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“They were—” Jameson lets out a breath that’s half-sob, hot on my neck. He’s crying in slow motion. His chest jerks at slow intervals. Has he always cried like this, or only since his parents died? “Lured to a meeting in a—a development that my father’s business consortium had invested in. The building was almost done, but there was some bullshit with the economy, and they were going to lose a fuckload of money. The rest of the members were fine with committing insurance fraud. My dad wasn’t.”
“And this meeting—”
“Therewasno meeting. The consortium hired a hitman to kill the elevators after they went up. The building must’ve…” He rests his face against my shoulder and breathes deep. His chest hitches once. “It must’ve already been on fire when they got there. They’d taken Mason with them because he was going to work for our dad’s company after college. He was the only one who made it out.”
“So he—” Sunrises happen fast. I stroke Jameson’s hair and watch the sky glow over the trees. “He was okay to take care of the rest of you?”
Jameson laughs, a thick, agonizedha. “No. The three of them made it as far as the fourth story before the smoke got to be too much. Our dad broke a window with an office chair and pushed Mason out of it.”
“Oh—oh,God. Were they—I know the fire department has ways to catch people, if—”
“He landed partially on the sidewalk, and partially on grass. Shattered one of his knees. He almost died, and while he was still in the hospital—” Jameson brushes the tip of his nose across my shoulder, then settles in again, his teeth gritted. It takes time for it to relax. “While he was still in the hospital, the social worker assigned to us told him they’d take custody of Gabriel and Remy and me.”
“What?”
“He was supposed to be there for a few weeks at minimum, then rehab to fix his knee, but he wouldn’t let us go. Remy—”Jesus,he whispers under his breath. “None of us were going to let that happen to Remy. He checked out after a week so we could stay together.”
“Was there anybody to help you? Somebody to stay with you, at least?”
If Jameson was washing his sister’s hair, then I think the answer has to beno.
He’s quiet again. Another sob goes through his shoulders, but he doesn’t make a sound. This silence is thoughtful and aching and heavier, somehow, than the silences before.
“We didn’t get to stay in our house,” Jameson says, his hand spreading wide on my back. “We had to leave.”
“Because of your relatives?”
“No. Because of the consortium.”
“The business group? Why would you have had to leave your house because of them?”
“They made the debt from the development my parents’ responsibility. Not just my father’s company. Their personal assets, too. Our house. Their cars. Everything. The debt had to be paid by their estate. It was so high that it wiped out my dad’s company and the bank seized the house and everything in it.”
Watching the sunrise was never supposed to be this horrifying. Jameson already knows how it was to lose his parents and his home, so I don’t sayhow awfulorI can’t believe itorI’m so sorry.Because technically, the sun isn’t all the way up yet. We’re still in the in-between. I have time to learn about him so I can—
Helphim. That’s the simplest, best answer. I’ve spent years studying my eyes out so I could get into Columbia Law and become a prosecutor and eventually a judge. I was going to help people by handing down justice from the bench.
It’s now,rightnow, that I see how convoluted a path that is.
“Where did you go?”
“The shittiest apartment you could imagine.” Jameson pushes his face into my neck again and squeezes his eyes closed. My heart aches. The connection between the things he screamed and shouted and begged while he was dreaming and the shake in his voice when he saysthe shittiest apartmentis clear as the sunrise.
“Is that what you were dreaming about?”
“They were all dead. I couldn’t keep any—any of them alive.” His voice breaks, and his body goes still. I thought he was still before, thought he was hardly moving, but he wasn’t. Now he barely breathes. His hand doesn’t flex on my back. A droplet of heat lands on my shoulder, and then a second one. Jameson suppresses the hitch in his chest.
“You—” I could cry, too, but I don’t. I take a deep breath instead. “You don’t have to hide it. You’ll hurt yourself.”
He takes a high, thin breath, like someone’s pinching the air between their fingers. “Better that way.”
“No, it isn’t.” I give his back a brisk rub. Jameson remains a statue on the sand. I pat the same spot with enough force that it becomes athump. More hot tears drip onto my skin. “Stop. You can’t keep all of that inside. It’s not good for you.”
“You can’t—” Jameson makes a sound that’s either a laugh or a sob, his head heavy on my shoulder. “You can’tburpme into making another scene.”
“Listen.” I run my hand over his shoulder blades, as soft as the waves on the sand. “Your brothers and your sisters are all fine. It was a bad dream. They’re okay.”
I didn’t think it was possible for Jameson to fold forward anymore, to hold me any closer, until he takes the hand that was supporting him off the sand and throws it around my neck.
