48

Around Clay, the world of night rasped and chirped and rustled. Cicadas, crickets, maybe a rabbit in the bushes beside the patio steps. He shifted against the hard Adirondack chair and leaned his head back. He’d sat here less than a week ago and listened to Khloe and Violet’s sleepover chatter and thought of how he’d escaped danger. Escape, yeah. So he could dive back into it and drag his girls down with him and … Stop it. You dragged them down and pulled them back up. Can’t change it now, but you did something about it.

The sliding door whispered open, shut. He turned his head.

“She cried herself to sleep.” Natalia took the chair across from him and drew up her bare knees. She’d changed into a fresh shirt and khaki shorts. “She keeps asking me if Violet’s okay.”

“Violet’s fine.”

“I’m sure she is.” Natalia stretched her legs and met his eyes. That hadn’t been sarcasm.

“You don’t think I’m a monster for leaving her with those network people?”

Natalia shook her head, but her eyes strayed past the glow of the porch light. Tires squealed from miles away, and Clay’s body tensed, waiting for a crash, but the night carried on without one. A tree frog trilled.

Nat’s sigh seemed to push out into the dark and fade away. “She made a choice, Clay. Thinking it was the right one … doesn’t make it the right one.”

He nodded.

“And Khloe will be fine, but it’s hard to … to hate someone. And love them. At the same time.”

What was she saying? Clay’s breath drew in too loudly. She had to hear it. She stood up, wandered to the wooden patio railing, leaned her elbows on it and faced the night. Her back shuddered.

Say something. She’s waiting. “I don’t think Khloe noticed the lock.”

He was truly stupid.

But Natalia turned around. A headache dug a furrow across her eyebrows. Clay’s hand twitched. He could rub the stress away. She’d always said so, all the way back to college.

“I’ll, um, I’ll buy a new doorknob and everything tomorrow, first thing. Should be able to handle that.”

“No pun intended?” A smile lifted her mouth.

Pun … right. The grin took over his face. He nearly stood up and gathered Nat to his chest. But the levity winged away a moment later. He had to talk to her, and he had no idea what he was going to say.

“Have you checked the news today?” Natalia said. Maybe she wasn’t ready to talk, either.

Clay shook his head.

“Texas seceded.”

“They … what? Can they do that?”

“We’ll find out, I guess. They’ve talked about it before, you know.”

“Right, but they were just being Texas. Protesting the erosion of the Constitution, maintaining their individuality among the states … It’ll never be allowed.”

“Time will tell. But they’re going to become a fugitive sanctuary, if they don’t close their borders fast. They disbanded the Constabulary.”

No way it would last. The country was centuries past the idea of civil war, but somehow, the federal government would stop them.

“After this week, I have to admit, the end of the Constabulary might be a relief. But it’ll never happen here.” Natalia looked over her shoulder, toward the front of the house. “I’m surprised all they did was force the lock. I expected crime-scene tape and ransacking, but … well, I can’t even tell they moved anything.”

“Maybe they didn’t.” But if they had … and then put it back … The shiver ran up and down his spine again as he pictured agents roving his house. “Maybe the lock’s a message.”

“They’re not the Mafia, Clay.”

Close enough sometimes. Making deals, agreeing to leave certain lawbreakers alone on certain conditions … Maybe he was crazy not to care that his front door wouldn’t lock right now. Crazy to leave a chair shoved under the doorknob. But after the past five days, he couldn’t trust a locked door any more than an unlocked one. He’d sleep in his own bed. Burglars and Constabulary agents and everyone else could go to oblivion.

“Anyway.” Natalia paced back to her chair and curled up. “I should be grateful, I guess. They could’ve done worse.”

A lightbulb, cobwebbed and flickering, came on in his brain. “You feel okay here? I mean, would you have wanted to stay somewhere else?”

“Oh, it’s fine.” But then she stared at him.

“What?”

“You just asked … how I feel.”

Had he? “I … well, sure, I ask that … sometimes. About some things.”

“You don’t, Clay.”

He squirmed, stood up, paced to the edge of the patio and wanted to keep going. No. No, he didn’t want that. He wanted to live the rest of their lives without giving his wife another reason to write a note and walk out the door. But getting that message to his feet, his legs, the weight in his chest—none of them wanted to listen.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” he said.

Back indoors. Walls to keep him where he needed—wanted—to be.

“Clay?”

Her voice barely reached his back. Soft. Seeking. His pulse hammered. What did she need? What if he couldn’t give it, didn’t have it to give?

“I … I feel like maybe … something’s … different? About you?”

Turn around. You undeserving dung heap of a husband, turn around. Clay’s body fought his brain every inch of the way, and his heart—did he have one? Which side was it taking?

“What happened? How did you manage to … Why did they let us all go?”

“I …” He faced her at last. Her eyes glimmered under the porch light. A moth fluttered past the back of her chair. “I gave them something they wanted … more than us.”

“Something?”

“I did what I had to, Nat. I finally did what you—what we all—needed me to do, and that’s all I’m saying about it.”

A slow nod, but she kept studying him. “Is this problem … could this … come back … in the future?”

That wasn’t a general question. “I signed a statement.”

Her eyebrows lifted with surprise. And hope.

“It’s over. I recanted.”

“Were you lying?”

