She edged back on the bed, pulling him with her. He sat facing her, his legs jackknifed over hers. She took his hands, clasped them in her own. She wanted him to understand his innocence. “There were eight armed men in that apartment. If you had been on your feet, you would be dead. Even if you had been a trained soldier, even if you had been armed, you could not have prevailed.”
“But you did. You got us out. What did—” He stopped abruptly.
What did you do?
The inside of her chest sheared off like the face of an iceberg collapsing into the sea. Nausea swept over her.
She shifted her eyes from bloodied Daniel unconscious on the floor to safe Daniel sitting on the fresh cotton comforter.
“Bren?”
She felt the sheen of cold sweat on her forehead. “Do you think…” Her throat knotted up on itself.
He tipped his head. “Think what?”
She swallowed. “Do you think there’s such a thing as an unforgivable sin?”
He blinked, unsettled by her change of direction. “Well,” he said cautiously, “If sins were unforgivable, what would the purpose of the human journey be? First time you screwed up, you’d be a write-off.” He groaned, circled the back of her neck with his hand, and brought his face close to hers. “If sins were unforgivable,” he murmured, “a man would have no chance of being loved by the woman he didn’t keep safe.”
“You didn’t fail me,” she said, running her fingertips over the scar in his eyebrow, the break in his nose, the now-healed places in his shoulders and his legs where he had been injured. Time and again he had pulled her out of danger.
She brought her mouth to his and kissed him. “There’s so much I don’t know,” she whispered, opening her gown, easing herself backwards, pulling him with her. “But this, I do: You, Daniel Ellsworth, would never hurt me.”
He came to her like a long slow wave from a distant epicenter, deepening, gathering momentum, sweeping her in his path.
She didn’t run. She wanted to drown in him.
He poured over her, building her passion to a fevered pitch, until she parted her thighs for him and lifted her pelvis, desperate for him to pierce her. He aroused her more, teased her nipples with his tongue, ran light fingers over her clitoris, slid his length over her welcoming moisture. Set aflame, she became reckless. Abandoned. Heedless. She closed her eyes. Loosed her voice.
She begged him to enter her. Now.
He did. He plunged deep, again and again, and brought them both to breathless, shuddering climax.
She clung to his shoulders while her ragged breath subsided and her pounding heart slowed.
Slowly, her head cleared.
Slowly, she came to her senses.
Dismay washed over her. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. Unprotected sex during mid-cycle. She’d gotten caught up, hadn’t reminded Daniel to use a condom.
“It’s all right,” he said.
She shook her head. Covered her face with her hands. She’d forgotten herself.
Still buried deep inside her, he reached blindly for the bedside table, found the torn wrapper for the condom he’d used. “Bren,” he said, showing it to her. “I took care.”
“You—? When —?”
“You were distracted.”
Relief flooded through her. Her eyes stinging, she slid her hands over his shoulders. “Oh, Daniel,” she mumbled. “I know you want children more than anything.”
“No,” he said, lifting himself onto his elbows and looking into her eyes. “More than anything I need the faith you have in me.”
Margaret was in the kitchen, gently patting out fresh biscuit dough when she heard Daniel’s bedroom door open, and the murmur of his and Brenna’s voices. Glancing toward the staircase, she saw him coming down ahead of Brenna, facing her, guiding her by the waist, helping her slowly descend. They were both freshly-showered. Brenna was wearing Daniel’s T-shirt and shorts, the bottom edge of her wound dressing just visible beneath the hem.
Margaret exchanged a glance with Alden, who was standing beside her at the counter, chopping ham and cheese for the omelettes.
“Well,” he mumbled, “the lovers emerge.”
“We took our share of mid-day naps, Alden.”
He chuckled. “Then early to bed.”
Daniel approached the peninsula, Brenna’s hand looped through his elbow. They were finding their way together, lacing their hearts together, fashioning the tapestry of their relationship with threads of mutual affection.
