Chapter Text
*
He worked most of the night. Calling people he knew, emailing and texting sources, trying to get through to someone who might have more intel.
Mei shared what she had. Correspondents were competitive about a story up to the point of breaking it. Anyone could have it after that. The goal was to be first, and Mei had gotten to it quickly. The attack happened Saturday, around 7pm local time, just before Aqşam namazy, the Kazakh name for the Maghrib prayers the majority Muslim population performed at sunset.
She had gone down the following morning at dawn, the scene secured by Army Rangers and a unit of British NATO forces. She’d written up what she could gather in eight-hundred or so words. She sent Danny the link to her story. It was already online in Australia.
Danny read the details, knowing the road, the apartment blocks in that area. It was a residential area on the outskirts of Ayagoz. A place there was activity and life, even in wartime. Even in a town a dozen miles from the front. He studied the photos that accompanied her story. The crater where the street had been. Body bags lined the road.
Once, in a briefing at the Security & Operations Command Center in the Neutral Zone, someone had asked the Special Envoy for Kazakhstan how many civilians had been killed since the invasion began.
Then-Special Envoy Paul Langdon replied, “I wouldn’t know. This is a military facility, not a statistics department.”
When the metric itself was indication of failure, wasn't much sense in counting. However many innocent people were dead as a result.
So whenever they could, they counted the bodies. Day in, day out. You counted the bodies.
Whoever was responsible knew exactly what they were doing. They’d timed it when people would be on the way to mosque. The Russians would have known that after their many failures in Afghanistan. The Chinese knew how to make a statement. The most reckless and extremist of the insurgents, the altın bürkittiñ bawırlastığı, the Brotherhood of the Golden Eagle, would simply have wanted to make as brutal a demonstration as they could.
He fell into the routine and the rhythm it contained, compelled by a gray, rote sense of unreality. The mechanics of the work and its component parts were second nature. Reporting was a process more than anything else. A system not unlike the scientific method: a series of steps and measures bound by an ethical framework, intended to capture some small sliver of objective truth.
That was the idea, anyway.
There was rarely anything objective to it. Very little was objective in the realm of human affairs. One person’s crusade was always someone else’s crime.
He called Tom Lawrence, got what he could from him. For the first few hours he couldn’t get through, but around morning local time, he connected with the Hotel Altai, where Amir put him through first to Adam Kurtz and then Gianluc Moretti, a couple freelancers who'd been around for the last few years.
He wrote a short, straightforward email to Dima, and hoped Google Translate was working better these days.
Using what Mei told him and the little he could find, he started building the timeline. Some bloggers in the Netherlands had been tracking development along the front, doing the kind of web reporting that would have been impossible until a few years ago. He pored over images they’d pulled from the wires, the international press, and social media.
Working through chaos, sorting the facts from the hearsay, organizing the information. That was the job.
That, and asking questions.
Who was responsible? Who was claiming responsibility? Why that street, that intersection, that apartment block? Why that afternoon? Rebels? Infighting? Accident? Chinese rocket? Russian missile? American drone?
Most everyone he talked to had the same answer, no matter the question. We don’t know. It was just another local problem, in a place that had a lot of local problems, and if there was a list of things the taxpayers of military engagements around the world cared about, dead foreigners weren’t usually high on the list.
It was almost 3:00am by the time Danny looked up from the laptop screen, realizing the hour.
His head ached. His eyes felt like there was sandpaper in them. He rubbed at them absently, wondering where his glasses were. He leaned back in the desk chair, eyes to the ceiling. He let them close.
The damaged apartment buildings, walls collapsing and open to the elements. Black smoke over burned out cars. Cups, clothing, CDs scattered in the debris. The things that once made a life, reduced to broken remains, scattered to the wind.
He found his glasses on the end table upstairs. CJ was curled on her side away from him, dead to the world. A thick book lay open on the bed next to her, its yellow spine facing up. Danny reached for it. He felt the weight of it in his hands.
The Falcon Guide to Hiking with Kids in Southern California.
He sat on the edge of the mattress, hearing the rise and fall of her breathing. The cool summer air rustled the palm trees outside.
All he had ever wanted was here, in these rooms.
He knew what he had to do.
*
CJ woke when her alarm went off on her phone. She swiped vaguely at her screen, waiting for clarity to rouse her. She yawned and turned over.
The bed was empty. She felt a pang of guilt.
After everything from the night before, everything she’d half-gotten out, the promise of actually saying it aloud, as if speaking to life the thing she and Danny had been working up to for ten years and counting…
…and she’d fallen asleep about thirty seconds after she climbed the stairs.