He was pitiful, because after all this, he still didn’t know. Which version of God was real, which version of Jesus had walked the earth, which one had heard his prayers in the beginning, which one had recently developed deafness. Well, one thing he did know. Whichever one You are, You didn’t deliver us. I did.

“No,” he said.

Natalia stared at him, a bright-haired pixie statue. “Thank God.”

“Look, Nat, I … I don’t know … I know I’m … I might not ever be the person you need, and I don’t know—”

“Shut up.” Tears filled her eyes, magnified their green glimmer. “Please shut up about that and talk to me.”

“About what?”

“I feel—I feel like I can’t get anywhere near you.”

A quaking started somewhere, maybe in his feet, maybe in his chest. Feelings. Curse them. Not now. Too much to process with his Nat standing here. She crossed the patio, and the porch light danced through her hair as she walked directly under its glow. She wrapped his hand in both of hers and tugged him toward the closest chair. His pulse drummed in his head.

Natalia pushed at his shoulder until he sank into the chair. She leaned down and kissed him, and a sweet caution flavored her lips. She pulled back before he could return the kiss and settled on his lap.

“Clay?”

Right, go ahead, say it. I feel fill-in-the-blank. “Nat, I …”

Why did she suddenly want his feelings out in the open? Even when they were dating, the early weeks of breathless discovery, of kisses like fireworks and hand brushes like lightning strikes, Natalia had never asked this of him. Never once asked how he felt. About anything. As it should be.

“Please say something, anything,” she said.

She tilted her head onto his shoulder and rested her hand on his chest. She breathed against him. A tear dripped onto his T-shirt. She huddled, the same soft, beautiful thing that learned to shield herself, but she offered herself again now. Right now. If he maintained the silence, he would be throwing away everything she gave.

This was what he’d asked for. Another chance.

But not this kind of chance. Not the kind that asked for pieces of his heart. Natalia lifted her head. Her hand curled into his shirt, then let go.

Silence was safe, but so was Nat.

Natalia shifted her feet to the porch, and her tears reflected the light. “I guess I should … Clay?”

He caged her in his arm. Pulled her close.

“What is it?”

Just give me a minute.

“Clay, what—?”

“I had a sister.” Clay trembled. Of all the words to burst out of him.

Natalia pushed back, sat up. “What are you talking about?”

“In Ohio. When I was a kid.”

“I don’t understand. You’ve never talked about her. Your parents have never talked about her.”

“She drowned. At a park. Like Clinton River. We were insect hunting and she saw the stepping stones and we didn’t know, we didn’t know the water was so fast. She fell. In. And I couldn’t get—I couldn’t—I couldn’t get to her—”

“Shh.”

Her arms enfolded him. He hid his face against her neck. His tears filled every silence, every space.

“Shh, Clay.”

“They resuscitated her, but she never woke up. She was comatose until … for weeks until … I was at school when Dad and Mom decided. I came home and she … They never let me in the room. I saw her through the door. And then I never saw her again.”

“I’m sorry.”

“They never said that. They never said anything at all. It was like they never had any child but me. We moved and their new friends didn’t know her and they never told anyone about her. So I couldn’t, either. She’s locked inside me, and I want to believe she’s locked inside them too, but I’ve never seen her in their eyes. I don’t know if they even remember their daughter.”

“You could have told me. When we first met, you could have talked about her right then.”

“I knew I could. But I couldn’t.” He tried to stop the rest of the tears, but they poured. Those few drips in the car with Khloe—they should have warned him more were coming. He never cried halfway. But on his bike, tears dried too fast to count. He’d never known how many he had.

“Have you ever cried for her before?” Natalia whispered into his hair.

He nodded against her neck. “Sometimes I have to, so … so I go off by myself for a while.”

“Clay, is this what you do? Not just for your sister, but … is this what you do?”

“Cry excessively? No, I—I don’t—” He gulped air. “Not normally.”

“I mean, when … when Khloe was sick. You weren’t running away from it. You were running to it. To a place you could let it out.”

What? Did he do that?

Natalia rocked him. “Listen to me, we’re going to figure this out. You are my husband. I want … I want to be that place you run to.”

Clay sat up, shifted, pulled her into his arms instead. Her forehead was warm under his lips. He should wipe the tears, but she’d already seen them, and it was all right.

“Nat, I know I’ve got … things. To prove.”

Natalia kissed him, deep and long, salty and sweet. “You’ve proved a lot in the last day or two.”

His heart stung, but then it eased. It had been so long since he felt … clean. Open. Ready for whatever might come next. He kissed his wife and saw the unfurling flag of the future. Khloe growing up with a clean record, going to the best art school in the country. Him and Natalia growing together, slowly at first, then twining so close they forgot how to cut each other, holding each other into old age until death at last parted them. And what could he ever need again besides these things?

“I was thinking the three of us should go up to Mackinac next weekend,” he said.

Natalia smiled. “Reclaiming us. Let’s do it.”

“Hilary.” He stood up and scooped Nat into his arms. “My sister’s name was Hilary.”

“Do you have any pictures?”

“No.”

“Do your parents?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Let’s ask for one.”

Maybe he could. He dropped a kiss on Nat’s forehead. “She liked waffles with whipped cream. She wanted to be a veterinarian.”

Natalia’s hand curled around his neck and tugged. The kiss tasted like honey and a vow.