Margaret liked the way Brenna looked at her son, the way she treasured him. But her love manifested itself tentatively. Like a garment held together with basting stitches, Brenna was fragile. One snag, one pull in the wrong direction, and she would come apart. She needed her feet beneath her before she could give Daniel what he needed with any consistency.
Brenna cast a shy glance in her direction.
Margaret smiled warmly. Love my son, she wanted to say. Make him happy. Instead, she announced: “Fifteen minutes to brunch. Dad’s got the table mostly set on the deck. I thought it’s such a lovely day we should eat out there.”
Brenna nodded. Given her shy blush, it eluded Margaret how anyone could think of her as a loose woman.
Daniel pulled out one of the stools at the counter, guided Brenna to it, and straddled the one beside her. He looked…hopeful. Something she hadn’t seen in a long time.
“What’re those?” Brenna asked, pointing her chin at the dough on the cutting board. “Buns?”
“Biscuits.”
“Oh. Uh…”
“Buns are usually made with yeast,” Daniel explained. “Biscuits use a different leavening agent, like baking powder, and don’t need rising time.”
Margaret placed the dough before her, followed by a clean drinking glass. “Want to do the honors?”
Brenna cast Daniel a quizzical look.
He flipped the glass over, aligned it at the edge of the dough, and pressed down. Lifting the glass, he tapped the biscuit loose onto his fingertips. “Voilà.”
Margaret set the baking pan nearer, and he eased the biscuit onto it.
“You, now,” he said, handing the glass to Brenna. “Cut them close together. The less trim to re-roll, the fluffier the biscuits.”
Brenna moved the glass to the edge. “So—” she said to Margaret. “You made these, just like that?”
“Only takes a few minutes, once you get the hang of it.”
Daniel watched Brenna with unabashed affection, delighting in how she held her lower lip in her teeth as she concentrated.
“Coffee, son?” Alden appeared at Daniel’s elbow, mug in hand.
“Thanks.”
“Brenna?”
“She prefers OJ. There’s some fresh-squeezed in the fridge.”
“Easy enough.”
“I have my mom’s cookbooks,” Brenna told Margaret, as if announcing she possessed a pile of gold ingots.
The conversation slipped into easy gear. Soon, the biscuits were in the oven, and Alden had Brenna standing beside him at the stove while he explained how the butter had to be bubbling before the eggs were poured in.
Margaret tapped Daniel’s elbow. “Hold the door for me, would you, while I take out this tray?”
He saw the laden tray, and stood up. “Here. I’ll take the tray. You get the door.”
“I take it you regained your power of speech with Brenna,” Margaret said, once she was outside, setting small ramekins of preserves on the deck table.
“Just in time to nearly put my foot in my mouth.”
She turned her full attention to him. “How so?”
“I damn near asked her what happened in Kavsak. Caught myself in mid-question. I wasn’t trying to push her—” he hurried to explain. “It just…came out.” He reached for the sugar bowl on the tray. Lost in thought, he turned the lid round and round in the groove. “It’s like one of those brain-teasers: ‘If eight armed men are in a room with Brenna Rease, four children, and a
n unconscious man—how does she escape?’”
There was frustration in his voice. He’d pored over the clues but hadn’t resolved the riddle, and there was no back page to turn to, that gave the solution.
Margaret, butter dish poised in mid-air, considered her son. “What do you think the answer is, Daniel?”
“All I know is what it wasn’t. She didn’t use force—she was unarmed and outnumbered. Not bribery—she got to Weisbaden with a fat wad of Euros. Not sex—they’d’ve just raped her if that’s what they wanted. And not political leverage over her father, because she wasn’t taken hostage.”
Margaret agreed. But what, then? How did she get out of that apartment? If all the thinkable explanations were rejected, what was left? A shiver ran up her spine. “What about this Maric man? Did your Canadian colonel e-mail you back with anything?”
He shrugged. “Just that the guy’s a captain of one of the Nationalist units holding the western edge of the city. Known to be a rogue. And before the war? The man was a poet.”
“A poet?” That was unexpected. An observer who distilled life into a few words. Margaret tapped her fingers on the back of a chair, thinking. Whatever would a poet want from Brenna Rease?
