Page 55 of Redeem

“That night,” I said, looking at him, letting the words come out even though I didn’t want them to, “he was late. I went looking for him.”

I thought back on that night again, remembered how I’d been irritated, but not surprised. “It wasn’t uncommon. He’d get caught up in work. Anyway, it wasn’t uncommon for him to come home hours after he said he would. He’d take on a job and then try to finish it himself after hours so he didn’t have to pay anyone. He worked really hard.”

And he had. So hard, he had been blind to the risk that he was taking. So intent on growing the company, he hadn’t considered anything else.

“In a lot of ways,” I said, “I admired him. He never had fear, not a single moment of it. He always thought everything would work out. I didn’t.”

Confessing that was huge for me, and I felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders. For years I’d carried that burden, wondering if I’d just believed more, that maybe things would’ve turned out differently. In my heart I knew they wouldn’t have, but my heart had little to do with my head, where I so desperately wish it to be true.

“I didn’t think anything of it, just walked in, ready to chew him out for being so late,” I said.

I didn’t know why I was giving a step-by-step replay of what happened. This was his story. But now that I had started, I felt compelled to continue. In some ways, this wasn’t his story. It was ours. Born of that twisted, fucked-up single moment that had brought all those that came after, a moment that connected us forever.

“I found him. Held him as he died,” I said.

I looked up at Ciprian then, waited for him to say something, to apologize. He said nothing. And to my surprise I was grateful for his silence.

“I saw you,” I finally said. “Your shadow at least.”

“Just as I saw you. I heard you scream something, but I don’t know what. You looked at me,” he said.

His expression changed then, went solemn. “I remember your face, that expression. It’s haunted me for years.”

He was so matter-of-fact I couldn’t be upset or offended by him for saying so. Besides there was another, more pressing question on my mind.

“You know I saw you?”

He nodded.

“Why…?” I swallowed, started again. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“You want the honest answer?”

Did I?

His question made me think I didn’t, but we’d come so far I decided there was no other way.

“Yes,” I said.

“Because I hadn’t been paid to.”

I don’t know what I had expected, but it hadn’t been that.

In some ways his answer was simple, straightforward, something I could understand if not entirely respect. But there was a callousness to that answer, a brutality and viciousness that chilled me to my core and again reminded me that the Ciprian I had known had sides that even now I couldn’t fully contemplate.

“You wanted me to be honest,” he whispered.

I glared at him. “You have no idea what I want. So tell yourself whatever lies you want to, but don’t ever, for a single second, think I wanted this,” I said.

I spit the words through clenched teeth, seething with each that came out. I couldn’t believe he would try to put some of this on me. Told him as much.

“How dare you! How dare you try to make me a part of this!”

He shook his head slowly, calm in a way that both calmed and infuriated me. “I’m not trying to put anything on you. Not trying to influence you. I just needed to tell you,” he said.

“So finish telling me then,” I said, again leaning back in the chair.

I had been frozen for years, and the emotion of this conversation was taxing. I couldn’t think of a time when I had been so up and down, so back and forth. I had thought I was happy to feel alive again, but I realized then that I hated it.

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