The Salvation State
Page 28
Not everyone’s like Andrea. Even she might do things differently if she had a chance now. Even she thought she was doing the right thing.
“I kept wanting to get you alone,” Daniel said. “Just like this. For the keychain—to give it back in secret. To keep you safe.”
She nodded. She believed him. She still couldn’t speak. She was glad of the rain, glad it camouflaged her tears. She didn’t want him to think she was a crier.
“Why did you do it? Smuggling that here—it’s one step short of suicide.”
Given a direct question, she found herself able to take some wind and answer. “My parents are dead,” she said simply. “I miss them. I never want to forget what they look like.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “My father’s dead too. I don’t know about my mom. I worry about her.”
Rebecca turned her gaze up to his.
“I trusted them,” he said. “Both of them.”
She fingered the keyring. “I trusted my mother, even though we fought a lot.”
“You didn’t trust your dad?”
She shook her head. “I loved him, though.”
“It’s a dangerous thing,” he said. “Trusting someone.”
Tell me about it, she thought. Then she said, “It’s sacred. You can’t break it.”
“Do you trust me?”
In answer, she kissed him. She reached out with both hands, taking him right at the ears, and drew him down for it. His eyes widened in surprise, then seemed to melt in pure, uncomplicated contentment. There in the rain, he wrapped his arms around her and returned the kiss.
“That was my first,” he said afterward.
“My second,” said Rebecca, grinning, feeling unaccountably giddy and safe. “We’re probably doing it wrong.”
They laughed.
“Little more practice, then,” Daniel said, and drew her face back to his.
Epilogue
Hope
Sunday, August 23
Second Salvations Camp 6: Angel Island
Countdown: 7 Days Till the Lamb.
The rain stopped.
Heading back to the quad, where different paths would return them to their separate cabins, they didn’t hold hands. They certainly didn’t dare another kiss. They walked with a respectful gap separating them. They didn’t want to get in trouble.
“They will kill him, Daniel. Asher, I mean.”
“I know.”
Rebecca stopped walking. She took his hand just long enough to stop him too. “Let’s play a game.”
Daniel looked at the clock tower. They had eight minutes. “Better be a quick one.”
“It is,” she promised him. “I’ll tell you how to play, and you just think about it for tonight.”
“All right. Shoot.”
“First,” Rebecca said, “one of us thinks of an impossible task, something that simply cannot be done. I’ll go first, just as an example. Then you think of the first step to pull it off. Then I think of the second step, and so on, until there’s a whole plan.”
“I like this game,” Daniel said. “Does Caroline know how to play?”
“Yeah. She’s really good at it.”
He regarded her. “I’m all in. What’s the impossible task?”
Under the lamp light, between the shadows of the chapel crucifix and the clock tower, Rebecca told him.
The End
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