“The FBI?” I stared at him. “Jesus, Michael.”
“They said it’s probably nothing. Miguel Ángel Ochoa is locked up. Most of his network is scattered. The ones still loyal are focused on keeping themselves out of prison, not...”
“Not what? Not killing the journalist who exposed everything? Not silencing the witness before trial?” I pulled away from him because I needed space to breathe. “You wrote about what they did to that accountant who testified. They killed his whole family, Michael. Hiswhole family.”
“That was different?—”
“How? How is it different?”
Through the window, Rose tumbled off the swing and landed hard in the wood chips. For a second she was still, and my whole body seized. Then the wail started, more surprise than pain. Blaze was already there, helping her up, brushing off her pants.
“Because I won’t let anything happen to you,” Michael said quietly. “To any of you. I promised you that the day the piece was published, and I meant it.”
I turned back to him. This man I’d loved since I was twenty years old. Who’d held me through three miscarriages and never once let go. Who looked at our children like they were gifts because to us, they were.
“What if promising isn’t enough?” I asked.
Neither of us had an answer for that.
Michael crossed the kitchen and pulled me into his arms. I pressed my face against his chest and listened to his heartbeat. The same rhythm I’d been falling asleep to for fourteen years.
“Then I won’t testify,” he said. “If you want me to walk away, I’ll walk away.”
I pulled back to look at him. “You don’t mean that.”
“I mean it more than anything I’ve ever said.” His thumb traced my cheekbone. “You and the kids are everything. The story, the trial, justice. None of it matters as much as you do.”
I thought about the piece he’d written. The victims he’d named. The families destroyed by the Ochoa cartel who’d waited years for someone to say their names out loud.
I thought about what he’d told Blaze that day two years ago in the kitchen:Sometimes the most important thing you can do is tell the truth, even when it’s hard.
“You have to testify,” I said.
“Shell—”
“You have to. Because if you don’t, what are we teaching our children?” I looked toward the window where Blaze was carrying Rose on his hip, pointing at something in the yard. “That you run when things get scary? That you only tell the truth when it’s convenient?”
“I’m teaching them that family comes first.”
“You’re teaching them that fear wins.” My voice cracked. “Those people Ochoa killed, they had families too. Families who deserve justice. And if you don’t testify, if you let them scare us into silence...”
Michael kissed me. Slow and deep, his hands in my hair, and I held onto him like I was trying to memorize the shape of him.
When he pulled back, his eyes were wet.
“I love you,” he said. “God, Shell, I love you so much.”
“I know.” I pressed my forehead to his. “I love you too. That’s why we’re doing this. I’ll be right there with you.”
The next fewweeks passed in normalcy.
We didn’t talk about the trial date. We didn’t discuss the new locks or the changed routine or the way Michael checked his mirrors twice before pulling out of any parking lot.
We focused on ordinary things. Fury’s basketball games. Blaze’s science fair project. Rose’s expanding vocabulary and her stubborn refusal to eat anything green.
Patrick and Theresa’s house became our refuge. Sunday dinners stretched longer. The cousins wore themselves out while the adults lingered, pretending everything was fine.
Theresa knew. My sister-in-law had always been able to read me, and one evening she cornered me in her kitchen while the men were outside with the kids.
