I kept going, out the back door, and into the cold.
* * * *
I took first watch that night, like Rawley wanted, but after an hour of pacing the porch and checking every window for headlights or silhouettes or the flicker of a lighter in the tree line, I ended up back inside, in the rocking chair by the makeshift crib.
The house went silent at night, so silent that the click of a wall clock two rooms over sounded like a hammer on bone. I left the lights off and let the moon take over. It painted the walls a dirty blue and gave everything edges where there weren’t any during the day.
The crib was too small for a kid who would almost certainly grow up to be my size, but for now it was perfect. Emilio slept with both arms flung out, surrendering to gravity and the heat trapped in the flannel blanket Jojo had wrapped him in. The steady up and down of his chest was so quiet I had to lean close to see it.
My back hurt, so I let the chair rock just a little, not enough to squeak but enough to keep time. I told myself I’d get up soon, finish a sweep, maybe lock the barn again, but the longer I sat the less I wanted to move.
On the windowsill, just above my head, I’d propped the photo from the envelope. I didn’t know why I wanted it there, but I did. In the moonlight, Liam looked even younger than I remembered: hair falling into his eyes, lips parted, expression soft and sharp at the same time. He was holding Emilio, but in the picture it almost looked like he was bracing for something—impact, or maybe just the weight of being seen.
I kept coming back to the same question. Why does a man walk away from his own blood? What kind of ghost follows you that you’d rather freeze your own heart than take the risk of being found?
I’d spent most of my life betting I would never have to make that call. That I would never care enough to be the one left holding the baby, literally or otherwise.
But now here I was, and the question wouldn’t quit me.
The chair creaked once, loud, and Emilio stirred. I reached a hand through the bars of the crib, resting my fingers against his chest. He didn’t wake. I counted the breaths, the way I used to count the ticks on a bomb timer—waiting for a sign, but never sure if it was going to come.
The house shuddered with a gust of wind. Somewhere, a pipe in the wall moaned and then went quiet again. Outside, the moon sat heavy on the snow, watching.
I thought about Liam, wherever he was, maybe in a car with the engine idling or maybe already out of the state. I wondered if he was looking back over his shoulder, or if he’d learned by now that there’s nothing back there but memory and the pain you already signed for.
I wondered if it was possible to be brave and terrified at the same time.
I took my hand off the baby, flexed it, let it fall. The photo on the sill caught the light, just so, and for a second I saw myselfin it, right behind Liam’s shoulder, looking like I’d always been there.
Maybe that was the point.
I didn’t know if I would ever get to ask him why. Or if, when I did, I’d even want to know the answer.
But the kid was here. He was safe. That was all that mattered for tonight.
I closed my eyes, boot still on, and let the chair rock me through until dawn.
Chapter Four
~ Liam ~
I couldn’t get the radiator to shut up. It clanged with a wet iron echo that vibrated all the way up through the springs of the mattress and into my jaw, so even with the pillow pressed over my face it sounded like someone hitting a pipe with the flat of their hand, every six or seven heartbeats.
Sometimes it got stuck in a loop—tick, tick, tick, pause, then a rapid-fire double-tap like gunshots in the alley below. I didn’t really mind it. The noise was proof the place was still warm, and the warm was proof I wasn’t dead yet.
My room was the top floor of a former flop, a windowless rectangle boxed in by a wall on one side and the pitched roof on the other, so low at the edges you had to walk at a crouch unless you wanted a concussion.
There was water-stained wallpaper where there should have been paint, and the bulb in the ceiling hung from a cord so short that I had to stand on the bed to reach it.
The floorboards let off the scent of sun-bleached hay and whatever chemicals they used to keep mice out of livestock feed, plus the constant undertone of dust—granular, organic, slightly sweet, the way dry flour smells before you open the bag.
I lay flat on my back, ankles crossed over the threadbare comforter, one arm wedged under the pillow and the other resting across my chest where I could feel the jitter of my heart through the bones.
Two in the morning and there was no chance of sleep. Even if the radiator had gone quiet, my body would have kept me awake, running diagnostic after diagnostic, checking for changes in the noise outside, for shifts in the weight of the air, for the subtle shifts of danger that accumulate around a man on the run.
It was easy to catalog what I owned: the jacket, which I kept on even in bed, both for the warmth and the sense of readiness; the phone, prepaid, screen dark on the mattress beside me, forty minutes of credit remaining, battery half-full; a single change of clothes, still damp from their rinse in the bathroom sink, hung over the back of the only chair in the room, sleeves and legs arranged so they wouldn’t touch the dust or brush the radiator’s rusty paint.
In the inside pocket of the jacket, folded and then unfolded so many times the edges had started to go soft and slightly furry, was the photograph.
