Chương 8
“He used a wrong word in anger.”
“Nice distinction.”
“It matters.”
“To you.”
“Yes.”
Mike exhaled sharply.
“You always did this.”
“Did what?”
“Make everything precise enough that you don’t have to feel it.”
Mara’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“You don’t know what I feel.”
“Neither do you half the time.”
She almost hung up.
Instead she said, “And you make everything somebody’s fault because grief without a defendant scares you.”
Nothing on the line.
Mara closed her eyes.
Too far.
“Mike—”
“Go to hell.”
The call ended.
She sat there for a long time.
When Lena came onto the balcony, Mara handed her the phone.
“I’m an asshole.”
Lena looked at the blank screen.
“What did you do?”
“I told Mike he needs someone to blame for Pike.”
Lena winced.
“That’s not ideal.”
“No.”
“Was it true?”
“That doesn’t help.”
“No.”
They watched traffic.
After a while Lena said, “Call him tomorrow.”
“He won’t answer.”
“Then leave a better voicemail.”
Mara rubbed her cheek. The swelling had gone down, leaving tenderness along the jaw.
“Everybody wants a version.”
“Of what?”
“Me.”
Lena leaned on the railing.
“That’s because they don’t know you.”
“Ethan doesn’t know this part either.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Mara looked at her.
Lena shrugged.
“He’s allowed to want to know the person he’s marrying.”
“I told him what happened.”
“You told him you were injured on deployment.”
“That’s what happened.”
Lena gave her a flat look.
Mara sighed.
“Fine.”
“You don’t have to tell him everything.”
“I know.”
“But if there’s a room in your head where you go every June and every time a generator backfires and every time someone calls you brave, he probably deserves to know the room exists.”
Mara looked at the road.
“I hate when you’re reasonable.”
“I have a baby. It changed me.”
“You left your diaper bag in the car.”
Lena looked down.
“Damn it.”
The next morning Mara filed a police report.
She did not do it because social media demanded accountability.
She did not do it because Weller told her to; he did not.
She did not do it because Ethan wanted her to, although he did.
She did it because when she woke at four seventeen, she realized she had spent thirty-six hours thinking about everyone except the woman who had been hit.
She drove to the station with Lena.
An officer took photographs of the faint bruise on her cheek, asked questions, took names of witnesses, and explained that the report would be forwarded for review. He did not promise an arrest. He did not tell her what would happen. He did not call her a hero.
Mara liked him for that.
In the parking lot afterward, Lena handed her a coffee.
“How do you feel?”
“Like I filed paperwork.”
“That’s deeply moving.”
“Thank you.”
“Want to go home?”
Mara looked toward the street.
“Yes.”
The reporters had mostly left her apartment by then.
Denise let them in through the garage.
She hugged Mara without permission, then stepped back and inspected her face.
“I saw worse at a Steelers game in 1989.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“Your basil died.”
“I was gone two days.”
“It lacked character.”
Mara laughed.
Denise pointed at Ethan.
“You.”
He straightened.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You hurt her, I have a shovel.”
Ethan blinked.
Mara said, “Denise.”
“What? I garden.”
“You live in an apartment.”
“Community plot.”
Ethan nodded solemnly.
“Understood.”
Denise seemed satisfied.
Mara opened her door.
Her apartment looked exactly as she had left it.
A gray blanket folded over the couch.
Two mugs in the drying rack.
Mail on the counter.
Her running shoes beside the balcony door.
The ordinary sight of it made something in her chest loosen.
Ethan carried their bags inside.
Lena left after making Mara promise to eat lunch.
For ten minutes, Mara and Ethan unpacked without talking.
He placed his shirts in the small section of drawer she had cleared for him months earlier.
She watched him fold one twice because it did not fit.
“Ethan.”
“Yeah?”
“Sit down.”
He stopped.
“That sounds bad.”
“Probably.”
He sat on the edge of the bed.
Mara remained standing.
Then she changed her mind and sat beside him.
For a while neither spoke.
Finally she said, “His name was Aaron Pike.”
Ethan nodded.
“I know.”
“Don’t.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“He was thirty-two. He had a wife, Anne, and a daughter who was four then. He drank powdered lemonade because he hated coffee, which should’ve disqualified him from military service.”
Ethan smiled faintly.
“He was a doctor?”
“Physician assistant. Better at sutures than me and smug about it.”
“You were friends.”
“Yes.”
Mara looked at her hands.
“The night of the fire, we were evacuating after the second explosion. Ruiz caught me outside and said Bay Three was still locked from the inside. Twenty-three men.”
Ethan listened.
“I went back.”
“Why you?”
“I knew the interior hall.”
“That’s it?”
“That was enough.”
“Did Pike choose to follow?”
“Yes.”
“Could you have stopped him?”
“I ordered him not to.”
Ethan turned toward her.
“You ordered him not to?”
“I outranked him by six months.”
“What did he say?”
Mara almost smiled.
“He said, ‘That is adorable.’”
Ethan laughed softly.
Mara did too.
Then the laugh was gone.
“We got seventeen through the inner corridor before part of the ceiling came down. Reeve and Pike were behind me. I remember the sound more than anything else.”
Her fingers found the scar beneath her shirt.
“Pike pushed me forward. Something hit my abdomen. He went down.”
Ethan said nothing.
“Reeve tried to pull him. I tried too. Then there was another fire warning. Somebody screamed that the south wall was going.”
She stared at the floor.
“We left him for maybe ninety seconds.”
Ethan’s voice was careful.
“Left him?”
“To get the others out.”
“Mara.”
“He was alive.”
She swallowed.
“We went back.”
“You went back again?”
“Yes.”
May you like
“Jesus.”
“Reeve and I. Crash crew came through the other side. We got Pike out.”
