I make my way back to the deck, unable to stay in the room anymore.
The marsh is darker now and the heron that’s been keeping us company every day is gone. Tybee smells like salt and rot and gentleness. The reflection in the glass of the door shows me a man I recognize and hate.
Phoenix can leave. She can put a bag on a shoulder and a leash on a dog and walk down a driveway that a man I used to loathe paid for and vanish into a life that doesn’t require me. She can use our million to make herself safe in a country that prefers stories to facts. She can call the boat a dream and sell the nightmare for parts to keep her in a life.
I bite my tongue and taste copper, raw and clean.
If she leaves, it won’t be because he opened a door and made his hands look clean. It will be because she decides to.
If she stays, it will not be because of a contract or a clause or a leash or a ring or my father’s blank smile.
It will be because of us. The five of us. Each of us individually, with her, and all of us together.
Down the hall, a door clicks—open, not closed. Zeus’s nails tick. Phoenix’s bare feet whisper against a runner. I don’t turn. I don’t breathe. The glass shows me her reflection when she pauses in the den, scanning.
She looks toward the balcony and sees me seeing her. She doesn’t come, but she doesn’t walk away, either.
We hang there, two people on either side of the glass that separates salt from conditioned air, waiting. For what, I’m not sure. For me to ask? For her to tell me?
“Conrad,” she says at last, her lips shaping the word. The way she says my name is not goodbye and not a promise. It is a key landing in my palm, weighty, undecided.
I turn, and if my cheeks are wet, it’s the salt water. I know it’s the fucking salt water.
“Stay,” I say, helpless. It tears out of me like a sin I don’t regret.
She doesn’t answer. Not yet. She doesn’t owe me that.
When she goes back down the hall, she leaves the door open, a small, cruel mercy that both saves me and sets me on fire.
I am a man built for outcomes. Tonight I am a man with an if. I hate it. I hold it. I let it ruin me in the exact measure required to make me worthy of whatever word she says next.
19
Phoenix
Tamsin closesher laptop and watches me the way she did that first hour—steady, curious, and not afraid of what I might say.
“We’ll keep meeting,” she says as she slips the tablet into her bag. “Twice a week on video. If you want me here in person, I can come back. And if you have a bad hour, text me your color and I’ll make room.”
“Green for go, yellow for slow, red for stop,” I say. “I remember.” Idly, I let my fingers resume the steadytap tap tapagainst my thigh that brings me comfort.
“I suspected you would.” She smiles, small and uncomplicated with one glance down at my fingers before she moves on. “You’re doing the hard parts. Feeling things while your body is still on alert is not easy. It is enough, though.”
I nod. “Thank you.”
She squeezes my forearm—a quick, human touch—and leaves me with a short list on a sticky note:water, food, walk on the deck, write three sentences that are only about the present.They’re such small things, it feels almost childish. It is also doable.
Tap.
Dr. Hale arrives as Tamsin goes and checks me the way she has every morning. Light in my eyes, pulse under her fingers, a quick sweep over the bandage at my nape.
“No fever. Site is clean. Bruising is fading,” she says. “You’re tired. That’s normal.”
Tap.
“I can do normal.”
“Good. I’m not going far,” she adds, packing up. “But you don’t need a doctor in your pocket anymore. You need sleep, quiet, and people who know how to sit with you.”
