Great and Precious Things

by Rebecca Yarros

  “That’s not—”

  “Shut up! I saw you! I couldn’t figure out what you were doing with the hose from the mine’s water tank until I saw you throw the torch.”

  My head felt light, and I swayed on my feet.

  “No one was in there! Everyone was outside at the bonfire.” His eyes darted toward me. “At least they were supposed to be.”

  “So, what? You were just going to put the fire out and call yourself a hero?” Cam shouted. “Instead you sat there. Holy shit. You watched Sully crawl out. You watched me go in. You stood there the whole time, didn’t you?”

  Xander swallowed. “Look, it caught so much faster than it was supposed to.”

  “You let me take the blame for it! You watched them pin it on me, and then you used it against me in Dad’s case.” Cam shook his head. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Don’t hit him. Don’t hit him. He wouldn’t get away with it, not with the crowd and the cameras.

  “Like you’d understand!” Xander shouted. “You, who can’t stay out of trouble. You, who gets into fistfights defending her!” He pointed at me. “And who manages to carry her out of a mine covered in blood. And who rips apart the entire town for fun but then emerges from a burning barn with Willow in your arms. It was all so easy for you to be larger than life! And I did everything I could to be good. That’s what I was supposed to be, but it was never enough. I was never good enough. And you come home a decade later, covered in your army medals, and think you can rescue her again, rescue Dad, now rescue Rose? Hell, rescue this whole damned town!”

  The realization that began that day at the courthouse came full circle. It was all about perception for him. He had been so consumed with trying to look like a hero that he forgot to be one.

  Cam shook his head and took another step back. “News flash, Xander. I didn’t want any of it. I only wanted her.”

  “I just wanted one medal. One moment.”

  “I would trade every medal on that uniform to have Sullivan back.”

  Xander’s head snapped to the side as a fist slammed into it, but it wasn’t Cam standing above him as he slid against the wall. It was my dad.

  Gideon and Tim sprang into action, one cuffing Xander and one cuffing my dad.

  “Alexander Daniels, you’re under arrest for arson,” Gideon growled and guided Xander by the neck down the steps.

  “Gid!” I shouted, and he looked back. “You might want to take his mic off.”

  Xander’s head snapped up to look out over the crowd of a thousand people who’d heard it all go down over the speakers. Gid unsnapped the tiny mic from the front of Xander’s shirt and tossed it to the reporter after nodding his thanks to me.

  “I don’t want to do this, Noah,” Tim Hall said quietly. “But the damned cameras are on us.”

  “The law is black and white,” Dad answered Tim while he looked at me. “And it was worth it.”

  “Noah Bradley, you’re under arrest for assault.” He finished his Miranda rights as Mom trailed after him.

  “I’ll get the bail money!”

  Cam wrapped his arm around me, and I melted against his chest. “Take me home?”

  “Gladly.” He kissed the top of my head.

  “I guess we put on quite a show for the tourists,” Dorothy Powers said, her arm looped through Art’s. “Let’s get you home, Arthur.”

  Art looked at Cam, and I knew the lucidity he’d had in the mine was fading fast. “The map,” he said quietly.

  “It’s framed above Xander’s bed,” Cam explained.

  His eyes drifted toward mine. “Balance.” Then he walked off with Dorothy, looking like he’d aged ten years in the past hour.

  “Should we open the mine?” John Royal asked, gesturing out at the tourists.

  Cam groaned.

  “Tourists first,” I whispered, looking out over the crowd. He’d done this—made it possible for Alba to not just continue surviving but thrive. All because he’d been unafraid to stand alone and fight for what he knew was right, even if everyone else screamed that it was wrong.

  “I guess we’ll open her up.” Then he kissed me in front of everyone, and the crowd roared.

  “We don’t need to put on that good of a show,” Dorothy muttered.

  “That was just for fun,” Cam replied, smiling down at me.

  He’d never been the one to care how things looked, and I couldn’t have loved him any more for it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Camden

  The aspens’ leaves danced shadows across the gravestones as I stood and faced my little brother for the first time in six years.

  “It’s not like I need to fill you in,” I told him as I brushed fallen leaves from the top of the gray marble. “I’ve always felt like you hung around. Hell, I talk to you enough. Of course, I’m hoping you don’t hang around too often, given…” Given the fact that I had Willow in my bed every night. “But I hope you’d be happy for us, and even if you aren’t, I’m just going to pretend that you are, because even you being pissed at me couldn’t keep me away from her.”

  “Nikki told me you were out here.”

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Dad coming up the slight incline, his nurse staying back a few dozen feet to give us some privacy.

  “You look good,” I told him as he came to stand next to me, directly in front of Mom’s stone.

  “It’s my mind that’s going, son, not my face.” He smirked before stepping forward to brush his hand over Mom’s name. “I’m glad she wasn’t here for this part, though. No one should have to watch the person they love disappear right in front of them.”

  I looked him over, doing a quick assessment. He wore the new Rose Rowan shirt I’d dropped off for him last week, his hair was combed, and he looked, well, like him.

