“The journal.”
Roderick Pierce drew a breath and released it, then laid the journal atop the check. “Truly, Quillan, you have words that should be heard. It’s wrong to hoard them.”
Quillan met his frank stare, unsure how to take those last words. Wrong, to keep his private thoughts to himself? Mr. Pierce gave a short nod and walked out.
“Oh!” Carina shook her fists. “He makes me want to—”
“Kick?”
She spun on him. “And you can sit there and smirk?”
Quillan squelched a smile. “What exactly did Mr. Pierce say to you?”
“He wanted to know if my ‘lover’ had caused your accident.” As soon as the words were out, she seemed to want them back.
Quillan flinched even though he’d done everything he could to keep the truth from her.
She rushed to the couch and dropped down beside him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
She caught his hands in hers. “I know Flavio did this. He admitted it.”
Quillan raised his brows in surprise. He couldn’t believe the man would actually brag on it. Not after— “Why did you protect him?” Though he looked away, she persisted.
“Did you think I wanted that?”
“No.” He unfolded his arms, dropped them to his sides.
“Then why?”
Quillan turned back to her. How could he make her see? The harm Flavio had done him mattered less than it might. He was used to the worst in people. But in those moments, knowing he was hopelessly trapped, that fire would consume him as it had his parents, as the worst of his nightmares of melting flesh and charred bones . . . From the extremity of his pain and terror, Flavio had freed him. “Because he could have let me die . . . and didn’t.”
“Oh, Quillan.” Carina pressed in close to his chest, nestling her head beneath his chin.
He wrapped an arm around her, then the other. She understood. She knew his demons. She had brought them out of his own personal darkness and suffered them with him. Rose’s diary had brought her tears; Wolf ’s pictures had broken her heart. But it was to the burned-out cabin she had returned again and again, imagining their final agony. She must know what Flavio had saved him from.
She drew a jagged breath. “He hates himself. I found him with a rope tied into a hangman’s noose.”
Quillan turned her face up to see the truth. It was there in her eyes.
“Why?”
“Because of what he did. What he is.”
Quillan looked down at his leg, the leg that might never hold him again. He felt the residual pain in his weakened body. The weeks of helplessness and humiliation, being fed and shaved and bathed while his own hands were bound to his chest. All Flavio’s doing. He closed his eyes, fighting the satisfaction of the man’s torment.
But it was wrong. He’d spent enough years believing himself a flawed man. He would not wish it even on Flavio. And only he could change it.
“Would he come here if you asked?”
Her face came up as he’d known it would, in wonder and confusion. “I don’t know.”
He forced his voice to obey his will. “Ask.”
She started to straighten.
“Not”—he pulled her close again—“just now.” He sank his fingers into her hair. It was a little thing to have his hands back, but it felt immense.
Past the amazed stares of Tony, Joseph, and Mamma, Carina led Flavio through the house to the shuttered porch where Quillan waited. She was uncertain even now what her husband intended, though Flavio had asked at once, “Does he mean to accuse me?”
And she had met his gaze. “What if he does?”
Flavio had fought an inner battle that flashed across his face, but he had come. He asked no more questions as they rode together to Papa’s house, though his expression had darkened and ebbed by turns as he no doubt pondered the outcome of it all. Now he looked both desperate and resentful. But his inner fiber, the worthy core Carina hoped was still part of him, had brought him to face the man he had wronged.
She pushed open the door. “Quillan, Flavio is here.”
Quillan looked up from the couch. He set down Henry Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body. She could tell by the sweat on his brow he had not been reading, but rather using it to strengthen his arms; Papa would be irked. Quillan nodded. “Let him in.”
She motioned Flavio into the room, then positioned herself beside the bookshelf. The moment Flavio entered she could feel their tension. Flavio might be ashamed of his deed, but he was still Flavio, mercurial and proud. They squared off, both defensive. Though Quillan had asked and Flavio come, had either anticipated the difficulty of coming face to face after such an act?
“I’m sorry I don’t have a chair.” Quillan indicated the sparse appointments.
Flavio said nothing, but he glanced at Quillan’s leg in the cast and lost some of his defiance. “What do you want?”
Quillan seemed to be fighting for his next words. Carina wanted to rush in to his defense, to make Flavio see what he had done, the suffering he had caused. She wanted him to know her husband, who had once been so strong, but now strained to lift a book, to make a fist, to sit up by himself.
Quillan’s gaze was steady. “I want to thank you for getting me out.”
Carina’s whole attention went to Quillan. What had she expected?
Accusation, threats, demands. But gratitude?
Flavio glared. “What do you mean?”
Quillan dampened his lips. The tendon in his cheek pulled taut beneath the skin. Could Flavio see the effort Quillan made? He said, “My parents burned to death. It’s been my terror all my life.”
Carina stared at her husband as though she had never seen him. In truth she had never seen him so real. She knew the truth, his inner anguish, his parents’ suffering and the fear it had caused Quillan. But to admit such a thing to Flavio? Who tried to kill him? Who might have succeeded.
“I . . .” Flavio turned away.
“I don’t know how you got that wagon up. But I’m grateful.”
The wagon that had burned up all their wealth, all Quillan’s work, that had burned because of Flavio. Yes, she had been thankful for the loss, if it kept Quillan from wandering, but Flavio’s hatred and jealousy had almost cost her husband his life. She fought to restrain her anger in the face of Quillan’s resolve. Whatever he was doing, she must not interfere.
Flavio’s hands tightened into fists, the veins rising blue, knuckles white. Carina held her breath. How would he respond? He could not have guessed this was what Quillan brought him here to say. Did he realize what it cost Quillan to reveal a weakness, a fear? To admit his helplessness to the man who had caused it?