By the time he reached the last sketchbook, his hands were shaking, his chest aching with the weight of it. What was in there wasn’t for his eyes alone. He folded forward and let himself lie back on the bed. Memory rushed in hard and merciless.
This was what Mei had been carrying. This was what Mei’s mom had meant for him to know.
He curled onto his side, clutching the nearest sketchbook to his chest like it might stop him from coming apart entirely. The grief finally took him then, deep and consuming. He sobbed into the pillow, shoulders heaving, the sound pulled from a place he’d kept locked down for weeks.
She hadn’t been unsure. She hadn’t been holding back. She had loved him with intention.
Than stayed there until the light shifted and the ocean darkened outside the windows. He fell asleep, his slumber fitful. He woke the next morning, the loss in him like the tears on his cheeks he hadn’t even known he was crying. He wiped his face and stood in front of the portrait again.
“I see you,” he said softly. For the first time since she’d died, he believed with all his heart that she had always seen him, too.
When he got back to the dorm, Fly was getting dressed. He took one look at Than, then the sketchbook in his hands.
“You okay?”
“Not really. You should see this.”
Fly sat down on his bed, Than settling next to him.
Fly opened the cover to the first page. His face contorted, and he made a soft sound. “Mei,” he whispered, turning another page.
Fly as she saw him.
Standing at the helm, posture loose but exact, eyes narrowed against wind and glare. One hand steady on the tiller, the other lifted mid-command, the whole of him oriented outward, reading water, sky, crew. There was no softness here, but there was reverence. She’d captured him as a fixed point, a man shaped by responsibility and motion. Than swallowed. Another page. Fly again, seated this time, elbows on his knees, head bowed, expression stripped down to thought. The lines were heavier. The shadows deeper. This wasn’t admiration. This was understanding.
She had seen both of them.
He turned the page again.
Them at the Tide & Bean, sketched in charcoal and ink. Fly leaning back in his chair, one boot hooked around a rung, Than beside him, shoulder angled in. The table cluttered with glasses and folded napkins, laughter frozen mid-motion. Another showed them sailing, Valor heeling hard, spray cutting white across the bow, Fly at the helm and Than forward, bodies aligned, trust rendered in line and balance.
The drawings were dramatic. Alive.
Mei had captured moments of motion and meaning, the way things felt rather than how they looked. She had drawn belonging.
Fly closed the book slowly, bowing his head, working at keeping his emotions from spilling over. She hadn’t just loved him. She had loved them. The quiet constellation of people who mattered to her. The bonds she trusted. The men she believed in.
They sat there for a long time, surrounded by the truth of it, evidence of a life deeply and deliberately lived.
That was when the grief finally took Fly. He folded forward, clutching the sketchbook to his chest, and let himself sob into the quiet of the room.
She had seen them all.
She had held them in ink and paint, in lines and angles. In her heart.
There was deep solace in that.
“You keep it,” Than said. “She left me…some beautiful stuff.” His voice broke. “I’ll show you when I can.”
Fly nodded. “Thank you, Than, for allowing me to have this.”
“She belongs to both of us.”
23
RCMP WILD Headquarters, RCMP Barn, Outskirts of Kamloops, British Columbia
Whatever he carried, she suspected it ran deeper than the loss of her career. Deeper than losing her family’s respect, respect that had always felt conditional anyway, earned through performance instead of love. Or maybe it was something harsher still. Something more devastating.