  “Nikki also said that the last few times you’ve stopped over, I haven’t recognized you.” Dad crouched and brushed the leaves from Mom’s stone.

  “But you do today?” I asked slowly.

  He sighed and stood, wiping his hands off on his jeans and glancing toward Uncle Cal’s stone a little past Mom’s. “I’m enough of myself to recognize that I’m not always myself.”

  “And everything that happened a couple weeks ago?” I probed.

  “I know your brother is out on bail, if that’s what you’re asking,” he grumbled. “He really left Willow in the mine when you were kids?”

  “Yeah.” I beat back the anger that welled up every time I thought about it.

  “And he set fire to the bunkhouse?”

  “He did.”

  Dad turned to face me. “And you took the blame.”

  “My reasons seemed sound back then.” I looked away. We’d come a long way since I’d returned home, but this was still awkward as hell.

  “I swear, you always cared too little about what other people thought, and Xander cared too much.” He shook his head. “There was a girl in the mine…”

  “Rose,” I supplied.

  “Right. She okay?”

  “She is. Grounded, I believe, but physically fine. You saved her. We never could have found her without you.”

  He grunted a reply that I couldn’t interpret.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you,” I said softly, spitting it out before I lost whatever time I had with him.

  His gaze jerked toward mine. “More what?”

  Shit.

  “The DNR,” I reminded him. “The judge denied us. Do you remember?”

  His brow furrowed. “I remember Walt telling me the judge’s decision. But I know you did what you could. You opened the mine, for Christ’s sake. Took on Judge Bradley and won him over, from what I remember.”

  “It wasn’t enough.” I shifted my weight and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Cam, y
ou can’t control the choices other people make. You do the best you can, and then it’s out of your hands.”

  My gaze drifted to Sullivan’s stone.

  “And what happens when you make the wrong choice?” I arched my neck slightly to ease the tightening sensation in my throat. “What happens when you’re standing in the mine and you have to choose left or right in a split second with no way to justify your choice?”

  “You went left and found the girl. Why are you beating yourself up? It worked out in the end.”

  Willow chose left. I followed her.

  “I made a decision just like that. Two men stepped forward, I pointed to the guy on the left, and Sullivan died.”

  Dad sucked in a breath. “Camden…”

  “I want you to know what happened that day, but not for the reasons you think. I’m starting to realize you can’t give me absolution, if that’s what you’re worried about. What I need you to know is that while I’m responsible for Sully’s death, I didn’t know it was his squad leader I chose.” I closed my eyes against the barrage of imagery in my head. Sullivan’s smile, his laugh, his eyes going vacant as he bled out. “I didn’t know.” My voice dropped to a whisper.

  For a long moment, the only sounds were the rustling leaves above us and the faint whirl of the wind.

  “We made a deal when you came back.”

  My eyes flew open at Dad’s comment, and my stomach clenched. “We did, but I’m not holding you to it. I want you to listen, but I won’t force you.” As much as I knew I deserved to be heard, my father deserved to make his own choice in the matter. Sullivan was his son.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  With Sullivan only a few feet away, I did.

  “We got the call that an outpost was in serious danger of being overrun, and we went. We landed under heavy fire, and it was a shit show on the ground. A new company had just rotated in the month before, and from what we’d seen from the air, they were vastly outnumbered. Our team split to accomplish different objectives. Once my commander relayed what we’d seen to that company’s commander, I was ordered to take a squad with another operator—they couldn’t spare a whole platoon—to reinforce the section of the perimeter we’d seen was about to fall. I’m talking minutes, not hours.”

  The smell of gunfire filled my nose, and even though I told myself it was all in my head, my heart rate picked up.

  “Two squad leaders answered their captain’s request. They stepped forward, and I pointed to the guy on the left and told him we needed to move.” I’d gone over the memory so many times in my head, and yet I still found myself searching for any sign that I’d missed Sullivan at that point. “He pulled his guys off the line, and we ran.”

  I glanced Dad’s way to see that he was focused on Sullivan’s stone but appeared to be listening, so I forged ahead.

  “I go over it in my head a lot,” I admitted. “More than the psych guys would want, at least. That moment, had I picked the sergeant on the right, Sullivan wouldn’t have been shot.”

  Dad flinched.

  “The next opportunity I had was when we ran. I let their sergeant lead the way because he knew the outpost better, of course, but I kept up with him step for step as his men followed and Vasquez brought up the rear. If we’d traded places, maybe I would have recognized the way he ran.” I cleared my throat as it tightened again. “We spread out along the wall and began returning fire.” I skipped over the details. “A few minutes later, I heard Vasquez call for a medic. I can still hear him calling, to be completely honest. I don’t even know why I looked, but I did.”

  I turned my head and waited until my dad’s eyes met mine.

  “It was Sullivan. He was standing there with those wide eyes of his, holding on to his neck while blood…” I closed my eyes and took another deep breath. “I screamed his name and ran as fast as I could, but I barely made it there in time to catch him as he fell. Ten feet. That’s all that had separated us. Ten fucking feet.”

