since the hospital, her mouth shifts. Not a smile. A tired recognition that the sky has joined the conversation.

The rain starts soft. A scatter through leaves. Small rings forming on the water around the boat. The heron lifts again, annoyed by weather or by us, and disappears into gray.

I reach for the motor, but stop when Reva stands, rocking the skiff. My hand leaves the motor and grips the side of the boat. “Sit down.”

She ignores me with the focused dignity of a woman who has made a decision. Two careful steps bring her to me. She uses the edge of the bench for balance, rain dotting her hair, her lashes, the shoulders of her shirt.

I narrow my eyes. “Reva.”

She comes to stand between my knees, rain darkening the fabric of her shirt. Her face is too pale, and her eyes burn.

For a moment, I think she is going to cry.

Then she hooks her fingers in the waistband of her leggings and pushes them down.