Chapter 7 #2
“It’s terrible listening to people spread rumors about someone you love.
Listening to them speculate about what happened, how they died, whether they were having an affair.
” She waved a hand in the air. “It goes on and on. But my mom and Phillipe, at least they didn’t have to hear it and see it.
They aren’t here to read what people are posting on social media.
To feel the weight of eyes when they walk into a room.
To overhear people speculating about their life and death as if they don’t have feelings, as if they didn’t exist.”
Rosemary’s pain emanated from her in waves. His chest ached with empathy, but he didn’t agree with her logic.
“I’d rather have Phillipe alive, even if it meant public embarrassment.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean that. What I meant was...
” She hesitated, the sound of her flicking the pop top loud in the quiet room.
“Imagine being the one dying but not being dead. Imagine having a terminal illness and people you barely know thinking it’s perfectly acceptable to grill you about your doctors, your treatments, and your prognosis.
Asking you if cancer runs in your family.
Asking you what your symptoms are. Asking how you realized you were sick.
Having the nerve to ask you, to your face, how long you have to live. ”
She released a long, slow breath and lifted her gaze. Her eyes had grown dim and somber.
“They looked at me as if I was already dead. As if I wasn’t a person anymore.
I was a curiosity. An interesting, gruesome topic of conversation that, somehow, they couldn’t let go.
Most people, even my friends, stopped seeing me.
They only saw the cancer that was killing me.
How I can be so reasonable? I had to be.
I had to find a way to understand the obsession with death or hate was going to destroy me.
I think that’s where you are now. If you don’t find a way to process your grief and anger, it’s going to consume you. I know. I’ve lived it.”
Her strength and compassion tugged on the knot of torment and outrage that was tangled tightly in his chest. She was right.
His grief and anger were slowly burning him alive, but after talking to her tonight, the jagged edges of his pain had softened a bit.
For the first time in two years, he’d spoken about Phillipe and felt better, not worse.
Maybe Rosemary could be the key to helping him heal.
But for her to help him heal, he was going to have to tell her the whole truth of his pain. The cold facts he’d provided his superiors, the one-word answers he’d offered the psychologists, the icy stares he’d given his colleagues—they weren’t going to cut it.
Phillipe’s memory deserved more.
Rosemary deserved more.
* * *
Rosemary took another drink of her fruity, bitter beer while she waited. Aleksei’s face was impassive, but his eyes churned. What had begun as a predictable evening of theater had morphed into laughter, rain, anger, sadness, and souls laid bare.
The night was as crooked as her stepfather, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
She wanted to know Aleksei. Really know him. In her opinion, a relationship wasn’t real if it wasn’t completely honest. The question was, now that he’d gotten a handle on his emotions, would he still be open with her?
He reached out, resting his long, lean fingers on her bent knee. She could feel the warmth of his hand through her jeans and the blanket.
“You’re right. I’ve been completely wrapped up in myself. My mom told me the same thing, but I didn’t listen.”
“I guess she’s not one for gentle parenting?” she asked, trying to lighten the moment.
A chuckle rumbled in Aleksei’s chest, erasing some of the pain in his expression.
“My mom is a determined woman. She doesn’t mince words or hold her tongue.
She told me I was wallowing in self-pity, and it was time to get over myself.
I think her exact words were, ‘Get your head out of your ass and see a therapist. The wounded, distant, tough guy thing is getting old fast.’”
Rosemary giggled. She’d probably really like his mother.
She shifted her legs closer to him and relaxed into the quiet.
When she was sick, she’d learned to listen.
Really listen. The tension in the room had eased, but it was going to be incredibly hard for Aleksei to keep talking about Phillipe.
Hopefully, her silence would give him the space and time he needed to find the words he wanted to use.
After a few minutes of listening to the sounds of the crackling flames, he finally spoke.
“Phillipe was my best friend. We started at Quantico on the same day. We were both Special Forces. He was a Green Beret, and I was a Marine Raider. We’d both been through some real shit and had an instant connection.
