Chapter 25 #2
“Some men wage war in here.” Emory tapped his temple as they continued down the hall.
“Joe was that way. Even after he came home from Vietnam, the war never truly ended for him, so he built a brotherhood of lost souls, men who were similarly afflicted and had no one to turn to, nowhere else to go. At first, they offered protection to the neighborhood. That led to gambling rackets, shylocking, the like. It grew from there, and they found in each other family and belonging.”
Emory didn’t have to tell her. Amelia would’ve figured it out as they passed faded photographs where love, joy, and the pulsing promise of new beginnings radiated from each frame. A monster unmasked, her father surely never knew the Moriartys that way.
They stopped at a photograph halfway down the hall. In it, Liam wore fatigues a smidge too big, and a rifle hung heavy over his bony shoulder.
“Liam was raised in this life,” Emory said. “To him, it was the family business. Joe thought military service would instill the discipline Liam needed to lead the organization one day. It did, and Liam eventually inherited it with one rule: our secrets are sacred.”
Amelia stilled, but when she met Emory’s eyes, the warning she expected wasn’t there. Instead, his gaze flicked from her lips to her eyes again, and Amelia’s heart strummed a quickened beat. The sun washed farther down the hall and saturated the glossy length of Emory’s hair.
He tapped the soldier in the frame standing tall next to Liam. “That’s my father.”
The resemblance snapped into place. Emory’s coloring was darker than his father’s chestnut hair and blue eyes, but the striking features were the same.
Amelia beamed as she studied Emory then the photograph. “You look so much like him.”
“So I’ve heard. He and Liam served together in Iraq. They lost touch after they came home but reconnected when my mom passed.”
“Where is your dad now?”
“He died of a heart attack when I was thirteen. Liam and his wife, Francisca, took me and Mirabelle in.”
Despite his composed delivery, Emory’s jaw clenched with old hurts. He looked caught between exalting memories of his father and suppressing the sadness they stirred.
“I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“It’s okay. That was a long time ago.”
“How did your parents meet?” Amelia asked as they passed several more photos.
“After my dad got out of the military, he went to Puerto Rico. He only planned to stay a week but met my mom.” Emory paused and glanced at Amelia with a knowing smile. “He got hit with the thunderbolt.”
“The thunderbolt?” she laughed and turned the phrase over in her mind. “Wait, like in The Godfather?”
He nodded with a chuckle. The reference was to something more consuming than love at first sight and tinged with more madness too. It was also perhaps the most tender moment in a story Amelia remembered was shaded with sorrow.
“They were crazy for each other, and my dad refused to leave without her. My granddad had other thoughts.”
“He didn’t like your dad?”
“Not exactly. My dad had known my mom for less than a week and wasn’t a practicing Catholic.
My granddad refused to give my mom away to a man who didn’t intend to marry her in the church.
So, my dad rediscovered his faith under my granddad’s tutelage until he agreed to the marriage. It took four months.”
Emory relayed the last bit with evident pride and admiration. The story was worthy of both, that a man would be so devoted to the woman he loved.
“That’s very romantic,” Amelia said, her cheeks warm well before they dipped into the sunlight.
“He had his moments.”
She waggled the notebook. “Seems you do too.”
“For you, yes,” Emory said and studied her in the fresh light as they reached the end of the hall.
Amelia’s heart picked up its rhythm, a steady pounding against the notebook she clutched to her chest.
“Why for me?” she asked but wasn’t fishing for a grand gesture.
Plenty of women had appeared over the last week unattached to a man and shamelessly on the prowl. Amelia wasn’t foolish enough to believe that none had offered Emory their company and so much more. A man like him could have his pick.
A soft smile spread on his lips, but his eyes conveyed what was in his heart, a steadiness of affection that’d seemingly grown in their time apart.
“Thunderbolt,” he said.
“Thunderbolt,” Amelia repeated, keenly aware of how far they’d come.
The change had happened unexpectedly in them both. If anyone asked how it began, they’d have no coordinates in space to give, no moment in time to tell, only that they stood in the midst of it now, baptized in new light at the end of the hall.
They stood beside the last photograph, one where Liam Moriarty flashed a candid smile. In Portland, the same picture, tattered at the edges and regarded with contempt, sat on her father’s desk. Here, it held a place of honor amongst a proud bloodline.
“I see why this is your favorite part of the house,” Amelia said and cast one last look down the hall before they drifted into the great room.
The space was an Elysian dream, redolent with lavender and drenched in golden light. Through tall windows, the sun melted like sherbet on the horizon and spilled across the desert valley.
“Simple things,” Emory said and settled next to the window.
Amelia contemplated the scene outside and that lonely road in the distance. “And yet here you are where nothing is simple.”
It was only an observation, but Emory treated it like a question to be answered. Shoulder against the window frame, he stared out and Amelia admired his profile.
The poetry I’ll write for you, she thought fondly, though her crushes always ended that way, those times she bled her heart onto a page and handed it over.
The ones before crumpled it up and said it was too much.
“Not all hearts are built for boundless love,” her mom used to say as she freed the hair plastered to Amelia’s tear-stained cheeks.
“Those poems you write. Darling, save them for someone worthy.”
The scar on Emory’s lip twitched with a frown. “I came here without a choice. It was survival, not ambition.”
Eyes to the floor, his hair was a curtain around his face and his cheeks a dusky pink. Heavy was the crown upon his head, but Amelia recognized the burden as loneliness, not duty.
She reached up and gently tucked a lock of hair behind Emory’s ear. The gesture drew his gaze. He was heartsick over something.
“You ask me the same question every time you see me, but I wonder if anyone’s ever asked you, so I will. Emory Holt, are you okay?”
“Amelia Havick, no, I am not.”
“What can I do?”
Emory stared up at the ceiling and thought it over with a hum. It was a clever distraction as his arm slipped along the small of her back, and he drew her in close.
“Hmm, well, let’s see.” Emory appraised Amelia in her sundress and wedge heels. “You look beautiful, like you’re ready for a date or something, and I happen to know a place on the third floor.”
“Oh yeah?” Amelia laughed, giddy just to be near him again. “You know a place?”
“Yeah, there’s this balcony. No one fucks with me up there. I was gonna grab some food and hide away. You wanna hide away with me?”
Offered in earnest, the question came quiet and not for the sake of discretion.
Emory drew a long breath and shifted on his feet.
He’s nervous, Amelia realized. It never occurred to her that she might elicit butterflies in him too or that he might fumble his words with his heart on the line.
Something in the balance, that they were on equal footing, calmed her frazzled nerves.
Amelia held his hand in both of her own and stared up at him from beneath her lashes. “Only if it’s a date.”
The blush on Emory’s cheeks deepened. Whatever his worries, they seemed to depart. “Yes, it’s a date.”
“Then let’s go hide away.”