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“I’m okay,” I tell her, speaking against her mouth, echoing her own words, my arms coming around her to hold her tightly against me. “I’m right here.”
She tucks her head against my neck. Her voice is so soft that I can barely make out the words. “I shot a federal agent, Cassel. I’m going to have to go away for a while. Until things cool down.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, dread making me stupid. I want to pretend I misheard her.
“It’s not going to be forever. Six months, maybe a year. By the time you graduate, probably things will have blown over and I’ll be able to come back. But it means that—well, I don’t know where that leaves us. I don’t need any promises. It’s not like we’re even—”
“But you shouldn’t have to go,” I say. “It was because of me. It’s my fault.”
She slides out of my arms, walks to the dressing table and dabs at her eyes with a tissue. “You’re not the only one who can make sacrifices, Cassel.”
When she turns around, I can see the shadows of the mascara she’s wiped away.
“I’ll say good-bye before I go,” she tells me, looking at the floor, at the ornate pattern of what is probably a ridiculously expensive rug. Then she glances at me.
I ought to say something about how I’ll miss her or about how a couple of months is nothing, but I am silenced by rage so terrible that it locks my throat. It’s not fair, I want to scream at the universe. I just found out she loves me. Everything was just beginning, everything was perfect, and now it’s snatched away again.
It hurts too much, I want to shout. I’m tired of hurting.
Since I know that those are not okay things to say, I manage to say nothing.
The silence is broken by a knock on the door. After a moment my mother comes in and tells me that it’s time to go.
Stanley drives us home.
17
WHEN I GET UP THE NEXT morning, Barron is downstairs frying eggs. Mom is sitting in her dressing gown, drinking coffee out of a chipped porcelain mug. Her mass of black hair is twisted up into ringlets and clipped like that, with a bright scarf to keep it all in place.
She’s smoking a cigarette, tapping the ashes into a blue glass tray.
“There are some things I will definitely miss,” she’s saying. “I mean, no one likes being held prisoner, but if you are going to be locked up, you might as well— Oh, hello, dear. Good morning.”
I yawn and stretch, reaching my arms toward the ceiling. It feels truly wonderful to be back in my own clothes, back in my own body. My jeans are comfortable, old and worn. I can’t face putting on a uniform right now.
Barron hands me a cup of coffee.
“Black, like your soul,” he says with a grin. He’s got on dark slacks and wing-tip shoes. His hair is rakishly disheveled. He appears not to have a care in the world.
“We’re out of milk,” Mom informs me.
I take a deep and grateful gulp. “I can run out and get some.”
“Would you?” Mom smiles and touches my hair, pushing it back from my forehead. I let her, but I grit my teeth. Her bare fingers brush my skin. I am thankful when none of my amulets crack. “Do you know what the Turkish say about coffee? It should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love. Isn’t that beautiful? My grandfather told me that when I was a little girl, and I never forgot it. Unfortunately, I still like my milk.”
“Maybe he was from there,” Barron says, turning back to the eggs. Which is possible. Our grandfather has passed down lots of different stories to explain our ancestry, from the one about being descended from an Indian maharaja to the one about runaway slaves to something about Julius Caesar. Turkish, I never heard. Yet.
“Or maybe he read it in a book,” I say. “Or maybe he just ate a box of Turkish delight and that’s what it said on the back.”
“Such a cynic,” my mother says, picking up her plate, scraping the toast crusts into the trash, and putting it in the sink. “You boys play nice. I’m going to go get dressed.”
She brushes by us, and I hear her footfalls on the stairs. I take another sip of coffee. “Thanks,” I say. “For delaying Patton. Just—thanks.”
Barron nods. “Heard on the radio that they arrested him. He had a lot to say about conspiracies that I take credit for personally. It was good stuff. Of course, after that speech, everyone has to realize that he’s bonkers. I don’t know where you got all that—”
I grin. “Oh, come on. It was some fine rhetoric.”
“Yeah, you’re like a modern day Abraham Lincoln.” He sets a plate of eggs and toast in front of me. “?‘Let my people go.’?”
