Chapter 11
They took twenty-seven minutes.
I spent them in the barn.
Not the council corridor.
The barn.
Emma was awake now, sitting against the hay bale with Sophie in her lap. Claire’s pendant rested in my palm.
“Why did you say they only sleep in their mother’s arms?” she asked.
I looked at the girls.
“They used to cry for hours.”
Emma smiled faintly.
“All three?”
“All three.”
“Claire must have been exhausted.”
“She was.”
I paused.
“But she had a rhythm.”
“The humming.”
I nodded.
Emma looked down.
“She taught me.”
That still hurt in a strange way.
Another person had shared moments with my wife while I spent months believing Claire was beyond reach.
“What else did she tell you about me?”
Emma hesitated.
“Not flattering things.”
I almost laughed.
“Good.”
“She said you trust men for too long because once you call someone family, you hate admitting you were wrong.”
That stopped me.
Accurate.
Painfully.
Victor had been beside me fifteen years.
Marco ten.
Claire knew my weakness better than either of them.
Not grief.
Loyalty.
I kept dangerous men close too long because removing them felt like admitting years of judgment had been false.
The barn door opened.
One of my capos stepped inside.
“The vote’s done.”
I stood.
“And?”
He looked at Victor’s empty place beyond the snow.
“Not one man backed him.”
Relief should have come.
Instead, I thought of Claire.
If she had trusted me four months earlier, she might have come home.
She didn’t.
Victor created the lie.
May you like
But I had built the kind of house where the lie was believable.
That part belonged to me.