  “Was it quick?” Dad asked, his voice thick.

  “Just a couple minutes.”

  “And he wasn’t alone?” The last word broke.

  “I was with him the entire time. He knew it was me. There was nothing I could do.” I made the realization as the words slipped free. “I’ve spent six years reliving those moments, and once he’d been shot, there really was nothing I could do but stay with him. And I did. I stayed with him through transport and through Dover and didn’t leave his side until we laid him next to Mom.”

  Tears blurred my vision, but I saw Dad swipe at his face.

  “I loved Sullivan, Dad. I would have traded places with him in a heartbeat. God knows I did my best to join him in the years that followed. I never would have chosen his squad if I’d known. Hell, I would have sat on his stubborn ass in the middle of that outpost, far from the wall. I made the choices that killed him, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

  I couldn’t say how long we stood there, but the afternoon sun had shifted by the time Dad spoke.

  “You might not want my absolution, Camden, but you have it.”

  My knees weakened, and I swayed.

  “Were you a part of his death? Yes, but only in the way a cog moves the hands of the clock.” His jaw ticked as his gaze met mine briefly. “The truth is that while it was easier to levy the blame on you, we all made choices that led to his death. I let him enlist—not that I could have stopped him. I think about that every day. That boy worshipped the ground you walked on. He wanted to be just like you. Even fell for the same girl.”

  “He would have been better for her,” I admitted.

  “Maybe,” Dad admitted with a nod. “But maybe not. And you’ll be better to her. You tend to safeguard something once you realize how precious it is.”

  “I will.” Losing Willow wasn’t an option, and maybe I didn’t deserve her, but I was sure as hell going to earn her every day.

  “Your mother told me once, ‘You’re free to make your own choices, but you’re not free from the consequences of that choice.’” His lips curved slightly before falling again. “Sullivan made his choice. Xander did, too. We all do. Every day. You’re no different. You have to love your choices, Camden, no matter what they are, because you have the freedom to choose.” He looked me in the eye. “Don’t waste them, either, because you never know when it’s the last one you’ll get to make. It goes faster than you think.”

  He turned and headed down the hill.

  “Dad!” I called out. “One thing has been bugging me.”

  “What is that?” He paused but didn’t turn.

  “The door in the mine. What was it there for?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows. Your great-grandfather wasn’t exactly all there in the head.”

  I huffed a small laugh and watched him walk away. We might not be a sitcom family, but at least he wasn’t shooting at me anymore.

  My phone buzzed as I headed toward my Jeep, and I checked it with a grin.

  Willow: Finishing up a design and then headed to your place.

  Cam: Sounds perfect. I just need to run an errand. I’ll meet you there.

  Willow: Love you.

  I grinned. That right there was what my choices—the good and the bad—had earned me.

  Cam: Love you.

  I slipped my phone back into my pocket and climbed into the Jeep. There was one more choice to be made today, and it was Xander’s.

  Ten minutes later, I rang the doorbell at my brother’s house. It was one of the newest buildings in Alba, go figure, all sparkling new, and the setting sun bounced off the gleaming windows, picture-perfect.

  “Cam.” He answered the door, looking like nothing had changed. Like he wasn’t out on bail or facing ten years in prison if he didn’t plead it down. “Come here to gloat? I just saw the follow-up on Rose’s rescue on CNN if you want to revel
in your glory.”

  “You still don’t get it.” The manila envelope crinkled in my hands, and I was glad I’d only brought copies.

  “What do you want?”

  “About Dad—” I shifted my weight, at a loss on how to broach the topic.

  “I’m still his guardian unless you want to take me to court again. Then again, now that this has happened to me, maybe you’ll get guardianship this time.”

  I didn’t state the obvious—that he’d done it to himself.

  “Dad doesn’t want to die. You know that, right? He just wants the choice. To him, that’s what makes life worth the living. Choice.”

  Xander crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, I choose that he lives. And if you think that’s selfish, then I don’t care. I don’t want to lose my dad. I’m not going to be the son who lets it happen.”

  “What if it were you?” I asked quietly. His eyes narrowed, and I continued. “What if you were the one who couldn’t make your own choice?”

  “I don’t have to think about that. I’m thirty-one years old.” He shrugged.

  “But if you did,” I pushed. “What would you want?”

  “Are you asking if I’d want a DNR?”

  “I’m asking you to think about it,” I said slowly, clutching the envelope, “because one day you might not have the choice. The ironic thing about you fighting Dad for his right to his own body is that you never stopped to ask yourself about the genetics.”

  Xander froze.

  “I did.” I shrugged. “When I realized that Willow was it for me, that I wanted marriage and kids and the whole domestic package, I started reading. Guess what, Xander? Dad’s form of Alzheimer’s is genetic. It’s a presenilin-one mutation.”

  The color drained from his face. “So that means we could have it.”

  “Sullivan did,” I announced, handing him the envelope. He refused to take it. “I got the results for all three of us the day of the hearing.”

  “How?” He looked at the envelope like it would grow teeth and bite him, which was the most logical reaction I’d seen him have in a while.