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He returned the weapon to its holster but didn’t leave. Instead, he crouched several feet from the broken glass.
“Tell me where you are.”
“I know where I am.”
“Then tell me.”
“In your safe house.” I pressed a hand against my chest, trying to hold in something too large for bone. “In the middle of nowhere. Alive when Salvatore isn’t.”
Rurik stayed where he was. He didn’t say Salvatore would want me to live. People used the dead that way when they needed grief to become more convenient. They placed wishes inside silent mouths and expected survivors to obey them.
“What were you remembering?” he asked.
The question hurt more than reassurance would have. “He used to dance with Henry in the kitchen.”
“Was he a good dancer?”
“No.” A sob caught against a laugh and wounded them both. “He was terrible. He believed confidence could compensate for rhythm.”
Rurik reached for a dish towel and began gathering the larger pieces of glass. “It rarely does.”
I told him about the song. I told him how Salvatore changed the lyrics and how Henry slept against his chest as if his father’s heartbeat were the safest place in the world. Once I began, the words wouldn’t stop. They carried me through Montana, through the cabin, and back into the life we had possessed.
Rurik cleaned the floor while I spoke. He didn’t interrupt or look wounded when love entered my voice. He understood that every tender memory belonged to another man and made room for it anyway.
When the floor was clean, he sat against the opposite cabinet. We remained there until dawn began thinning the darkness around the curtains.
After that night, Salvatore’s name no longer emptied the room. I spoke about him when silence made the memories cruel. Rurik listened when I told him about the way Salvatore held a book open with one hand while feeding Henry with the other, or how he checked every door twice but always forgot where he left his keys. He asked questions no one else dared to ask because grief had made Salvatore sacred to them.
Rurik allowed him to remain human.
By the middle of August, the house no longer looked untouched. My new shoes waited near the back door. A blanket remained folded across the arm of the sofa because the air-conditioning made the front room too cold at night. Rurik’s coffee occupied one side of the kitchen counter, while the tea I drink had claimed the other.
We learned how to stay out of each other’s way and when not to try. He woke before dawn, checked the perimeter, and returned with leaves caught against his trousers. I called Cian at nine, spoke to Mom when I could manage it, and received carefully filtered updates from Uncle Sal. In the afternoons, Rurik worked at the dining table while I read, paced, or stared through the narrow opening he allowed in one curtain.
Maxim sent a recording of Henry through a secure channel during the last week of August. Rurik placed the tablet on the coffee table and left the room before it started playing.
Henry appeared beneath a summer sky, chasing fireflies across the grass while Illyria laughed behind the camera. He had grown taller since the last image I’d seen. His dark curls bounced against his forehead, and grass stains covered both knees of his shorts.
He stopped near the camera and opened his hands. A firefly glowed between his palms.
“Look, Mom,” he whispered to Illyria. “I caught a star.”
The recording ended before I was ready. I played it again, then a third time, until the words became another wound I could press simply to prove I still felt it.
Rurik found me on the floor beside the table an hour later. He sat in the chair across from me but didn’t reach for the tablet.
“He calls her Mom.” My voice sounded distant. “He should. She earned it.”
Rurik waited.
“I gave him away to keep him safe, and now he’s safe enough not to need me.” I touched the dark screen where Henry’s face had been. “That was the point, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t feel like winning.”
“No.” Rurik leaned forward, resting his forearms against his knees. “I don’t imagine it would.”
