And she would.
They will pay.
Trevor glanced around the estate grounds. He saw no spying eyes.
She replaced the beret on her head. A soldier again.
“Good luck to you,” he offered from two full paces away.
She replied, “You, too.”
“I have to go,” he said, reluctantly. “I have to-I have to go visit an old friend. Something I have to do. That’s sort of been the story in all this,” he tried to send another message. “There have been things I’ve had to do. And things I have been forced to give up.”
She figured that whatever wrong she had done to him had been beyond the point of forgiveness. She had been one of those things he had been forced to give up because she had done something to deserve abandonment. She could not blame him; not if she had betrayed him.
“I–I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” he corrected but lightheartedly. “Maybe someday you will. Maybe someday-when all this is over-it will be clear. I don’t know if that will make things better or worse. I guess we’ll see. In any case, let me say it again: thank you, for saving me.”
Nina closed her eyes and conjured that feeling of warmth and being wanted. No matter what The Order had taken from her, at some point in the past she had been a complete person.
No, Trevor, thank you for saving me.
“Mother,” Jorgie Benjamin Stone stood at the doorway to his room with his grandfather at his side and looked in at Ashley, “I won’t need all of that. Father said we’ll be traveling light.”
Ashley had already stacked a small suitcase full of underwear, socks, and t-shirts. The second suitcase-for pants, sweatshirts, and jeans-would come next.
Her frustration boiled over.
“Well maybe your father is wrong, did you ever think of that? Did that ever cross your mind? Father isn’t always right, you know. He-he makes mistakes. He’s been known to be wrong. Maybe just once mother knows what’s best.”
Benjamin Trump-elderly and thinning-tried to intercede, “Oh, now Ashley the boy didn’t mean anything by that.”
JB’s reply came not in words but in a bear hug against his mother’s legs. She silenced her tirade and returned his hug. A lump grew in her throat. A big hole opened in her chest.
Grandpa, who had already said his goodbyes to JB over a game of catch, bowed his head and walked away.
“I’m-I’m sorry,” she apologized.
She realized her son cried. Honest-to-god tears. Deep sobs. His shoulders raised and lowered. His arms clutched tight around her legs.
For a moment he shed the trappings of the mysterious child with the evolved brain chemistry and the supernatural insights. For a moment there stood nothing more than a nine-year-old boy about to leave his mother, possibly forever.
“Mommy,” he pleaded, “I love you, Mommy. I love you!”
“I know, I know,” she stroked his hair. “Listen, JB, I won’t let Trevor take you. You don’t have to go.”
The child answered through sobs, “Yes, I do have to go. Father is right. It is the only way. But I love you, Mommy. I hope you know that. I love you so much!”
He buried his head into her again and cried. She felt damp streaks from his eyes run along her pant leg.
“I love you too, honey. I always have. You’re my son.”
“Yes,” he agreed as if it might be a revelation. “I’m your son. I came from you, too.”
Ashley grabbed his hands and knelt in front of her boy. She searched his red eyes and spoke strongly to her son. Her words held a mother’s power; a power gentle enough to sculpt the heart of a child and strong enough to change the universe.
“That’s right, Jorgie, you remember that. You are a very special boy, but you’re also my son.” She held his hands up in her own, pressing her flesh to his. “A human boy. No matter what happens-no matter what else you may be-remember that. Remember our time together. Remember what it is like to be happy and sad; to love your parents, to play catch with grandpa. Don’t you ever forget, do you hear me?”
“I won’t, Mommy.”
“Promise me.”
Jorgie-tears still flowing-stepped to the bed, grabbed his stuffed bunny wrapped in its tiny blanked, and answered his mother.
“I promise.”
Clouds rolled in over the horizon and spoiled another brilliant May sunset. The cover overhead draped the hillside graveyard in early shadows. A gust signaling an approaching thunderstorm-still far off-blew between the rows of stone markers carrying dried leaves and tiny buds in a mix of old and new.
Hauser managed to land Eagle One with his usual skill across one of the cemetery roads with the landing gear touching down between headstones. The pilot waited behind as Trevor strolled among the tombs searching each name one after another until he found his old friend.
Dante Thomas Jones.
Trevor removed the baseball cap from his head and knelt first to one knee, then to both. He stared at the letters etched in stone.
He could not forget that Dante Jones had played a pivotal role in the plot against him. Nor could he forget, however, that Dante Jones had been his friend for many years going back to the days before the old world ended.
Forgiveness? No. Not possible. Dante had known as much when he purposely aimed his pistol to miss Trevor during their confrontation atop the White House. He had known as much when he had turned that pistol to his own temple, an act of responsibility as much as escape.
“I miss you, my old friend,” and his hand touched the cold marker. “I thought I’d come and see you before I go. I may not be back. Ah, hell, I probably won’t be back. I guess I should be honest with you. I guess…” Trevor’s thoughts trailed off to memories of the last decade.
“I guess I wasn’t always honest with you. Not completely. Maybe that’s part of the reason you listened to Evan. I made you my Internal Security Director because I wanted you close, because I trusted your instincts. That’s what I told you, wasn’t it? Part of that is true, I think. But if I’m going to confess, part of the reason is just because you were my friend and I wanted to give you something to do and I could keep an eye on you if I kept you close. Maybe I didn’t think you capable of succeeding in this new world without me around to keep watch over you. But I didn’t, did I? The bigger we grew the more I expected from you and I wasn’t around to help out when it got tough.”
An early evening bat whizzed overhead in search of prey. Trevor watched it fly off until its shadowy body blended with the darkening sky.
“I’ll bet that was tough for you. Well, not in the beginning. Early on it was all easy. All black and white. You had a bunch of guys and started doing your patrols and watching out for any criminals that might have been among the ranks of the survivors. Easy stuff early on. Then as we grew-well, that’s when things got hard. I wasn’t much of a help either, was I?”
Trevor recalled chewing out Dante on more than one occasion. He remembered the creation of the Senate and how that body held influence over I.S. Legal influence that Trevor had sanctioned.
“You were caught in the middle sometimes. Okay, a lot of times. Maybe all the time, right? But I didn’t have the time to worry about it, Dante. Too much to do. Too many big things to pay attention to. That’s why I always told you how much I hated all the politicians, the procedures, the bullshit. It clouds things. Evan knew that. He played it well. He played you well.”
Trevor removed his hand from the gravestone and stood.
“I can’t forgive you, Dante, even if I do miss you. I’m sorry. Maybe I am a bit of a monster. Sometimes I feel trapped, kind of like you must’ve felt. I have to do what I have to do. I mean,” Trevor gripped his hands into fists and looked at them, “I have nothing other than this war. Over the years, I’ve come to learn something. It’s not nice.
