"You had eyes on me for eight years and you stayed away."
"Yes."
A long beat.
"And what happened last month?"
"Thorne moved. I'd known for years that if his people ever found out the letter existed, they'd work the chain backward to you. Last month they did. They had your address. I picked up the trail. That's the day I broke the promise. That's the day I called you."
She is very still.
"You called me because he was coming for me."
"Yes."
"Not because eight years had been long enough."
"No."
"You would have kept the promise forever."
"I think I would have."
Her chin jerks back. The breath she'd been holding goes out of her in a sound that isn't a word. She presses a hand flat to her sternum.
Then she comes at me harder.
"For fuck's sake, Kane! I was fourteen at his funeral. The pew had three of us. My grandmother and two Army friends I'd never met before. I was falling apart, fourteen, at the bottom of the worst thing that had ever happened to me. The entire service the only thing in my head was the note in my coat pocket.Find Kane.That was the last instruction my brother ever gave me. But I was a kid. I had no idea how.Youshould have come to me.Youshould have helped me."
I sit still and let her have the room.
Every word she's saying is true. I've been a piece of shit for eight years. There is no kinder word for what I did, and I'm not going to look for one. The shame I should have been carrying since her brother's funeral hits me all at once.
"At sixteen I wrote to the Army for a forwarding address. They wrote back twice telling me they couldn't release it. Two years later I phoned a man named Garcia I'd found a number for, said I was Danny Walsh's sister, asked if he could put mein touch with anyone from the team. He hung up. Then my grandmother got worse and I stopped looking."
"Callie."
"I'm not finished, Kane."
I close my mouth.
"I buried her the summer after I graduated high school. Seven people came to the service. After that I built a life out of cheap rooms, night shifts, one chapter of a psychology degree at a time. Four years of figuring out how to be alone. I came to Blackwood Falls last month because you called me from a number I didn't recognize and told me you'd known my brother. The entire eight years before that call you knew where I was and how to reach me."
"Yes."
"While I was wiping the corner of her mouth, signing her papers, standing alone at her grave, you were here. Choosing my grandmother's word over Danny's. Choosing the picture you had of yourself over the woman his last words were about. Choosing anything but me."
Her shoulders drop a fraction.
"Danny told you to come. My grandmother told you to stay. You picked her. You watched me build a life from wherever you watched it from and you decided I was managing without you. Eight years and not one person in that decision was me."
"You're right."
"You should have told me this the day I walked in here. Not nine days later."
"I know."
"You let me sleep down the hall for nine nights thinking you'd just decided I wasn't worth the trip."
