“Did you ever find it?” Emory asked and shivered against the night’s subtle chill. It’d displaced the heat and burrowed beneath his skin.
“No, but I still look for it sometimes. Here’s my point. You lost something meaningful toyou. It’s a tragedy toyou. Just because the men don’t understand doesn’t mean you can change what Amelia means to you. That girl is your calm sea.”
“My what?”
“Your calm sea. When I was a young man chasing the wrong kind, my father told me, ‘Look for calm seas.’ People wondered how a delicate creature like my mother managed a son-of-a-bitch like him, but she was always the backbone, the strong one. She stilled the storm inside him. A calm sea. Amelia is your calm sea.”
Emory nodded, though it took no great deal of introspection to know what Amelia was to him. The thought was beautiful, but Liam left out a crucial part. The sea was at the mercy of the sky. When storms rolled in, calm waters suffered the surge.
“Your mother and Francisca,” Emory said, “they endured, but would you say they flourished? Or did they live their lives in service to an organization that robbed them of normalcy and peace of mind?”
Overhead, a floodlight flicked on and left Liam faintly stunned in its light. “They made sacrifices. All the spouses do.”
“But our world consumes people. You think a future ofsacrifice is what I want for Amelia? Look at what I do for a living. Look at what’s happened now because of it.”
“We’ve all done awful things in our time. You’re a good man.”
Emory expelled a caustic laugh. “Am I? Sometimes, I have these dreams where my sins are weighed against Ivan’s, and the scales come up even. Same darkness. Same monstrosity.”
In those nightmares, Emory chased salvation, but the beast lived in him, and when it broke free, it thrived with Ivan by his side, two brothers bonded in blood.
“Bad men don’t bother with atonement,” Liam said. “I promise you Ivan doesn’t worry about that. You are not your brother. You saved Amelia’s life. You could’ve left her at Dauer’s, but you didn’t. I’m not stupid, Emory. It wasn’t opportunistic heroism, was it?”
Liam cast a pointed look at Emory, the answer already in hand, it seemed, but some things needed to be said out loud.
Emory shook his head. “It was more complicated than that.”
“Then tell me. Why her?”
A nervous breath passed Emory’s lips, an overture to a story seldom told. Denial would be futile, and they were alone in the desert, the secrets they shared between them and the moon riding high.
“When I was ten, Ivan murdered our babysitter. I found him raping her dead body in the woods. He forced me to watch. Most of it’s a blur, but I’ve never forgotten her eyes. I thought people looked peaceful when they died. She didn’t. Even in death, she looked helpless and terrified.
“When he was done, we buried her beneath dead leaves. The whole time I felt like I was erasing her. On the way back home, Ivan kept saying, ‘You and I, we did this,’ like it bound us in some unbreakable way. She wasn’t found for months, basically bones by then. I wasn’t responsible for her death, but I felt responsible for her disappearance. If I hadn’t covered her body so well, maybe they would’ve found her sooner.
“At the party, I knew Amelia was in danger even before the killing began. I had my chance to get out, but I saw her on theground, just lying there amongst the dead. I thought she was dead too, but then she opened her eyes and looked just as terrified and helpless as the girl in the woods.”
Emory swallowed hard to dismiss the lump in his throat and, with a deep breath, drank in the cool air.
“I can’t change the past but thought maybe I could atone for the time I’d been too late, done too little, played a part in erasing someone else. I know a singular moment of morality doesn’t pay for a lifetime of sins. The debt doesn’t work that way, but she wasn’t dead, and I couldn’t leave her.”
Emory leaned against the wall and stared up at the sky dusted with stars. When he spoke again, it wasn’t to Liam. If something up above was listening, he hoped it might hear him.
“I just want her back.”
“You’re in love with her,” Liam said plainly and didn’t bother spinning it into a question. There wasn’t much need.
“Yes,” Emory whispered, the confession aching in his chest, and he’d gladly give his next heartbeat to turn back time. If only he’d told her sooner, it might not have happened.
Liam rested a hand on his shoulder with a slight pressure that encouraged Emory to face him.
“I always wanted a son and prayed he’d be half the man you are,” Liam said, his eyes glistening in the moonlight. “Then you came along. A son to me, a good man, more than this world deserves. You were never meant to claim my legacy. I realize that now, and I’m sorry I ever asked you to. Once Ivan’s gone and the war is over, I’m setting you free.”
Emory laughed. “You say that now.”
Liam didn’t hold his sentimental musings well. Like too much whiskey, they went to his head.
“I mean it. You want your freedom or not?”