She sighed.
Well, so much for heartfelt confessions. Danny had turned the light off whenever he’d come up. She had a half memory of his arm slung around her middle, of scratchy kisses to her neck, the warmth of him spreading through her.
Tonight, she promised herself and her absent partner. Tonight, she’d get it right. They had time.
She dressed sluggishly and got Leona up, changed and ready for the morning. A slow endeavor, though usually she snapped awake in the morning. Odd.
In the kitchen, there was coffee already brewed. The patio doors were closed, but unlocked. Through the glass she could see Danny in the guest house. He paced inside the entrance, phone to his ear. He pinned it to his shoulder, leaning over his laptop and typing quickly as he listened.
She waved to get his attention.
He didn’t see her.
Probably his editor. An interview. Maybe someone from the fire service or a scientist. She recognized Reporter Mode when she saw it.
Leona gave a little shriek as the front door opened and Mrs. A called out a greeting as she set her bag down and opened her arms to the she-devil.
CJ downed her coffee, glancing at the time on her phone. Late.
She’d be back this evening. They’d catch up tonight.
They’d talk.
*
Dread, all day.
Dread as he got in touch with Nicola, talked through the next steps.
Dread as he put Leona down that night, reading to her, listening to her chatter away. Her life was perfect, this sunshining girl. Filled with palm trees and Goldfish, whenever she wanted. Filled with so many people who loved her, treasured her, wanted to set her up for life.
Dread, endless dread, as from the stairs, he listened to CJ humming to herself in the kitchen. Nothing else to do but face it.
“How was work?” he asked, buying time.
She tipped her hand. So-so. “Finally got some progress with the DRC…”
She poured a glass of white wine while she spoke, picking at the vegetables in the pan, telling him about her day, her work. A normal Monday night, California, such as it had become. No air raid sirens. No explosions.
“There’s something I gotta talk to you about,” Danny said, at last.
CJ looked up and for the first time actually saw him. “What’s up?”
“I need to go back.”
Her brow furrowed. She shrugged. “To London? Okay. When?”
“To Kazakhstan.”
Her head bobbled back and eyes narrowed, like she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “But you can’t.”
“I gotta,” he said.
She laughed. Snorted, actually. Like it was a joke. “You can’t go back to– Danny! Are you kidding me?”
He rankled, remembering how shitty her dismissiveness could be. How she could make you feel small and unimportant when she wanted to.
He held her eye, leaned back against the counter across from her. “No. I’m not.”
She blinked, confused. Held up a hand, flummoxed. “I don’t understand. You said…There was a story about fires. You said that was next. That was what you wanted to do.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “And I do. I will. But that's different. This is urgent. This is happening now. ”
Her whole posture and expression shifted. What little mirth there was left in her expression bled out. Her features set, hard. “Well: No, obviously. No. No! You have a child.”
“And that’s not changing,” he said. He held his hands out, trying to reach for some kind of calm. “This isn’t about her, or you, or us. But there’s things I have to finish there.”
She stared at him like they’d never met before.
Danny pushed on. “Look, it’s not forever. A few weeks. A month, maybe few months at the outside–”
Her mouth dropped, eyes going cartoonishly wide. “Excuse me? Did you just say months?”
“We’re not talking about a long-term assignment,” he reasoned.
“The hell we’re not!” she scoffed.
“CJ–”
She threw up her hands. “So that’s it? You’re up and leaving? Again?”
He steeled himself for the fight he’d known was coming. “I’m not leaving. Not this. But there’s things I can’t do from here.”
He could feel his pulse tick up.
“In the age of the internet?” she spit. “Please. This isn’t Kuwait or the Khmer Rouge. You can get whatever you need online. Instantly!”
He shook his head. “You know that’s not true. You know how this works.”
CJ laughed a short, bitter laugh. Mean and cutting. “Right, wouldn’t want to interfere with you and a story. Nothing more important…”
“That’s not fair.”
“Why I thought anything would change…”
“I’m exactly who I’ve always been. Nothing has changed. CJ, look where I am. Look what we’re doing.”
“Exactly. A guy who puts his own self-interest first.”
“That’s not-”
She paced across the kitchen to the doorway and back, hands on her hips, agitated. “Can’t bother with an editor’s job, nope. Too boring, being behind the scenes. Not for someone itching to get his byline on the front page, again and again and again. Not for the guy who can't stomach sitting still, who wants to write the first drafts of history books.” She spun on him. “Is that what this is? Some pitiful attempt at immortality?”
