Page 84

During the day, I spoke with Mom and Dad, watched the road through the narrow opening in the curtain, and tried to imagine a future extending beyond the next piece of Salvatore’s truth. At night, I remained awake long after Rurik completed his final inspection of the locks.

I listened to the safe house breathe around us and wondered which sound would come first—the alarm or the gunshot.

Four nights into the third week, I began writing letters.

I told myself they weren’t goodbyes. They were precautions created by a woman who finally understood that death could be authorized thirty-six hours before anyone pulled a trigger. Loving people meant preparing for the possibility that I wouldn’t be there when they needed answers. The first letter was for Mom and Dad.

I wrote that I loved them. I told Dad that the years he had spent pretending to be my uncle didn’t erase the father he had always been. I asked him not to blame Mom if something happened to me, and I asked Mom not to let grief convince her that every choice she had made led us there. I didn’t ask either of them to forgive me. I didn’t know what I might eventually need forgiveness for.

The second letter was for Uncle Sal. It contained instructions rather than tenderness because my uncle understood orders better than grief. I told him where to find the copies I had made, which names could be trusted, and what needed to reach Sinclair if Rurik and I disappeared.

I stared at the third envelope for nearly an hour before writing Henry’s name across the front.

Nothing came. How did a mother explain why she had watched from behind trees instead of crossing the distance to her son? How did I tell him that giving him away had been the greatest act of love I possessed when every birthday, fever, nightmare, and ordinary morning had belonged to someone else?

I could have told him about Salvatore. I could have described the way his father sang badly, laughed loudly, and held him as though the entire world had been created to place that small body against his heart. I could have told Henry he had been wanted from the instant we knew he existed and loved every second afterward.

But any letter I wrote would place a burden into his hands. It would ask him to grieve a mother he had never been permitted to know.

I left the page blank.

Shortly after two in the morning, I folded the other letters and slid them into their envelopes. Rurik had gone upstairs an hour earlier, though I knew he wasn’t sleeping. The old house carried every movement. If he crossed his room or opened the door, I would hear the floorboards complain above me.

I placed the envelopes beneath Salvatore’s file and rested my head against the back of the chair.

Exhaustion took me before I realized I had closed my eyes.

When I opened them, I was sitting at the kitchen table in Montana.

Morning hadn’t reached the windows. Darkness covered the mountains beyond the glass, and snow lined the sill in smooth white. The clock above the stove had stopped at 4:17. I remembered buying it from a shop in town because Salvatore insisted the kitchen needed something cheerful, then laughing when he chose the ugliest yellow clock in Montana. The cabin smelled of coffee, pine, and the cedar soap he used. Salvatore sat across from me.

He wore the dark shirt I remembered from our last autumn there, sleeves pushed to his forearms and the first two buttons open at his throat. There was no blood on him. No bruises marked his face, and no evidence remained of the men who had dragged him from our life. He looked tired, but whole. The letters waited beneath his hand.

“You always hated writing letters,” he said.

His voice entered every empty place inside me. For one terrible moment, relief became so complete that I forgot he was dead.

“Only when I don’t know what to say.”

Salvatore looked down at Henry’s name. “You know what you want to say.”

“That doesn’t mean he should have to hear it.”

“Then why write his name?”

“Because leaving him nothing feels worse.” I reached across the table, but my fingers stopped before touching the envelope. “I don’t know which selfishness hurts him less.”

Salvatore lifted his gaze to mine. Love remained there exactly as I remembered it, but it no longer protected me from the sadness underneath. “You’re writing goodbye.”

“I’m preparing.”

“For what?”

“You know for what.” Anger entered my voice because anger was easier than admitting how desperately I wanted to cross the table and put my hands on him. “They know I met Reagan. They know I have the authorization. If they aren’t looking for me already, they will be.”

“Then let Rurik take you somewhere else.”

“There is nowhere else. You proved that.”