“He’ll catch up soon enough,” I say, breath heaving as I stumble forward.
Charlie takes a step back, her legs hitting the edge of the boat. It sways in the water.
“You need to turn around,” she says.
“This was what you were planning the entire time, wasn’t it?” I ask. “Nolan was never going to leave me. He never could have gone through with what we had planned.”
“You have to understand,” says Charlie. “We trust you. But?—”
“But you can’t trust me. Because I’m under the Sister’s bargain.”
“Yes,” says Charlie. “I meant what I said. I won’t let anything happen to him. While I can’t ever promise to give him the life you would have, I will do my absolute best. He will always be loved. And protected.”
“You were going to leave without saying goodbye,” I say.
Charlie offers me a pained smile.
“Goodbye, Winds,” she says, and then steps into the boat.
Charlie sets my son—sleeping soundly—into a bassinet woven of straw, already secured in the boat.
She pushes it off and into the water.
Vaguely, I feel my fingers twist at the ties of my satchel.
“Charlie.” I mean it as a warning. As a plea.Look back here. See what I’m doing.
But still, even knowing the bargain I’m under, when Charlie looks up at me, all she hears is a friend saying goodbye.
“I’ll miss you too, Win?—”
A shot fires, cracking through the night.
Charlie falls, the back of her head hitting the side of the boat, and slumps into the water.
Agony rips through me. But as I stumble forward, the smoke of the pistol swaying up from my hand through the wind, I find myself stepping over her, barely sparing her a glance.
Faintly, I hear the water lap against the side of the boat.
My child calls out to me, and I draw my little boy into my arms at last.
CHAPTER 43
My child isn’t crying when I pull him from the boat.
Tears slide down my face, dripping onto his beautiful cheeks.
There’s an instant satisfaction, an instant brightness, when his weight falls into my arms, presses against my chest. He opens his mouth slightly, turning his cheek into my chest.
It’s agonizingly beautiful. A pain I can’t get enough of.
There, holding my child in my arms, I count every one of his features, searching them for his father’s face, my face. But the joy is mingled with the dread of knowing exactly what pulling him into my arms means for him. Exactly what it means I’m about to do.
Water splashes against my calves. A tangle of dark, wet hair wraps around my ankles.
I look down to find Charlie, face-first in the water. There’s a pool of blood misting out like smoke from her side.
I ache to reach out to her, to yank her from the water and beat against her chest until she chokes it out. I scream at my limbs to stoop down, to rip my shirt and shove it against her bleeding wound. But my limbs no longer obey me.
