Page 82 of Embers of Midnight
“Yes.” No softness, because softness here would be lying. “Real enough that I could have broken it if it was wrong.”
She nods once. “She’s dead.”
“I know.” I would buy her a better word if we made those here.
“She told me to find my father,” she says. “She said I’m only half free.”
My mouth moves before I plan it. “We’ll find him.” We. It is not theater. It’s a route with no map.
Silence sits with us the way a third person would if they knew how to be useful. The room holds the kind of quiet that doesn’t threaten to tip.
“You’re shaking,” I murmur when her fingers jump against my shirt. “Do you want me to build you something to rest in.”
Her eyes flicker in a yes that doesn’t want to be loud. “Stay,” she says. “Don’t go to your room. Do it from here.”
“I will,” I say, already sliding my back to the headboard. “Lie down. Breathe with me.”
She tucks in under my arm, one palm flat on my ribs where she can steal my count if she loses hers. I press the back of my head to the wall and drop into the place where dreams take instructions if you give them gently enough.
Sea before dawn. Cobble underfoot. Heat leaking from a closed kitchen leaves a ribbon of warm air at shin height. I build the street narrow on purpose—two people wide, shops shuttered, salt riding low enough you taste it if you breathe with your mouth open.
I open the door with my shoulder and let her feel the pressure change like a tide shift. Her breath hitches, then evens. The dream takes gently. We’re there.
She pads a few steps, barefoot because she is safe here. “Where did you bring me?” she asks, not assuming, just curious. Her voice is rough from crying and not pretending she didn’t.
“A version of Italy,” I answer. “Coast town, no tourists, kitchens that know garlic isn’t a personality. I stitched the map from places I liked.”
She nods once like that matters—because it does—and we start walking. No rush. The lane bends and drops. Laundry lines hang slack over our heads. A scooter sleeps against a wall, not staged, just parked. Three cats exist in a window and do nothing important. She smiles at none of it and all of it.
We pass a bakery where the ovens are cooling. Flour dust sits on the sill like a fingerprint. She runs her fingertips along the stone, grounds herself, and looks at me side-on. “It was real,” she repeats. Not a question.
“Real enough to change the temperature in your bones,” I reply. “I felt the line between you and her.”
“My mother,” she says, testing the word like it might splinter.
“Yes.” The word lands clean.
She swallows. “She said to find my father. That I’m only half free.” Her jaw works once. “She said I was loved before I was born. Twice.”
“I memorized it when she said it,” I admit. “All of it.” The lane opens onto a stair that drops to a small square. I take her wrist—thread, bracelet, pulse—two short, one long. She matches. Her shoulders come down half an inch.
“What if he doesn’t want to be found?” She keeps her eyes on the stairs like they might argue.
“Then we inconvenience him with reality,” I say. “You exist. That changes the math.”
She huffs a laugh that isn’t ready to be big. “You make it sound simple.”
“It isn’t,” I concede. “But it is doable. We’ll ask boring questions in the right places. We’ll build proofs. When people get tired, they confess to end the conversation.”
“He won’t come to me,” she quotes, mouth twisting. “She said that like a fact.”
“Some men confuse distance with duty,” I say, and hate that I sound like I’ve been grading that sentence for years. “We’ll test the difference.”
We cut left where the square thins to a seawall. The water below is black turning gray. No metaphor. Just push and pull and acool draft across our shins. She braces her forearms on the stone and looks at the horizon like it might offer paperwork.
“What did you feel from her?” she asks. “You were there.”
“Love, not theater,” I tell her. “No pride. No agenda strong enough to lie for. Regret that tasted like a fact, not a performance.” I rest my knuckles on the wall next to hers, not touching. “And a door behind her, thin as rice paper.”