“Ma? Brenna said once that…”
She raised her head, concerned by the stress in his voice.
“…that she paid for me.” He studied his garden, then forced himself to meet her gaze again, as if he had done something wrong and was owning up to it. “How do you think she did that?”
“Hm. To answer that, we’d need to know two things: What did Maric want? And what did Brenna have, with which to negotiate safe passage?”
Daniel pondered her reply, then shrugged. “Hell. It was Kavsak. For all we know, she promised him a rhyming dictionary.”
When he stayed in Vienna, Special Envoy Brendan Rease resided at the Hotel Imperial, a five-star luxury hotel built in 1863 to be the city palace of Duke Philipp of Württemberg. Overlooking the historic Ring Boulevard, the hotel was sumptuous with its soaring ceilings, magnificent chandeliers, star-patterned parquet floors, and Baroque antiques.
Standing on his private balcony overlooking the roofs and spires of old Vienna, he was thinking about his distance from Brenna. Nearly five thousand miles and two dozen years of neglect lay between them. For six years after Anne died, his daughter lived grudgingly at home, going to school, coming home to a housekeeper, locking herself in her darkroom for hours on end. The day she turned eighteen, she left. For college, yes, but mostly just to get away.
Martindale cleared his throat. “Mr. Ambassador.”
The Envoy blinked, unaware his aide had approached. “Yes. What is it?”
“The diplomatic pouch, sir. A person of interest has been killed in Kavsak.”
He turned, saw the folder in his aide’s hands. “Who.”
“Jasha Subasic.”
He searched his memory, drew a blank.
“Brenna’s fixer, sir. There was…an arrangement.”
He frowned. “I received no reports from this man.”
“No, sir. He refused. Called it spying.”
“And we transferred payments to him?” he asked incredulously.
“No, sir. He refused those, too. The terms were that he would serve as your daughter’s bodyguard, and contact our agents in the city if anything happened to her. Which he did, when he found her wounded. It was Mr. Subasic and his men who got her to the Navy SEALS you sent in to extract her.”
“I see. Cause of death?”
“Sniper bullet through the clavicle. Lost control of his vehicle and hit a concrete barrier at a high rate of speed.”
He sighed. “And in return, we promised—?”
“A green card for his mother if he did not survive the war. A university teaching position for her.” Martindale opened the folder, turned it, and held it out for the Envoy’s inspection. “The application.”
He leafed through the paperwork, scanning the contents. Three pages in, he stopped. His eyebrows rose in surprise. He held out a page to Martindale with an unstated question.
“An unexpected development, sir. Not part of the original terms.”
Just not something my daughter would bother to tell me.
“Did your daughter mention it?”
“These are her signatures, are they not, Martindale?”
“Yes, sir.”
He jammed the page into the sheaf and snapped the folder shut. “See it gets done.”
“Yes, sir.”
Martindale stood there.
“Good God, man. What else?”
His aide held out a small envelope, note card size, addressed to him in Brenna’s bold handwriting, with Daniel Ellsworth’s return address.
The Envoy took it. “That will be all.”
After his door closed, the Envoy slumped into a chair and opened the envelope. He pulled out a small, buff-colored card with English ivy embossed on the front. He slipped a shaking thumb into the fold and read:
Thanks.
— B.
He dropped his chin to his chest and covered his mouth with a circled fist.
No armistice.
But the glimmer of a ceasefire.
All the weight of the United States government behind him, fifty-some years as a diplomat, and he was negotiating with cookbooks.
There were days Brenna woke and felt surprised she was still alive. The planet still spun, the sun rose and fell, the city clamored around her, its noise intensifying and diminishing in parallel to the glowing orb itself. But she felt detached from it. Unengaged. As if the pull of gravity drew everything but her.
The intensity she used to feel in Kavsak had abandoned her. She was safe, shapeless, no longer driven. Drifting through her days, she was getting up, dressing, eating, engaging in small interactions with others, and then retiring for the night, so she could waken and go through the motions once again. Form, not content.
