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I reach for Derek’s twitching right hand behind my back and squeeze it.
Derek looks from his father to me. I squeeze his hand again and hold tight.
He flinches and stares at me with confusion in his pained eyes.
I put my other arm around him and rub his back.
He looks ready to break down in tears. From his father’s speech? From my back rub? Both? Everything? Probably everything.
“Let’s stay,” I say.
Derek swallows, then looks back to his father. “Fine,” he says, “But I’m not participating in a circus out there. Receiving lines and bullshit like that. No. Me and Chloe will stay in my old room, and I’ll see you all in the morning.”
“Thank you,” Michael breathes, sounding relieved. “All of you do what you need to do today, just please do it here. Stay. And let’s meet for breakfast in the morning. Nine o’clock in your mother’s morning room. I’d like to have breakfast with my children tomorrow. And your spouses. My family. Have a meeting with my sons about security and cleaning up after today, but after breakfast. Is that all right?”
“Okay, Daddy,” Grace says quietly, dabbing her wet eyes with a Kleenex.
Derek moves toward the door, taking me with him.
My eyes meet Derek’s father’s.
“Thank you, Chloe,” he says softly.
I give him a small, sad nod as we move out of the room.
Derek walks too quickly, meaning I need to jog to keep up, taking us down a hall through a room full of mourners eating and drinking, staring at us, and then down another hallway until we’re approaching a grand, winding staircase.
“You’re walking too fast,” I manage to rasp, a stitch in my side.
He slows and we climb the stairs together, then move down a hallway of doors before turning down another hallway leading to a short staircase and yet another hallway of doors.
Three doors down, he opens a door.
A large bedroom with multiple doors including sliding patio doors that lead to a balcony. Done in dark wood furniture, gleaming hardwood floors, blue and green plaid bedding. A large desk with leather chair. An adjoining bathroom. A sitting area as well as a wet bar with a fridge microwave.
He closes the door, locks it, and turns to me, taking my face into both hands.
I gasp in surprise as his mouth touches mine gently, sweetly.
“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispers. “I need you right now. I need you so fucking much I think I’ll die if I don’t have you.”
“Derek, no,” I whisper. “I can’t…”
“I can,” he says, a gleam in his eyes. “And I will. Please, little bunny, don’t try to deny me. I need you more than air. I need to feel my wife. I need to hold you. I need you to numb the pain for a while. Please, baby. Please. You’re the only one that can stop it.”
“Stop it?” I query.
“The pain. The trigger finger.”
I stare at his hand.
He’s not flexing it right now.
He pulls me close and the zipper on the back of my dress descends.
“I was trapped with that doc for nine days as he sank deeper and deeper into psychosis. As I watched the timer on the wall count down while he ranted for hours at a time about things a kid couldn’t comprehend, telling me he’d have to kill me. Because my father had to be the bigger man with the bigger balls, not giving in to ransom demands because it was a shot at his manhood. He talked to me about life, death, fuckin’ taxes, revenge, baseball, betrayal, sex…” He shakes his head. “Made me work through mind and guessing games for food and water. And then when it was clear the timer was about to go off and I knew no one was coming to pay him the ransom, I got my hands on the gun and pulled the trigger.” He mimics the action again and I can see it’s what he was doing. Squeezing an imaginary trigger over and over.
“I squeezed, and it was over. The guy was dead on the floor, bleeding out, and I knew it was over. I had nightmares for months about pulling the trigger over and over, watching the blood, gray matter, flesh and bone shards explode from his head. But even though what I saw was horrific, that one squeeze of my finger made it over.”