“What?”
She bit her lip in rage. “You’re never going to change! I don’t know what I ever believed you would.”
“I was ready to change. For you!” he argued. “I wanted to give it up. All of it! And you walked out without a second thought!”
Her eyes flashed, hard. “Little convenient to be singing that song, years later.”
“Convenient?” he roared.
He couldn’t believe her audacity. He felt like he was talking to a stranger.
“Shut up!” CJ snarled. “Her childhood is not a book you get to flip through whenever you feel up to it. You signed up to be here. You don’t get to walk in and out whenever the hell it fits your schedule. This isn’t a beat you can pick up and discard like the White House or the Hill. You’re a parent, not a goddamn babysitter.”
Was she kidding him with this?
Danny threw his hands wide. “Walk in and out? CJ, you're the one who's been deciding if and when I deserve speaking to since the day we met. Every time I left Washington, it was in no small part because you decided you were done with me. That I didn’t serve your purpose or your administration’s agenda.”
She shook her head bitterly. “That's not true.”
“From where I'm standing, it sure as hell is!” he exclaimed. “In fact, your petty tiffs have almost gotten me fired more than once. You’ve excommunicated me half a dozen times, so don't give me this shock at covering something else that matters.”
She stood tall and threw her hands out, eyes wide, bright, livid. “So cover it! Who the hell says you need to be in the thick of it? Last time you were there, you all but got blown up!”
Because my friend is dead, he wanted to say. Because I was here, playing at happy ever after, and was too busy to bother with him. Because I have to finish what he started, or he died for nothing. Because this is how the book ends.
But he couldn’t tell her that. He knew CJ. She’d take that information and turn it around for her purpose. Make it something she could use against him.
Instead he said, “How about the twenty-year-olds, the people we’ve screwed over who are actually getting blown up?”
“So write about it! Sing their praises! Excoriate everything and everyone, I don’t care what you say! But there’s Marines and Rangers and aid workers getting killed left and right, and I don’t want you next on the list!”
“That is the job. That’s the risk you run.”
Her hands balled into fists in the air. “Then don’t run it. My God, what is wrong with you?”
He couldn’t believe she was telling him this.
“You think this is so different from what you’ll be up to next year, or the one after? You think you’re not gonna have to show up in dangerous places from time to time? You’re planning major engineering projects in the middle of a failed state plagued by civil war, famine, and endemic violence!”
She glared at him. “That’s different, and you know it.”
“Why’s it different?”
“Because anywhere I go, I can have a team of ex-Navy SEALs or former elite ops guys from Mossad following my every step. I can have a Blackhawk and an extraction ordered. I have protection and the resources for it. Do you have that?”
“No. I don’t.”
“No. You don’t,” she summarized. “Billy Price was shot five blocks from his hotel. You remember that.”
“Of course I remember. I knew Billy. I liked Billy,” he told her.
She looked at him, aghast. Then how are we having this conversation?
It was like they were speaking different languages. How can you not understand?
He took a long breath. “Look. CJ, you know what I want. You know how I feel. I lo–”
“No! Don’t you dare say it,” CJ shouted. She smacked her wine glass off the counter. It shattered against the wall above the sink, skittering into pieces against the porcelain. “Don’t you dare say that to me! Not now, and not when you’re about to jump on a plane into the middle of no man's land to chase mayhem and madness across the goddamn eastern front!”
“Why?!” he shouted back, pissed. “Why shouldn’t I say it? It’s true. You’ve known it’s true! You’ve known it for years. Used it to your own advantage every time. Why does everything get to be a tool when it’s in your hands and a hammer in mine?”
Her jaw twitched in rage.
“Know why you don’t want to hear it? I do,” Danny told her. “Cause then you’d have to face it. Face the fact that this isn’t just screwing around, and never was. And now there’s a hell of a lot more consequences than just you leaving heel marks on your way out.”
“I’m not the one leaving!” she shouted.
“Neither am I! But only one of us has ever had their eyes on the exit sign.”
Her eyes blazed in rage. “I may have detonated whatever chance we had three years ago. I've been collecting the pieces of my life ever since. But I sure as hell am not going to be held responsible for doing it a second time,” she seethed. “You're choosing to go. It versus us. That's what it comes down to.”
She tried to storm past him.
He reached for her elbow. “CJ–”
She wrenched her arm away. “Don’t touch me!”
