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But not with Bishop. I don’t know how to let him touch me without welcoming the heat of his hand.
My father is not a fan of surprises, so I know I’ve done something either very good or very bad when I see him coming toward me on the sidewalk, Callie trailing in his wake. I stop dead, my messenger bag slamming into my hip, and wait for him to approach. I haven’t seen him since the wedding, and if anyone is watching, they might find my reaction strange, so I stretch a smile across my face. His presence is a relief, but it’s a burden, too. I’ve missed him, but I don’t want to be reminded of what he expects me to do.
“Hi, Dad,” I say, when he’s a few feet away. “What are you doing here?”
“Can’t a father visit his favorite daughter?”
Callie socks him on the arm and flashes a grin. “Hey, standing right here. ”
My father smiles at us both, and I recognize this whole strained interaction as a performance, put on for the benefit of any curious eyes and ears. It makes me sad that we have to pretend to be comfortable with each other.
I allow myself to be folded into a hug, a quick kiss pressed against my cheek. “We’ll walk you home,” my dad says.
“Okay. ”
I lead the way, the two of them walking on either side of me, the same way they did the day of the wedding. Boxing me in.
“We got your message,” Callie says, once we’re past the semi-crowded streets near the courthouse and on an empty sidewalk.
My father puts his arm around my shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze. “Good work, Ivy. ” He withdraws his arm. “Where are they exactly?”
“In a room in the basement of the courthouse. There’s a keypad on the door and inside the room there’s a safe. ”
“How many?”
I shake my head. “I couldn’t get a close look. But I’d guess several hundred. Different types. Handguns, shotguns, rifles. ”
“We’re going to need the codes,” Callie says. “Knowing where the guns are doesn’t do us any good without those. ”
“They don’t leave them lying around,” I snap, irritated for no good reason. I knew when I found the room that the next step would be finding the codes; it’s not a surprise.
“I’m aware of that,” Callie says. “That’s why you’re going to have to figure out where they are. And you can’t take too long. Three months is coming up fast. ”
“I have the code to get into President Lattimer’s house,” I tell them. “Bishop gave it to me. ” My father beams at me and I flush with pride. “I can use that to get in and search for the code to the gun room and safe. ”
“Once we have the codes, we’ll be close to putting the final phase into action,” my father says. He stops walking, and Callie and I do the same.
The street is very quiet. In the distance, I hear children’s laughter. I scuff the toe of my shoe against the sidewalk. “You mean the phase where we start killing people?”
From the corner of my eye, I see Callie give my father a look, her eyebrows slightly raised. But when she speaks, it’s to me. “You’ve known all along what’s involved, Ivy. No revolutions are won without sacrifices. ”
I take a step toward her. “Thanks for patronizing me, Callie. You’ve made everything so much clearer. ”
Callie jerks her head back like I slapped her. But before she can respond, my father puts a finger under my chin and turns my face until I’m looking into his brown eyes. The same eyes he passed on to Callie. Eyes so dark you can never figure out exactly what’s happening behind them.
“Yes, Ivy, the phase where we start killing people,” he says. “The same way they killed your mother. The same way they showed her no mercy. ”
The familiar anger swirls in my gut, so automatic now at the mention of my mother’s name I wonder if I even really feel it anymore or if it’s just a reflex. “President Lattimer told me he knew her,” I say. “Is that true?”
My father pauses, shrugs. “Probably. They grew up on the same side of town, so I’m sure their paths crossed at some point. ”
“But he made it sound like—”
“Does it matter?” my father asks. “It doesn’t change anything. The facts are still the facts. And you know what needs to be done. ” His voice is gentle but firm. “Not everyone who dies in a war is guilty. Sometimes they’re just on the wrong side. ” He gives my chin a little chuck as he moves his hand away. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I say. And the hell of it is, I do understand. They are both right. But it’s easy to talk about what’s right when the sacrifices for a cause are abstract…a president’s son, a distant stranger, a symbol. It used to be easy for me, too. But now I know the color of Bishop’s eyes in the sunlight, the way his hair stands up in the morning before he showers, the warmth of his palm on my back.
My father smiles. “Find the codes, Ivy,” he says. It’s not a request.
Callie squeezes my hand. “We’re counting on you. ”
I bite back a swell of disappointment that Bishop isn’t sprawled on the couch when I get home, his long legs resting on the coffee table, or out in the kitchen whipping up something for dinner. Already, I’m not sure how to define what we are to each other. Certainly not husband and wife, although that may be true on paper, and not exactly friends, either. But whatever it is, whatever we are, it will only make it harder in the end, because I am incapable of faking a relationship with him in order to make it through. For better or worse, my feelings for Bishop are real, whether they’re anger or frustration or something else entirely. I’m different from Callie. I can’t base my whole life on a lie, even if it’s only temporary. So it’s better if Bishop sleeps out here, with the safety of a wall between us.
I leave my messenger bag on the end of the couch and go into the bedroom. My neck and left shoulder have been sore since climbing the cliff at the river, and I rub the muscles with my right hand as I walk. Once in the bedroom, I kick off my shoes and one goes flying under the bed, disappearing beneath the bed skirt. I bend down and reach for it, my hand finding something hard instead of my shoe. Frowning, I get down on my hands and knees and lift up the bed skirt to peer under the bed. I pull out my shoe and toss it aside. Next to where it landed is a large photo album. I slide it out. Its cover is glossy red leather with gold leaf scrolling up the side.
I shift to sitting, my back leaning against the bed, and balance the heavy album across my legs. When I open it, the pages stick together slightly, making a faint ripping sound as I pull them apart. The first pages are dedicated to newspaper articles about the beginning of the war, the newsprint yellow with age. It’s all information I learned from my father—how the bombs fell first on the east coast of the United States, then the west, how we retaliated, how more bombs were dropped, both here and on our allies, the ever-escalating futility of war, like the world’s most deadly game of chicken. But the articles end before the war did, simply because the destruction was too vast. There was no one left to report on the damage. Everyone was too busy trying to survive it. And most of them didn’t. Those who did were then cast into nuclear winter and their ranks further culled by disease and exposure. It’s a miracle anyone survived, really.