The Things They Couldn't Carry

By evening, Brielle had learned the strange shape of waiting inside a house where people could make almost anything happen except the one thing she wanted.

Celia had spoken to Ruth again. An investigator was identifying the church group that had staffed the bus station. The originals had been photographed and secured.

There was nothing else Brielle could do that night.

She stood at the sink, trying to wash the coffee cup she had used, when Matteo took it gently from her.

"You'll soak the dressing."

"I can wash a cup."

"You've been washing the same one for three minutes."

She let him put it in the dishwasher.

The kitchen had emptied. Lucia was upstairs, Elena was in bed, and the windows reflected only the two of them.

"What will you do to Daniel?" she asked.

Matteo closed the dishwasher harder than necessary.

"What I want to do and what will help your sister are different things."

She believed him. She also believed she would not have liked his first answer.

"I don't want someone telling me he had an accident."

"He'll answer for what he did. He'll be alive to do it."

It was a grim promise. She accepted it anyway.

"You don't have to stay here tonight," he said. "But I want you somewhere secure until we know who sent those men."

"Has anyone asked you what you want lately?"

His eyes met hers.

"I'm telling you now."

Warmth moved low in her stomach, unexpected and inconvenient.

Before she could answer, Elena screamed upstairs.

Matteo was already moving.

Brielle followed, slower on the steps. At the child's doorway she stopped.

Elena sat tangled in her blanket, fighting the arms trying to comfort her.

"The door was shut! I couldn't get out!"

"You're in your room, baby," Matteo said. "Look at me."

"No van. I don't want the van."

Brielle gripped the doorframe.

The pavement came back. The gun. The tiny yellow shoe caught sideways beneath the child's ankle.

"Can I come in?" she asked.

Elena looked over Matteo's shoulder.

"Your hand hurts."

"It does a little. Can I sit down?"

The child nodded.

Brielle sat on the rug beside the bed. Matteo remained with his daughter, one arm around her back.

"The van isn't here," Brielle said. "What can you see instead?"

Elena wiped her nose on her pajama sleeve.

"My lamp."

"What else?"

"Papa's shoes."

"Those are very big shoes. I think we'd notice if a van got past them."

A small breath escaped the child. It wasn't quite a laugh, but it was different from crying.

They counted the stars on the blanket. Elena found the rabbit beneath a pillow and pressed it against her father's chest.

"You need to hold him too."

"All right," Matteo said.

His large hand closed awkwardly around the toy.

Brielle looked away before her expression could give her away.

It took twenty minutes for Elena to lie back down. She asked for the door to stay open and her grandmother to sit nearby. Lucia brought a book and settled into the chair without asking anyone to hurry.

In the hallway, Brielle leaned against the wall.

Only then did she notice she was shaking.

Matteo looked at her hands.

"Come downstairs."

"I'm fine."

"I know what your fine looks like now. Come downstairs anyway."

She followed him to a small sitting room. He brought water, then a clean dressing and the supplies Dr. Ortiz had sent home.

"You're meant to change this tonight," he said.

"I remember."

"You can tell me to go away."

She studied the bandage, then his hands.

"I don't want you to."

He sat beside her.

She unwrapped what she could. When the last layer caught against the dried blood, he dampened it and waited until it lifted without pulling.

His concentration made her throat tighten.

"Have you done this before?"

"More often than I'd like."

She looked at the scar on his knuckle.

He glanced at it too.

"That one was a kitchen drawer. My mother still thinks it's funny."

Brielle smiled despite herself.

He caught the expression, and for a moment his fingers stopped moving.

Then he looked down again.

"Elena's mother died when she was two," he said. "A sudden illness. Since then, every fever feels like something I should catch before it happens. Every late car. Every call from school."

"You can't be everywhere."

"I know that when it's someone else's child."

His thumb rested against the inside of her wrist while he secured the fresh dressing.

"Yesterday I was in a meeting about a building," he said. "You were standing in front of a gun."

"You didn't know."

"Neither did you. You moved anyway."

She could feel her pulse beneath his fingers.

"I was terrified."

"I saw."

It should have embarrassed her. Instead it felt like being allowed to put something heavy down.

His phone vibrated on the table. He glanced at the screen and went still.

"What is it?" she asked.

He answered the call on speaker.

A woman's voice introduced herself as Sloane Price, his replacement security chief.

"The vehicle change was brought forward yesterday after a message from the foundation office. Your mother was told to wait by the bakery. The message came from Vale's account."

Brielle sat straighter.

"Did he send it?" Matteo asked.

"We're checking. But he also requested access to the Dawson archive box last week. The archive manager refused because Lucia had asked for it to be held for her."

Matteo looked at Brielle, his hand still around hers.

"Send everything to Celia," he said. "And no one gives Vale my family's location."