Danny bit back another shout of frustration. “CJ, I have a job to do. Same as you. Work that I wish to God I had never been asked to do some days, but it matters. You know that. You get that.” He implored her to hear him. “So I’m going, but I am not leaving my daughter, or this family. I choose you, and I think you know that, too. But if you refuse to understand why I have to do this, then you've been lying to me or to yourself.”
“You're skipping town and I’m the one who’s been lying?! Go to hell, Danny.” CJ gawped in disbelief. “Let me be crystal clear: You’re only here in case I get hit by a bus or someone decides to off me. You’re Plan B,” she spit, livid.
“Like always,” Danny bit out. If she could play mean, so the hell could he. “Second choice to whatever it is you want.”
“This is not what I want, you idiot. How can you not see that!? You’re choosing a fucking war zone over your child, Danny! Over me!”
“I’m not,” he swore. “But I got other obligations. I didn’t stop being a reporter the day you deigned to let me back into your life, CJ.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Oh, if wishing made it so…”
“Your job defined everything about who we were to each other. For years. You drew the line in the sand. You made it extremely clear what and who you cared about, and it wasn’t me. My work matters, too. A job I’m as good at as you were at yours. So don’t stand there and tell me what I’m choosing. It’s you. It’ll be you. But I don’t get to opt out of the tough stories just because it’s an inconvenience.”
“You don’t sleep!” CJ shouted. “You have panic attacks and nightmares and are hurt. Last time you were there, you almost came home in a box, you moron. A few more pieces of shrapnel and boom, case closed. She’s got a donor, not a dad. Jesus Christ, how do you not see that?”
“There’s costs. You know that. It’s part of the–”
“–the job? Is it? Why? For what? No story is going to make it stop! You are one guy! One person! I don’t know what you think you can do, but you cannot stop a war in progress!”
He opened his mouth but she held up a hand and cut him off.
“Enough: I’m not interested in re-litigating everything. Here are the facts on the ground, jackass: You have a kid who is wildly in love with her father. Who is going to be devastated if you up and ditch her for the back alley tour of Central Asia. You said you were in. Be in.”
“I am,” Danny implored. “I’ve been in, ever since May. But you gotta understand that you are not the center of the universe, CJ. Mine or anyone else’s!”
She flung her arms out wide, incredulous. “Yes, I am! You astounding moron. When are you going to get it through your thick Irish skull that I am the center of her universe. And so are you! Jesus, Danny! When the hell are you gonna figure out what it means to be responsible for someone else? You are accountable to and for her.”
He knew she wasn’t wrong. But it didn’t cancel out what he had to do.
“Yeah? How ‘bout all the kids who don’t have parents anymore ‘cause of what we been doing. Cause of a war you helped start. Who’s accountable to and for them?”
As soon as he said it, he knew. Oh, he knew she’d hit the roof. And yes, he’d deserve it, because saying a thing like that was narrow, and it was nasty, and it was mean.
But it wasn’t wrong.
CJ’s eyes blackened. She held herself very still. “Get out.”
“Fine,” Danny said through his teeth.
“You go file as many fucking dispatches as you can and pray your luck doesn’t run out,” she said to his back.
“I’ll do that,” he bit out over his shoulder, snide.
“At least your daughter will have those. I’m sure they’ll be a lot of comfort.”
He said nothing in response. He was done arguing with CJ.
He was done altogether.
*
These are the things CJ knows to be true.
She has a daughter who is loved and adored. She has friends. A niece who is brave and loyal. Brothers who exist.
She has friends. Trusted colleagues. She has the love and admiration of a man she was proud to serve for eight long, difficult years.
She has a stellar reputation for effectiveness.
She has a million dollar house on the California coast, where the air smells like jasmine and bay leaf. She has a closet full of designer clothes and wears her power now best of all.
There is so much she has. There is so little she needs. These are the facts.
She has her life. This life. It is extraordinary in some ways, and common enough in others. But it is enough.
And when you have been starving for love for so very long, enough is as good as a feast.
She told herself these things as she fumed and paced and raged and did not rest.
She does not need Danny.
She has never needed him.
*
In the morning, after a long and sleepless night, he tried to apologize. They could clear the air after they both had some time to cool off. He hoped.
“CJ,” he tried. “Come on. I’m here. I’m listening. I’m sorry. Talk to me.”
“Have you changed your mind?” She poured herself a cup of coffee. She did not look at him.
“CJ–”
“Have you changed your mind?” she repeated, slower and angrier this time.
“No.”
