Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center Page 0,107

to start with was this pain he was describing now. It wasn’t just this conversation that would connect us; it was everything that had come before it. Our lives were already tangled up. But what I’d just told him, and what he was telling me in this moment—these were bedrock truths about our lives. The kind of truths that could force us to understand each other better. The kind with the raw power to change how we saw each other, and even transform all that anger into something different—something more like understanding.

Could that happen? Could DeStasio and I become friends? Could I even consider not hating someone who’d treated me so viciously?

I wasn’t sure. But I felt too much empathy for him right now to say never.

“You couldn’t leave him there,” I said, my voice as soothing as I could make it—validating his choice to put us all in danger in a way I wasn’t even really sure I agreed with. Maybe he just needed someone to understand him. “I get it,” I said.

Maybe we could both overcome all our bitterness.

Then, after a good pause, DeStasio said, “Piss off. I don’t need your approval.”

Maybe not.

Now I could see what a friendship between us would look like. Equal parts hostility and grudging acceptance. Equal parts deep understanding and pure misunderstanding. Equal knowledge that I’d saved his life, and that he’d borne witness to the worst moment of mine, and no matter what else happened, that connected us.

Of course. One conversation might have bonded us, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to shift his entire personality from crabby-old-troll to sensitive-New-Age-guy-friend.

“It’s fine. Be your bitter self,” I said. “I didn’t even come here for that, anyway.”

“What did you come here for?” he asked.

“To bring you soup,” I said with a shrug. “To find out how your collarbone was healing. To be a frigging human being.” I met his eyes. “Also, because it suddenly occurred to me that you have a painkiller addiction.”

DeStasio let that land. Then he said, “Fuck off.”

“You fuck off.”

He closed his eyes.

“It’s so obvious now that I see it,” I went on. “The lying, the aggression, the secretiveness, the hallucinations … How did it take me so long to catch on?”

DeStasio just glared at me.

“I don’t need you to admit it,” I said. “It’s plain to see.”

“I’m not going to come clean to the captain, if that’s what you’re thinking,” DeStasio said. “I’m two years from retirement. You think I’d give up my pension?”

“I never expected you to come clean.”

He’d as much as admitted it. If this were some other version of my life, I’d be wearing a wire, and I’d now have his confession on tape. I’d take it to the captain, exonerate myself, get my old job back, triumph, and roll credits.

But life’s not the movies. And that wasn’t why I’d come here.

What I was trying to do was bigger than that.

DeStasio tried to pretend I was only there for self-interest. “A thermos of soup’s not going to get me on your side.”

But I wasn’t having it. “You’re already on my side,” I said. “You just don’t know it yet.”

I thought I saw the tiniest flicker of a smile. Though maybe it was a wince. Always a fine line with him.

“On that note,” I said, “I have some good news. I forgive you.”

He gave a tiny snort, like an eye-roll. “For what?”

“For all of it. For disliking me. For being so small hearted and mean. For stalking me, and scaring me, and making me the target of all your misdirected rage. For blaming me for your grief. For taking the one thing in my life that made me feel strong and safe and happy and trying to rip it apart. I forgive you for all of it. I forgive you.”

He studied me for a long time. At last, he said, “Why the hell would you do that?”

“Because that’s who I want to be,” I said.

And it was.

“Guess what else?” I said, on a roll now. “I don’t just forgive you. I forgive myself.”

For a second, he looked almost grateful before he turned away. “You can’t forgive me,” he said. “I won’t let you.”

“It’s not up to you.”

“I forbid it,” he said.

“I’m not doing it for you,” I said then. “I’m doing it for me.”

“Get out of here,” he said. “And take your damned soup.”

“I’m not taking the soup,” I said.

“Well, I’m not frigging eating it.”

“Fine,” I said. “Pour it out! It’s homemade by my dying mother, you