"I knowwhyyou did it." Her voice has gone somewhere it hasn't been since she arrived. "Iknowwhy, Finn. I've known for months. I sat at your mother's table, and she told me every bit of it, and I understood every word out of her mouth."
She stands up.
"And it didn't work," she says.
The roof's going in the wind, and I can hear my own blood.
"I was taken anyway." She's got her arms at her sides and she's not doing anything with them. "That's what I need you tofucking understand. You gave up ten years, you gave up me, you gave up your whole life to keep Ironwood off me. And a man I've never seen before put a bag over my head outside a Fry's in Tucson, and he wasn't one of theirs, Finn. Nobody called you. Nobody sent you a picture. There was no message, Finn, because it wasn't about you. I was just a woman with groceries."
Something's happening in my chest and it's not a feeling, like it's a hand in there closing.
"It was in the middle of the day and I was carrying groceries."
"Mila—"
"You blew up my whole life to stop something that might not have been coming." She's shaking. "And then it came anyway, from somewhere else. It took nine years off me, and the whole time I was down there I thought?—"
She stops.
"What?" I say.
"No."
"What did you think?"
Her jaw goes sideways and she turns her head away. "I thought you'd come for me."
The wind. The roof. My own breathing, too loud in a cold room.
"I thought you'd come." Her voice is coming apart in the middle and she walks straight through the pieces of it. "That's how stupid I was. Year one, I thought about it every day. Year two, most days. I had a whole picture of it in my mind. I had the door and everything, I had what you'd be wearing." Her hand comes up and drops. "And then, in year three, I worked it out that you didn't know I was gone. Nobody told you. Nobody could. And that was worse, Finn. You have no idea. That wassomuch worse than you not coming."
She turns around.
Her face is wet, and she's not doing one thing about it, and she's looking straight at me.
"If you'd known and you didn't come, I could've hated you." Her chin's going, and she doesn't stop it. "I wanted to hate you. I worked at it. But you were just gone, and you were gonefor me, and so I couldn't even have that."
I'm across the room.
I don't decide to.
I'm three feet away with my hands half up and she doesn't move, doesn't step back, doesn't do one thing except look at me, and we're two people breathing at each other in a room cold enough to see it.
"Mila."
"Don't."
"I'm sorry." There's nothing left in me. "I'm sorry, I'm—it doesn't?—"
"I know it doesn't."
Her hand comes up.
It lands flat on my chest and stops me dead.
Her hand's so small. She's got it flat on my sternum, and I can feel every finger of it through my shirt. It’s ice cold, and it's shaking, her whole arm's going, and she's staring at her own hand like it belongs to somebody else.
My heart's going into her palm and she can feel it. Shehasto know she can feel it.
