“We split. I got the children into a drainage tunnel. When I came back, the extraction bird was burning. Vale was on the ground. The Butcher was standing over him.”
Ethan’s eyes were wet now.
He didn’t wipe them.
“I shot the Butcher twice,” I said. “Vale was still alive when I reached him. He gave me half the mask and told me to run.”
“What were his last words?” Shepard asked.
I looked down.
For years, I had heard those words in my sleep.
“Tell Shepherd the orchard isn’t burned.”
Shepard gripped the chair until his knuckles whitened.
Margaret went perfectly still.
“You never put that in the report,” she said.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t trust the report.”
The answer settled over the table like dust after a collapse.
Richard suddenly pushed back from his chair.
“This is all very dramatic, but I fail to see what any of it has to do with me.”
I looked at him.
“That’s what I’m trying to decide.”
His face twisted.
“You watch your tone.”
Ethan moved then.
Finally.
He stepped between us, not fully facing his father, but no longer standing beside him either.
“Don’t speak to my wife like that.”
The room went quiet in a new way.
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