“Conversation over. Get your things out of my house. If you’re uninterested in being part of this family, fine. Your choice, Danny. I want you gone tomorrow.”
Well, he thought. It didn’t get much clearer than that.
*
She refused to speak to him after that, blazing through their every interaction like a guided missile, leaving nothing but sulfur and heat in her path.
He packed his things.
In the closet of the guest house, he wrested the articles, pages, and books from where he’d thrown them the week before, piled in boxes and shoved out of sight.
The notes he kept. Books he returned to the library. A few things he needed he mailed to The Guardian local bureau up in San Francisco. Whenever he was back in California, he could collect them. They could forward it on to him in London, if not.
He brought what he couldn’t pack, or wouldn’t need, to the Goodwill on Wiltshire. Other things he threw out. He took CJ at face value. She’d told him to get out. He wouldn’t leave her to deal with his mess.
Still, there was one thing he didn’t know what to do with. The trusty Taylor guitar. He couldn’t take it with him. He’d have no use for it. He didn’t have much reason to play it.
In the end, he left it in Leona’s room. CJ could do what she wanted with it. As always.
He looked around the bare guest room. The bare rafters and empty closet. It hadn't taken long to erase his existence here. A few hours and it was done. His clothes packed, his ticket booked for tomorrow. By Wednesday evening, he’d be gone.
All that was left to deal with were a handful of small, insignificant objects sitting on the corner of the desk.
Danny reached out a hand to sweep them into the trash. He hesitated. He couldn't do it. He rubbed a hand over his tired eyes.
He stood there, in utter disbelief with himself. At the unthinkable thing he had to do, and the impossible choice he knew wasn’t a choice at all.
And, maybe, Danny thought, maybe he understood CJ a little better now.
Some things you did not because you wanted to do them. Not at all. Some things you did because there was simply no other way.
That was what she’d felt, all those years crushed under that weight of duty. He’d known it then, but he understood it now.
He did not want to give it back. To return the favor, square.
He wanted no part in this miserable Sophie’s Choice.
*
A final try, the morning of his flight.
The island countertop reflected the morning light, shining like a great ocean between them.
“I’ll call you…” When I get there, Danny didn’t finish.
“What for?” CJ met his gaze impassive, emotionless. She had everything locked down.
“I’ll let you know when I’m coming back,” he promised.
She said nothing. Her face was a blank map. There was nothing to guide him.
Anything he could have said was irrelevant. He had words, of course. But he knew now he’d never say the words he had wanted to say to her for so long, but could not. Nothing he could say would make a difference. He’d lost the ability to reach her.
She took her things and stalked past him at a distance.
“Hey, Danny?”
He turned, hoping against hope.
She stood in the doorway, arm on the knob. The door was already half closed.
“Hope it’s worth it,” CJ said.
She looked at him once more, then left.
*
He told Mrs. A what was happening, as far as he knew.
Mrs. A listened intently, and when Danny was done explaining, she asked him two questions. When he was done answering them, she nodded. Then she took his shoulder and pulled him down to her level, hugging him gently, which was touching. Hers was a polite and formal kindness, but a sincere one, nevertheless.
She gripped his forearm a moment longer. He could feel the strength in her fine and birdy bones.
“See-shay?” Mrs. A asked.
Danny shook his head.
She nodded at this, understanding the way of things. She did not try to offer platitudes or phony optimism. Did not try to fill the moment with false cheer. He sensed she knew he’d see right through it, and anyway, it was not in her nature to do so.
He thought briefly of Abbey Bartlet, as straight a shooter as there was. He was glad Leona had someone so clear-eyed in her life.
“Be safe,” Mrs. A told him. "Try."
He rolled his bag to the front door. The cab pulled to the curb, honked. Time to go.
Leona hugged him, chit-chattering away like the wonder she was. He scooped her up, cartwheeling her around and around. She laughed, and it was the best sound he’d ever heard. A shock of joy like nothing else had ever shocked him, except maybe her mother and the glittering knife’s edge of her love.
“Bye bye, Ramona.”
Her mouth curved with her mother’s smirk. “No!” she laughed.
“Winona?”
“No!”
Her favorite word. Her favorite game.
“Oh, right, Verona.”
“I am Leona!” she yelled in defiance.
God, he loved that about her. What a willful punkass. What a rebel.
“Hell yeah you are, Wildcat,” Danny said.
He held her close, kissing her crown, feeling the wriggly warmth of her littleness. The soft tickle of her hair. The constant motion she was in, always moving, searching, doing.
