Chương 13
“I was mad before the video.”
“I know.”
He glanced at her.
“Sorry. Continue.”
He smiled.
“I was mad for eight years.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Yeah.”
He crushed a piece of ice.
“Pike and I had a fight that morning.”
Mara had never known this.
“About what?”
“Nothing.”
“That specific?”
“He’d borrowed my truck before deployment. Put a dent in the tailgate. Swore it was already there.”
Mara blinked.
“That’s what you fought about?”
“Among other things.”
Mike stared at his coffee.
“Last real conversation I had with him, I called him a liar over a dent.”
Mara said nothing.
“He died four days later.”
Mike’s jaw tightened.
“And I think some part of me decided if I could make the whole thing your decision, then maybe I didn’t have to keep hearing my own voice being an asshole about a truck.”
Mara looked down.
“That’s a very human way to ruin eight years.”
He laughed once.
“Yeah.”
She took a drink.
After a while Mike said, “You still think it was your fault?”
“Some days.”
“That’s stupid.”
“I know.”
He pointed at her.
“There. You’re allowed to say it that time.”
She smiled.
They talked for nearly two hours.
Not only about the fire.
Mike’s daughter wanted to study architecture.
His ex-wife had remarried.
He had started restoring old motorcycles and sold one for more money than he thought it was worth.
Mara told him Ethan had moved back into her apartment the previous week.
“You married yet?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because apparently weddings require planning.”
“Elope.”
“My mother will kill me.”
“Your mother scared me more than the fuel fire.”
“That’s reasonable.”
When they left, Mike hugged her awkwardly.
He smelled like coffee and aftershave.
At his truck he stopped.
“Hey.”
“What?”
“Pike did have terrible socks.”
“The worst.”
“He’d want us to stop doing this.”
Mara knew what he meant.
Punishing ourselves in his name.
She nodded.
“Probably.”
Mike opened the truck door.
“Still not forgiving him for the tailgate.”
“Absolutely not.”
He drove away.
Mara stood in the parking lot until he turned onto the street.
Then she went home.
Ethan had left cabinet doors open in the kitchen.
All three.
Mara stared at them.
“Are you an animal?”
He looked up from chopping onions.
“What?”
“The cabinets.”
He glanced over.
“Oh.”
“Three, Ethan.”
“I’m cooking.”
“That doesn’t require architectural exposure.”
He closed two.
Mara pointed at the third.
He sighed and closed it.
“Happy?”
“Deeply.”
He went back to the onions.
She kissed his shoulder.
“How was Mike?”
“Good.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Ethan nodded.
He did not ask for details.
Mara noticed that too.
She opened a cabinet.
Took out a glass.
Left the door open.
Ethan stared at it.
Mara smiled.
“Growth.”
“You’re a terrible person.”
“So I’ve heard.”
They set a wedding date for the following spring.
Small.
Forty guests.
No family foundation property.
No photographers beyond one woman Lena knew from nursing school.
When Vivian offered the Mercer estate, Mara said no.
Vivian said, “I expected that.”
Sloane did not receive an invitation.
Ethan did not ask Mara to reconsider.
That mattered.
Sloane completed the terms of her diversion agreement in February.
Mara knew because the victim-services coordinator sent an update.
Three days later a letter arrived.
The return address belonged to Sloane’s attorney.
Mara left it unopened on the kitchen counter for two days.
Ethan did not touch it.
On the third morning, Mara opened it while eating toast.
The letter was handwritten.
Mara,
My attorney told me not to send this until the case conditions allowed it. I have rewritten it enough times that I’m probably hiding behind revisions, so I’m sending the version I dislike most.
I am sorry I hit you.
I am sorry I asked you to hide your scars before I hit you.
I am sorry that my first concern afterward was the foundation.
There are explanations for why I behaved the way I did. None of them make the behavior acceptable.
I spent most of my life believing control was the same thing as competence. When you refused to cover yourself for a photograph, I felt something stupid and disproportionate: that I was losing control of the event. I treated your body like part of my event.
That sentence is difficult to write. It should be.
I don’t expect forgiveness.
I also don’t expect a relationship with you.
I wanted to say one thing without a communications director, lawyer, family member, board member, or therapist turning it into better language.
I was wrong.
Sloane
Mara read it twice.
Then folded it.
Ethan came into the kitchen.
“You read it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
He poured coffee.
Mara looked at the letter.
“Aren’t you going to ask?”
“No.”
“That’s irritating.”
“I’ve been practicing.”
She smiled.
He sat across from her.
After a minute she handed him the letter.
He read it.
His face gave away almost nothing.
“What do you think?” Mara asked.
He placed it down.
“I think she wrote it to you.”
“That is annoyingly healthy.”
“Lena has poisoned me.”
Mara took the letter back.
She did not answer Sloane.
Not then.
The wedding took place on a windy Saturday in April at a small restaurant overlooking the water.
Mara wore a sleeveless ivory dress.
The scar on her upper arm showed.
The abdominal scar did not, mostly because wedding dresses were not engineered like bikinis.
Lena stood beside her.
Mike came with his daughter.
Caleb Ruiz arrived late and claimed airline incompetence.
Thomas Weller came in a dark suit.
No uniform.
No medals.
No salute.
Before the ceremony he approached Mara near the terrace.
“You look happy,” he said.
“I’m terrified.”
“That too.”
She smiled.
He held out a small box.
“No.”
“You haven’t opened it.”
“If that is anything military—”
“It’s not.”
She opened it.
Inside was a cheap pair of socks printed with tiny tacos.
Mara stared.
Weller looked pleased with himself.
May you like
“Anne helped.”
Mara laughed so hard Lena came over to see what had happened.
