Page 68 of The Rebel King

My mind has been split for days, tuned into the stark reality of Owen’s death but also managing the very real implications of it. Maxim and I have had nearly no time together. He’s been a rock for Millie and the twins and for his mother.

I’m Mom’s favorite.

Owen said it, but both parents appear devastated.

Mrs. Cade sits on the front row, bracketed by the intimidating breadth of her son on one side and her husband on the other. I’ve known Warren Cade as long as I’ve known Maxim, since I was seventeen years old. For the first time, my heart softens toward the elder Cade.

I’m seated on the opposite side of the church so I can see his profile. Pain has carved new lines alongside his mouth and bold nose, so like Maxim’s. I usually try to ignore their similarities, above and beneath the surface, but today it’s impossible. The same sorrow hovers over them. They both bend solicitously toward the small woman seated between them whose grief slumps her slight shoulders.

The priest closes his prayer book, having shared a few verses of comfort, and scans the crowd. The Dallas church is filled beyond capacity. Mourners line the streets outside. Millie has allowed the service to be broadcast, so large screens have been set up in nearby parks and all across the country. People are crowding around their TVs at home or huddling around their laptops. Some are watching on their phones. The response across the nation has only highlighted how beloved Owen was from his ten years of service in the Senate and the impression he’d made in the few short months he’d been on the campaign trail.

“This is a difficult day for so many,” the priest says. “Mostdifficult for Owen’s family. His brother, Maxim, will now share a few words.”

Anxiety scatters briars in my belly. I didn’t know he would have to do this.

Maxim takes the stage, so handsome and proud, looking as impeccable as ever, but I know better. I sense the cracks, the lapses in his defenses. The only time I’ve ever seen him this emotionally vulnerable was by that river in Costa Rica, and not because he’d killed a man, but because he’d almost lost me. I want to cover him—to shield him from prying eyes. They haven’t earned the intimacy of Maxim’s pain, but it’s there for anyone looking closely enough to see.

“I made a really bad little brother,” Maxim says, managing to shape the grim line of his mouth into something approaching a smile. “Big brothers protect their little brothers when they get picked on, but I was kind of a big kid and not very nice, if I’m honest.”

A small murmur of subdued amusement ripples through the crowd.

“So nobody really messed with me,” he continues. “And you’re supposed to look up to your big brother, but when I was a kid, I didn’t look up to anyone except my father.”

I glance at Warren Cade, but the inscrutable planes of his face register no response or emotion.

“As we grew older, in a lot of ways, we grew apart.” Maxim glances down and clears his throat. “I wasn’t close to my family for a long time, but Owen never stopped reaching out to me.”

He aims a brief grin toward Millicent, seated in the front row. “He called me the night he met you at that mixer, Millie, and said he’d found the one. I laughed at him because how do you know after one night, right?”

He scans the crowd for a second until he finds me, his eyes connecting with mine almost imperceptibly, but it sends a jolt of recognition down the center of my body and arrows through my heart.

“I hadn’t seen him for months, but he wanted me as best manat his wedding. I was there when the twins were born.” He stares at the closed coffin, his eyes unfocused like he’s seeing a kaleidoscope of memories. “He never gave up on me, not just as his brother, but on us being friends.”

A deep breath swells his chest, and he goes on. “Owen modeled what it looked like to be a faithful husband, to save your love for one woman and then show her every day that she was worth waiting for. He showed me how it looked to believe in your children and want the best for them without pressuring them or making them feel they had to live up to someone else’s standards. He showed me how to really serve this country, not with charisma or charm or with lip service, but with his heart. With hard work on behalf of people who needed help more than he and I ever did.”

A deep swallow moves the muscles in his throat. “You were a great big brother, Owen. You were a fine man, and I didn’t tell you enough, but I love you, and Idolook up to you.”

When he shifts his gaze to the audience, there’s a shift in his demeanor, too. Steel enters his eyes. His broad shoulders seem to stretch. “Someone killed my brother, and they think they ended Owen’s life, but they haven’t. Not really. His legacy of service goes on in every person who benefits from the laws he voted into existence. He lives on in his beautiful wife, Millie, and my niece and nephew, Darcy and Elijah, who knew his love and his devotion and will carry them with them forever.

“Someone, the person who killed my brother, thinks we should be afraid.” His mouth tightens, and his eyes narrow. “I’m not afraid. Don’t you be afraid either. You know what scares me? Cynicism. Apathy. Anything that convinces people to settle, to quit. The thought that people will give up on changing this world because of one person’s cruel cowardice makes my blood run cold. I would have given up on the system, the way things work, long ago had it not been for Owen. He renewed my faith in the process by which we change things in this country.”

He grips the podium so tightly, his knuckles whiten. “Robert Kennedy said, ‘There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.’ I say comfort, even peace, is an illusion. There is always a cause, but too few believe enough to fight.

“Owen was a believer, and if you were around him long enough, he made a believer out of you. He had a stealthy will of iron. Beneath that easy charm and boyish grin was a tough-as-nails crusader. A brawler for the things and people he cared about, and he cared about a lot of people. They were his mission.Youwere his mission. He was determined not to fail you. If Owen inspired you even once, don’t you fail him.”

His glance drops to the coffin, and for a moment, he looks shaken. That helpless sorrow passes across his face almost too quickly to detect before he firms his mouth and looks back to the crowd.

“The past is behind us. The future is ours. Figure out how you can change the world rightnow, and don’t fear it. Do it.”

CHAPTER 29

MAXIM

My polite responses to condolences stopped hours ago. The comfort of strangers feels like an itchy sweater—agitating. I want to strip itoff. Whoever decided the best way to spend the afternoon following a funeral was with food and well-meaning, awkward mourners should be punched in the face. This reception is absolutely the last thing I want to do.

I haven’t been in my parents’ house in years, and this was not how I saw myself returning. When Ihavecome to visit my mother over the past decade, I’ve stayed in a hotel. I own homes all over the world, but not here. Even Texas isn’t big enough for my father and me.

I flew into Dallas yesterday to help prepare for the service and to support Millie and Mom. This has taken the hardest toll on them.

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