Page 98 of In the Dark of the Past

Though not enough to finish.

But this was ours.

Beside me, Finn’s breathing was slow and even. Asleep, finally, after what had been the longest day either of us had had in recent memory, which was saying something, given what had been going on of late.

I watched the ceiling and thought about my mother sanding the cedar chest. About the way she’d looked up when I came in from the yard and smiled without asking what I’d been doing or how long I’d been gone. Just…there you are.

I thought about her writing the letter in secret, in pieces, in whatever slivers of privacy Stonybrooke allowed and hiding it on one of her very infrequent day passes. Putting the envelope in the false bottom she’d built herself and then making sure to tell me to keep the things that mattered close.

She’d spent years making sure I’d have the truth when I was ready for it.

She hadn’t been able to give it to me herself, but she’d made sure it was waiting.

I closed my eyes.

In the morning, we’d go back to the case. We’d figure out the next move, the next pressure point, the next thread to pull. There was a lot of pulling left to do. The net wasn’t closed yet.

But tonight, I was here.

Still angry. Still not finished with any of it. Still carrying the weight of years of a wrong story.

But here.

Choosing.

And that felt like something.

It felt like enough.

Chapter Thirty

Finn

I woke up before River did.

That wasn’t unusual, I’d been waking before most people since the academy, some combination of training and temperament that had calcified into habit over the years. But the feel of it that morning was different. It wasn’t the sharp, cleared-for-action waking of a night call or an early shift. It was just…easy. Quiet. The waking of a person who had, for whatever improbable reason, slept well.

I lay still for a few minutes and let it be what it was.

River was asleep on her side, her back to me, one hand folded under her cheek. She’d taken the left side of the bed without discussion, which was either a coincidence or a deeply unconscious preference she didn’t know she had. The light coming through the curtains was the thin gray light of early morning. I figured it was maybe six, perhaps a little before.

I got up carefully and went to make coffee.

The morning had the quality of a held breath. Clean and unhurried. The kind that could tip either way into something ordinary or something else. Still, for this one hour, undecided.

I measured the coffee grounds. Started the pot. Stood at the counter while it worked and looked out the window at the yard. The pine stand behind the house was catching the first light at the tops of the trees, the gold moving down through the branches the way it did every clear morning, whether or not there was a conspiracy running through the town beneath them.

It was the same yard it had always been.

I heard River’s feet on the floor, the particular sound of someone newly awake navigating an unfamiliar room with reasonable caution, and then she appeared in the kitchen doorway. Her hair was loose, and she wore the oversized Henley she’d taken from the spare room the night before because she had forgotten something to sleep in.

She looked at the coffee maker.

Then at me.

“You measured it,” she said.

“You always said I made it wrong before.”