Chapter 21

Nate faced Janie across the kitchen counter, her hands cupped around a mug of chamomile tea. She’d drawn all the curtains, he’d checked all the rooms, and for the moment it was just them again in their old house, their daughter upstairs. But now, he realized, it was probably time for him to leave.

He got up from the barstool, withdrew the Beretta from the waist of his jeans, and set it carefully on the counter. “If they come again. You’re here with Cielle.”

“Is this real?” Janie’s eyes were unfocused, dazed.

“What?”

“All of it. Your dying. The death threat on Cielle. Pete leaving.”

“I’ll make sure Cielle’s safe and you’re safe, too, and then Pete can come back and you and he can work it out, start over.”

“How about you?” she asked. “The ALS?”

He smiled. “That I can’t fix.”

She reached across, slid the Beretta back to him. “I don’t want the gun.”

He made no move toward it. “I know you don’t.”

Her eyes went from the gun to his face. “Will you stay with it?”

He looked down, embarrassed that she’d see what this meant to him. He picked up the gun, tucked it in his jeans again. “I’ll sleep down here on the couch. Keep watch.”

“Talk to your daughter first. She needs you. Whether she knows it or not.” Janie turned to wash out her cup and he looked at her back for a moment before starting for the stairs. Casper rose from his slumber to follow him up.

He confronted Cielle’s bedroom door a moment before tapping. “Honey? It’s me.”

“What do you want?”

“I just want to see your face.”

A long silence. Then she said, “I heard Pete say to Mom, ‘I am not cleaning up his mess again.’ Is that what I was to him? A mess?”

“Oh, honey. No.” He leaned against the closed door. “He was talking about me and what I got us all into. Pete loves you.”

“Then why’d he leave?”

“Because he was scared.”

“I’m scared, too. And I don’t get to leave. Because they’re after me.” Fear cracked her voice. “I never get a say in anything. Everything’s just you guys making choices and doing things, and then I’m the one who has to live with it all.”

He pressed a hand to the wood. “From here on out, I will tell you everything. Every move, every choice. And you will get a say. Deal?”

“What were you doing at the bank?”

Not a hesitation. The question right there, locked and loaded.

His mouth went dry. How could he tell her something like that?

“You said you’d tell me everything,” Cielle said. “So?”

He struggled to find a point of entry. “Remember how I told you your grandma died?”

Her voice came through the door. “Yeah. Cancer.”

“I never talked to you about what that was like. For me, as a kid. And so … with me now and what I’m looking at … I didn’t want to put you through that.” He took a breath. “That’s why I was on that ledge.”

He waited, palm against the door, listening. Nothing.

Just as he was about to turn away, the knob twisted and the door pulled open a little more than an inch. Her face, red from crying, filled the crack. She looked in his eyes, really looking at him for the first time since he’d come back. Then she nodded and closed the door.