He couldn’t believe her, even now. He couldn’t believe himself.
“Cupcakes?” Leona’s huge green eyes searched his face for signs of weakness.
He smiled sadly. “No cupcakes. Sorry, kiddo.” I don’t make the rules. “Think you got a nap coming up.”
Her mouth screwed up to the side as she considered this proposition. “Okay. Nap, then cupcakes. Deal?”
“That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”
He kissed her again and set her down. She bolted away, spotting Milo the cat next door, shrieking happily.
Danny watched her go. As she did, some unknowable quantity of his heart went with her. What remained clenched into a painful fist of hopeless adoration for this bright flame that’d burst into his life after years of dark.
But Danny was old enough by now to know one of God’s own truths, which was this:
Just because you loved something didn’t mean you got to keep it.
*
Long haul from LAX to Seoul. Eight hours to Karachi. Six more to Astana. By the time he landed, the battery on his laptop was long-since dead. His phone wasn’t far behind.
He waited for his bags in the pre-dawn nothing of the arrivals area, uncertain of day or date and half-dead with sleep deprivation. If he was lucky he’d be able to get a military transport lined up to the Neutral Zone north of Almaty. Right back where he’d started.
He stared at the dying phone in his palm. The photo CJ had taken below the waterfall in the mountains shone out of the past.
Lucky, Danny thought, unable to look away.
Imagine.
*
Her house was quiet. No news clattering away, incessantly. No banging of pots and pans in the kitchen. No teasing banter, no evening sports, chess matches, or emotionally devastating heart to hearts.
He’d left.
He’d actually left, CJ thought. She’d asked him to stay—to make this thing work, to be here with his daughter and whatever it was CJ was, or was becoming, or had been—and he’d gone. He’d said he cared and then went and did the complete opposite of caring.
It eluded her how it had happened. She remembered every word, could play back almost every interaction they’d had since the fucking con-man had shown up at her door, and still she’d been swindled.
Three months he’d been here. Could that be it? Unbelievable.
Well, fuck him.
She’d gone it alone before. She’d do it again. She didn’t have to put up with his bullshit need to watch the world’s sturm and drang from up close. She’d see him in court if it came to that.
She stormed around the downstairs, tossing out any and all evidence she came across. The grocery list on the fridge. The stupid plush goldfish. She’d rip up the plants out back tomorrow and let the yard go wild.
She’d found the papers stacked on her desk when she came home. That was what started it, the cleaning binge. The documents filled out for the state, plus a letter and the paternity test he’d gotten back in June attached as exhibits.
CJ wanted to feed each and every page into a shredder. (She resisted only on account of the fact that she didn’t actually have a shredder.)
It would be satisfying, of course, to tear each page into tiny pieces, to stomp on them or, most dramatically of all, burn them to ash in the grill out back. She wouldn’t bother wasting the energy, she thought, lip curling. She threw the pages in the wastebasket.
She wandered between her office and the living room, staring at the walls. The artwork, the maps, the photos. It was difficult to focus. The incandescent rage that had thrummed in her veins for the last two days was gone, replaced by…nothing. Emptiness.
She did not—could not—understand.
Upstairs, the baby monitor crackled. Leona’s cry echoed in the silence.
CJ went upstairs, and poked her head in her daughter’s bedroom.
The nightlight threw starry shadows on the wall that wheeled and spun. Leona snuffled in her sleep, turning over. All was well.
They were fine.
She was about to close the door when an object in the corner of the room caught her eye.
Her breath hitched.
Danny’s guitar.
It wasn’t the only thing.
On the dresser beside it was a collection of objects.
An acorn. A seed pod. A sand dollar. A pine cone. A smooth river rock.
She worried the pads of her fingers along her collarbone, hugged her arms to her rib cage.
Reaching out, she plucked the acorn from the dresser and held it in the center of her palm, studying it. It was cracked on one side, dry and delicate after the heat of summer. As empty of answers as she was.
You’re kind of a wildcat yourself.
After all he had promised. After all he had said he would do. She was stunned he was gone, and she was astonished by her own capacity for cruelty.
She fought to keep her jaw still, her throat closed. To keep the hot, ragged cry of anguish from bursting out of her. If it did, it’d surely never stop.
That night, CJ fell asleep curled in a ball on the twin bed in Leona’s room, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from sobbing.
When she woke the next day, the sour, metallic tang of blood in her mouth made her stomach turn. It was the taste of bad pennies; of old wounds, and luck that kept on turning.
She threw up all morning.
*
END PART III
*