Vicki Pettersson - The Given

The sad truth was that first love rarely lasted, but a union between those who’d pruned away the infatuation of youth allowed stronger emotions to sprout in its place. A good cutting could later result in a love that had no end.

His love for Evie, he now knew, had ended. He didn’t think he’d have realized that if it weren’t for Kit. In retrospect, Grif could admit that marrying the then-twenty-two-year-old back in 1958 had been impulsive, the folly of a young man. They’d only been married two years. They hadn’t even had time to suss out each other’s deeper preferences. He’d known her favorite color, red, but not the why of it. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to know. They just hadn’t gotten that far.

And after that, after his death, it was his obsession that became his true love. He was consumed with the way his life was supposed to have been, and devoured by the regret for never seeing it through. He couldn’t even say now if he and Evie would have lasted the whole of the last fifty years. Had it been a love to survive decades?

Kit had once been married as well, and he wondered if she’d understand this if he tried to explain it. Did her previous union have the same sinewy greenness to it as his relationship with Evie now seemed to have had? Did she ever feel that her marriage hadn’t preceded her relationship with Grif as much as it paved the road for it?

He didn’t know. He certainly couldn’t ask. However, he did wish—with the same obsessive regret—that he hadn’t been so in love with his own heartbreak that he forgot to look ahead. Because what he and Kit had found together—fifty years apart and from beyond the grave—had been beautiful and stabbing at the same time. Like a breath drawn after a long, hard sprint.

And wasn’t that when you needed to catch your breath the most?

Grif’s shoulders began to shake, but he stilled them as soon as he realized it. He wiped his eyes. Love was fine; a fact, even. But this emotion wouldn’t do him or Kit any good. Fact was, Evie was still alive, and Grif was still technically married. If nothing else, there had to be an end to that before there could ever be a new beginning. So he could keep watch over Kit all he wanted, he could long for her in this life or the next, and love her for eternity. But he wasn’t going to torture her with it any longer.

And that was really why he remained in the corner and simply let her sleep.

Kit’s eyes shot open right before her phone rang. It was the dead of night, but she felt watched somehow, as if waking in the jarring brightness of an airport, and pulling her coat from over her head to find that her plane had already boarded. Yet the moonlight trailing through the curtains revealed only the unrelieved right angles of the guest room’s furniture and the concave scoop of the empty corner chair. That’s when her ringtone blasted the psychobilly chords of the Reverend Horton Heat.

She reached for the phone automatically, her brain still slow to realize that this particular ringtone signaled an unlisted number.

“I believe you have something that’s ours,” said a low, male voice.

“Maybe.” Kit pushed into a sitting position and reached for the light. “What does it look like?”

“It’s old and gray and forgot its toothbrush.”

“Oh.” Tucking the phone between her shoulder and ear, Kit scrambled for a pen and paper. “It’s sleeping right now.”

“And what about you? Are you having trouble sleeping?” The voice managed to sound concerned. “Because you should be. You really should.”

Kit froze with her pen poised over her small notepad.

“You’re going to need to keep your eyes open from now on. I mean every second of every day. You’re not even gonna want to blink.”

Kit clenched her jaw so tight her teeth ached. She was so tired of being bossed around by faceless men with mean ambitions. The past year’s events had left her with little bounce-back. Experience was supposed to make a person stronger and give them a foundation from which to bound to new heights, but Kit had taken a series of relentless hits: she’d been kidnapped by men who peddled women’s flesh, and threatened by others, who poured drugs into the same. Then there was the issue of patriarchal angels who toyed with mortal lives like they were game pieces, just because they could.

And now this?

Kit pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it for a long moment. Then she hung up.

Adjusting the pillows behind her, Kit repositioned herself against the headboard. Maybe it was the wine she’d consumed earlier in the evening. Or the muted, late night hours. Or Grif’s steadying presence back in her life. Yet, for some reason, the phone call didn’t scare her.

Gaze fastened on the bedside clock, she’d counted to twenty before the phone rang again, but waited until the half-minute mark to tuck it to her ear. “What?”

“Have you ever been in love, Ms. Craig?”

Kit thought of Grif in the next room, but didn’t answer. Seriously. Screw this guy and his threatening midnight questions.

“Because love,” the man continued, “at least, the most passionate love, comes from a deep place. It’s born somewhere far inside of us, and once it takes root, it’s almost impossible to ferret out.”

“Your point, please. It’s late.”

“Passion is my point. There’s passion in love, but there’s also passion in hate and greed and lust. Those are all my favorites,” he said, and Kit thought, I bet. “Yet love is still the strongest passion of all. Oddly, the etymological root of ‘passion’ is the Latin passus, and that means ‘to suffer.’ That’s what we really do when we love. We suffer. We submit.”

Kit said nothing at all now.

“Your aunt is the only family you have left, is she not?”

Oh, God.

“I wonder how she’d react if that fancy town house she’s letting you stay in suddenly caught fire. I’m not saying it will, but gosh. What if there’s a gas leak? Or an electrical cord gone bad? What if—and I know this will sound totally unbelievable—but what if some sort of rocket were to crash through that front living-room window and blow it all to smithereens?”

He let her think about that for a minute.

“I mean, that’s the crazy thing about life, isn’t it?” he said, his voice calm by contrast. “Anything can happen at any time at all.”

Yes, Kit thought, shaking now. Just like with her mother, attacked from within her own body. Just like with her father, assaulted on the street. Was there no safe place? Kit wondered, the thought coming perilously close to a prayer.

“One thing’s for sure, though,” the man continued. “Something like that occurs, and your dear aunt Marin, your family, your love, will know the true meaning of passion. She will suffer. And you? You will submit.”

Kit’s mouth was dry, head swimming like she’d drank two bottles of wine earlier instead of two glasses, but she managed to speak. “What do you want?”

“We will meet tomorrow at the Paris Hotel. Let’s be civilized like the French and arrive say . . . after lunch? I always like to take a restful afternoon siesta.”

Kit didn’t bother saying that siestas were a Spanish cultural tradition, not French. She had a feeling he already knew.

“Don’t forget to bring the old man, our information, and our new friend Griffin Shaw. We’re most anxious to have a little chat with him, too.”

Kit caught sight of her own gaze in the dresser mirror, and was surprised to find her exact feelings reflected there. Her eyes were narrowed and mouth downturned. She looked just a little demonic.

“Hey, Justin,” she suddenly said, and knew she’d named the right man when only silence met her words. “We’ll meet you tomorrow, and you’ll get your fucking flash drives, but if you hurt my aunt, your knowledge of what it means to suffer isn’t going to be some dusty old dictionary definition. Trust me when I tell you . . . there won’t be an angel in Paradise who will lift a finger to save you.”