24. Hunt #2
Her eyebrows went up. “June let you near her stove?”
“Don’t look so surprised. I can follow instructions when properly motivated.”
“What’s properly motivating you?”
I held her gaze. “You know what’s properly motivating me.”
The pink in her cheeks deepened. “Seven o’clock, then.”
“I’ll be early.”
I left the clinic feeling lighter than I had in a long time. Hope was part of it, but mostly it was the feeling of a path becoming clear, of the next steps finally making sense after months of fumbling in the dark.
Sasha was going to fall.
The lies she’d built her reputation on were going to crumble in front of everyone who’d believed them. And my wife, the woman I’d failed in a hundred different ways, was going to be the one holding the hammer.
I bought a new suit.
The tailor in town was a retired seamstress named Gloria Ruiz who’d been making clothes for Primrose residents since before Nora was born. She took one look at me and tsked.
“You’ve been working,” she said, circling me with a measuring tape. “Manual labor. I can tell by the way your shoulders sit.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It’s a challenge.” She made a note on her pad. “Fortunately, I like challenges.”
The suit she made me was simple, dark gray, well-fitted in ways my old suits had never managed. When I tried it on for the final fitting, I barely recognized myself in the mirror.
“You look like a man who does his own work,” Gloria said, adjusting the collar. “That’s not an insult, by the way. I’m tired of men who look like they’ve never touched anything heavier than a pen.”
“I touch a lot of things heavier than pens these days.”
“I can tell.” She stepped back, surveying her work. “Your wife is going to be pleased.”
“I hope so.”
“She will be.” Gloria smiled, knowing, the way a person smiles after a long marriage. “A good suit does wonders for a man who’s trying to earn his way back.”
The night before the banquet, I sat in my truck outside the clinic and ran through the plan one more time.
Nora had spent the week practicing what she’d say. She’d said it out loud to the exam room walls, to Waffles, to anyone who’d stand still long enough to listen, until every word was a blade she knew the weight of.
She was going to be magnificent.
My phone buzzed. A text from June.
“You ready for tomorrow?”
“As ready as I’m going to be.”
“Good. Because if you screw this up for her, I’ll end you.”
I believed her completely. “Understood.”
“I’m driving out for it, by the way. Wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
I smiled at my phone. June had become an unexpected ally over the past few months, a friend who saw through my walls but didn’t seem to mind what she found underneath.
“I appreciate the support.”
“I’m not supporting you, I’m supporting her. You’re just lucky enough to be attached.”
“Fair enough.”
The clinic lights went out. I watched Nora’s silhouette move through the building, locking up for the night, checking the owl one more time before heading home.
Tomorrow, we were going back to the city.
Tomorrow, we were walking into a ballroom full of people who’d watched her get erased and said nothing.
Tomorrow, she was going to burn it all down.
And I was going to stand beside her while she did it, because that’s what husbands did. That’s what I should’ve been doing all along.
I started my truck and drove back to the inn.
Saturday morning came gray and cool, weather that made the drive into the city feel longer than usual. Nora was quiet in the passenger seat, her hands folded in her lap, the red dress hanging in a garment bag behind us.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Nervous enough to throw up, and not from the baby.”
“You’ve earned nervous.”
“I keep thinking about all the ways this could go wrong.” She turned to look out the window. “What if I freeze up, or can’t get the words out? What if she just stands there and takes it and I don’t get the satisfaction I’m looking for?”
“She won’t stand there and take it.”
“You sound certain.”
I was. I’d spent the whole directorship watching Sasha Reed build herself out of other people’s admiration.
“I know her. I’ve known her for years, watched her work, studied how she operates.
She’s built her whole identity around being the hero, the one who saves the day.
When you take that away from her, in front of everyone she’s spent years impressing, she won’t be able to hold it together. ”
“And if I’m wrong? If she just laughs it off and walks away?”
“Then she walks away, and every last person in that room knows exactly what she did, and there isn’t a soul left alive who’ll look at her the same way again. She’ll have a medal and nothing else. That’s not nothing.”
Nora was quiet for a long moment.
“I keep thinking about the hospital,” she finally said. “Standing there in the doorway, watching her touch you. Watching everyone look at her like she was the reason you were still alive.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.” She turned to face me. “That’s not why I’m bringing it up. I’m bringing it up because I need you to understand why this matters to me. Why I need to be the one who says it, out loud, to her face. Why it can’t just be somebody else saying it while I watch from the back.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? Because this isn’t about revenge, Hunt. This is about standing up in front of every person who made me feel small and showing them that I’m not. That I was never small. That they just weren’t looking closely enough to see.”
I pulled the truck to the side of the road.
Nora looked at me, startled. “What are you doing?”
“I need to say one thing, and I need you to hear it before we walk into that room.”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
I turned to face her, taking in the worried crease between her brows and the way her hands had tightened in her lap.
“You are the most capable, competent, brilliant person I’ve ever known,” I said.
“I knew it the day I met you, and I’ve known it every day since.
The fact that other people didn’t see it, the fact that I didn’t show you that I saw it, is the greatest failure of my life.
But you were never small, Nora. You were never less than.
You were always the best thing in every room you walked into, and tonight, everyone is going to know it. ”
Her eyes were wet.
“You’re going to make me ruin my makeup before we even get there.”
“We have time for you to fix it.”
She laughed, a watery sound, and reached across the console to take my hand.
“Thank you,” she said. “For saying that. For believing it.”
“I’ve always believed it. I just forgot how to show you.”
“You’re showing me now.”
“Then let me keep showing you.”
She squeezed my hand once, then let go. “We should keep driving. I don’t want to be late for my own revenge.”
I pulled back onto the road, and we drove the rest of the way in comfortable silence.
The banquet hall was exactly as I remembered it.
Crystal chandeliers, white tablecloths, a ballroom full of our colleagues milling around with drinks in their hands and conversation buzzing.
The annual awards ceremony was one of the unit’s oldest traditions, a chance to recognize excellence and build morale and remind everyone why they’d chosen this work in the first place.
This year, it was going to be remembered for a different reason entirely.
Nora emerged from the changing room in red.
The dress was simple, elegant, designed to accommodate the curve of her five-month belly while still making her look like a woman who walked into rooms and made people pay attention.
Her honey hair was down around her shoulders, and she was wearing the pearl earrings that had belonged to her grandmother.
She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Ready?” I asked.
“No.” She lifted her chin. “But she’s going to wish I hadn’t come at all.”
I offered her my arm.
She took it.
And together, we walked into the ballroom.