After training, we were both assigned to work out of DC.
They normally pair new agents with more experienced ones, but a few months in, my partner blew out his knee playing softball the same week Phillipe’s partner announced his retirement, so they put us together. ”
It was as if he’d flipped the off switch on his anger and was retelling a story he’d heard second-hand.
His demeanor appeared calm, but his muscles were rigid against her legs.
He was as taut as an overstretched elastic wrapped around a too-large ponytail.
So tight that it might snap free at any moment.
“And then you moved to Philly?” she prompted. He would feel better if he kept talking.
“Samantha, Phillipe’s wife, wanted to move to this area to be closer to family, so they transferred us.
I moved here, and they bought a house in Abington.
Things were great. Sometimes we’d hang out in town.
I went to their place for barbeques, Sunday dinners, the kids’ birthday parties, all that kind of stuff.
We played in a softball league. Sometimes Samantha would bring the kids to watch our games. ”
He ran his free hand through his close-cropped hair and then grabbed his beer from the coffee table and drained it. “I loved being an honorary uncle. I thought we were so fucking lucky. And then the shit hit the fan.”
Aleksei’s tension emanated from his body in such forceful waves that it was like sitting next to a furnace.
The heat of his stress combined with the heat from the fireplace made sweat bead along the edges of her wig.
She pressed her hands to her thighs, trying to draw her mind away from the itchy feeling building along the edges of her scalp. He deserved her full attention.
“What happened?”
He ran his long fingers over his hair again, his head slowly shaking back and forth.
“The worst thing is, I don’t really know.
We had an apartment in Northern Liberties that we used for our cover.
It was a quiet night, and I was tired as shit.
I had a beer with Phillipe and went to bed.
When I woke up in the morning, he was gone.
His bed hadn’t been slept in. And I knew.
Right then, I knew something terrible had happened.
We found him later that day. It was...difficult. ”
He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then reopened them.
“It’s crazy the things you focus on. When the ME flipped him over, he had some kind of dirt on his face.
I remember wishing I could just clean his face.
There was nothing I could do about the bullet wound or his missing hands, but the least I could do was wipe his face.
And they wouldn’t let me. They wouldn’t let me. ”
Her lungs felt weighted down, like they were full of rocks. She would give anything to ease his pain.
“Did they find the person who killed him?” She had to ask even though, in her heart, she knew the answer.
He shook his head again. “No. There were no fingerprints. No physical evidence. I think it was someone from the case we were working on, but there was no proof. Somehow, it got leaked that he might have been an undercover cop. He was never linked to the FBI, and Philly PD denied he was one of theirs, but the murder was all over the news. The FBI closed down the op and shut down the investigation into the murder. They didn’t want any bad press. They wanted it to all blow over.”
He shrugged. “They moved on to the next thing and expected me to do the same, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t work every day with people who were willing to sweep Phillipe’s murder under the rug. People who could just go on with their lives and ignore his death.”
She hated the contrast of the pain in his eyes and the neutrality of his voice, the forced calm that masked his sorrow. She knew all about survivor’s guilt. She’d waited months for her mother’s murderer to be brought to justice. Aleksei was still waiting.
“So, you quit the FBI and started working as a consultant?”
He nodded. “We were supposed to have each other’s backs, but he chose to go out alone that night.
In the weeks before his murder, he seemed quieter than usual.
He blamed his mood on being separated from his family for too long, and I believed him.
He was my best friend. I should have known there was more to it. ”
Aleksei’s voice cracked, a small fissure in his composure.
“He didn’t trust me enough to tell me what was going on.
He didn’t wake me up to go with him. He never should have been out there alone.
I should have asked more questions. I should have pushed harder.
If I had been a better partner, been a better friend, if Phillipe had trusted me... maybe I could have saved him.”
“And if you couldn’t?” Rosemary asked.
“At least he wouldn’t have died alone.”