Once when she was sick, her throat so sore it hurt to speak, she realized how much could be left unsaid. Most talk was breath that evaporated as it entered the atmosphere, pointless aural pollution. And pictures? She saw now that they were moments past, frozen and irreversible. Life chronicled, but not altered. Not political tools, merely documentation. If thoughts could be left unspoken, and pictures meant nothing, what was left? Who was she now? What would she do?
If she ceased to exist, the world would go on, unperturbed by her sudden absence. It shouldn’t surprise her. Down through history, even the Gods had come and gone, the fervor of their followers’ belief supplanted by doubt and indifference, until they had become nothing.
She sat on the edge of the captain’s bed, thinking about Daniel’s one-item list of things that mattered, his reason for meeting his days.
Love.
She snorted.
She couldn’t think of anyone less qualified than herself to meet the challenge.
Love—true, enduring love—required courage and trust and honesty. Traits Daniel steadfastly demonstrated every day.
She had gall, telling him he must write openly, get dirty, expose his self-doubts to millions of viewers. Tell the truth, she’d advised him. No matter what the cost. Ha. Truth might once have been the flag she pledged allegiance to, but hers was dragging in the mud. She was hiding out, unable to tell her own story, even in private.
She shook her head, reached for the T-shirt and shorts she’d borrowed from him the day before, and slipped out of her nightgown. Even as she wrapped herself in the comfort of his clothes, his home, she was dishonest.
She walked through her day as haunted and uneasy as if she were wandering a misty graveyard in the black of night. Moving from one headstone to another, she read the names of the dead. She knew them all—mother, husband, strangers, children—some for years, some for fractions of a second, the planes of their faces as clear in her memory as in the images of them she had once captured.
She owned moments, cross-sections of a thousand lives—some at
their beginning, some in the middle, and far too many at their end. Her spirit was a burial ground, her recollections razor-sharp stilettos that ghosts slipped between her ribs at unexpected moments.
Bleeding out from a thousand punctures, she joined Daniel and his parents at breakfast, too distracted to hold the thread of conversation, too unsettled to eat. She spoke with James and Gary on the phone, told them she was okay, just tired, maybe that was why her voice sounded flat.
Daniel, who had been casting worried glances at her all morning, reluctantly agreed to attend church services with his Dad while Margaret stayed home with her, making phone calls to local colleagues.
At mid-day, Brenna retreated to the garden. Every time she thought of the children, she felt like throwing up. If she couldn’t even think about what happened, how could she tell Daniel the truth?
She shifted her thoughts to the nursery, to the children, to the way tragedy had unfolded before her incredulous eyes. It couldn’t be true there were Nationalist tanks, she remembered thinking. It couldn’t be true they were invading the neighborhood. It couldn’t be true that she and Daniel and the children were trapped. It couldn’t be true. Couldn’t be true.
Yet, it had been. Every horrifying instant, unfolding before her disbelieving eyes.
She felt fire crackling beneath her skin. Memories flooded back. Aleksandar. Maric. Mr. Fierce. The crimson hole in Dragoslav’s forehead. The black steel barrel, turned on Daniel. She saw it as a closeup: trigger finger, poised. She knew the sound of the gun, firing. Daniel would jerk when the bullet entered his body. Choose!
No! She cried out. No!
She gasped, sucking air, suffocated. She clamped her hand over her chest, rubbing, rubbing, trying to smother the spreading burn.
“Brenna. Take a breath, dear.”
She couldn’t.
“Breathe in,” her mother said. “Calm. Steady. This will pass. I’m here with you. Take my hand.”
She was shattering, flying into a million pieces, blowing out, leaving the atmosphere. “Mama,” she whispered. Make it go away.
“I’m right here,” her mother said, covering Brenna’s shaking hands with her own. “Just take a deep breath. That’s my girl. That’s it. Slowly. Slow-ly.”
Gradually, guided by her mom’s voice, the dark tunnel surrounding her opened. She found herself circled by arms that were not her mother’s after all, but of the same quality.
Day Three Page 48
