I smiled, because I had been afraid of that, too. “She was so proud of you, you know.”
My stomach tightened when I said it. Had she been proud of me? In the end, I mean? Had I been what she needed when times got tough, when the chips were down, when push came to shove? I’d like to think so. I’d never know for sure, of course. And I’d never forget. I’d never get over what had transpired during her last days.
Scott shook his head. “I don’t know if I believe in heaven and eternal knowledge and all that, but if it exists and she gets there, she might not be too proud when she realizes what I really did.”
“You saved Adam. What more could she want from you?”
Scott shook his head.
I was confused. “Am I wrong? Did you not rescue Adam?”
“Maybe. But at what cost?”
“What are you talking about?”
Scott put his head in his hands. “I have to get something off my chest, Emerson,” he said. “It has been eating me alive.”
I knew what that felt like. I had bite marks, too.
I could see his eyes welling as he sucked his breath through his teeth. “I got a kid killed over there,” he said. “I saved Adam, but I killed a kid.”
I felt my eyes widen, but I was trying not to react too strongly. I didn’t want to make him feel worse. “What do you mean?” I whispered.
“The man in the video? The one who fell? He wasn’t a man. He was just a seventeen-year-old kid.”
I cringed as I remembered that day, sitting in Caroline’s beautiful, serene house in the Hamptons when I got the text from Kyle. He sent me a harrowing YouTube video of leaked drone footage. Logic told me that if the footage was current and it was legit, one of the men in that video was my brother-in-law. And I was going to have to be the one to show it to my sister.
“So what did that have to do with you?”
“He was the one who told me where Adam was. He was the one who helped him escape.”
I gasped and put my hand to my mouth. “How did he know?”
Scott bit his lip. “He was one of the insurgent’s sons. I appealed to him, made him feel guilty so that maybe he would tell me where Adam was. But I never thought I would have made him feel guilty enough that he would try to help Adam and his unit escape. I would never have done that.”
I closed my eyes, knowing how this must weigh on Scott. In some ways, it put what I had done into perspective.
“I’m sorry, Scott,” I said. “I really am. But it’s not your fault. You didn’t point the gun. You didn’t pull the trigger.”
I couldn’t imagine a father killing his son, no matter what had happened, and I said so.
Scott shook his head. “His son had betrayed him in the worst possible way. He was dead to him anyway, I guess.”
I nodded. “While we’re airing our dirty laundry, I have something that I would love to get off my chest, too.”
“Hit me with your best shot, kiddo,” Scott said, leaning back in his chair.
I knew he was expecting something shiny and millennial, a fight with a friend, a social-media scandal. So maybe that was why such vast horror crossed his face when I said what I said.
“I killed Grammy.”
End scene.
THIRTEEN
ansley: a wonderful surprise
Maybe I’d picked the fight with Jack. I couldn’t really be sure. I mean, I was as on edge as I had ever been. We had Emerson’s doctor’s appointment, and, Caroline’s surprise aside, any fool could see that coming back to Manhattan was beyond painful for me. I don’t know why I had tried to dump this on top of everything else we had going on.
