I sucked in a quick, excruciating breath. “Yes, Father.”
“I understan’ ya motivation, son. An’ t’at motivation might be honorable but ’tis not ya place to decoide their fates.”
I let out a harsh breath, absorbing the gravity of what I’d done. I nodded, unable to answer without breaking my composure. I had no right to feel sorry for myself.
“Confessor,” I repeated.
“Aye, son.”
“I confess to the murders of countless men, and I am heartily sorry for what I’ve done.”
I hung my head low but his frail hand picked it back up.
His brows furrowed in understanding and pity. “Ach, the war that must rage within an’ outside ya, boyo.” He dropped his hand. “I can see ya remorse, Ethan. I can feel it. Ye seek absolution an’ ye shall receive it, but ’tis one condition.”
My eyes found his. “And what condition is that?”
“Ya must turn yaself in to Tran.”
My chest panted and I almost lost my balance. I righted myself. “Turn myself in to Tran.”
“Aye. When we take revenge ’pon ourselves, ’tis too burdensome, too heavy for us ta carry alone. It only causes more fear, more violence, more war. The only thing that can save us is love, my son. God is Love an’ Love conquers all, so take this ’pon ya breast, let it lie there an’ permeate ya skin. An’ obey Him by turnin’ yaself in.”
“I see,” I said, accepting the hellacious fate I’d chosen for myself. “No more Finley. No more thoughts of married life. No more thoughts of children of my own. No more thoughts of a life of Finley.” I looked up at Father Connolly. His hands were clasped together as if in prayer. “I see. I, uh, let me say goodbye to her tonight. I’ll go to Tran in the morning.”
“O’ course, my son.”
I wanted to run, to sprint to Finley so as not to waste a single minute of the precious time I had left with her. I’d deal with the idea of my future in a Vietnamese prison later. I knew that I just needed to get to her. I needed her. I wanted her.
I almost faltered when I reached the stairs. The idea of a future without Finley Dyer was punishment indeed. It was a hell on earth. I detested myself in that moment, detested everything I’d done with a fiery passion.
I looked up the staircase and called out Finley’s name. I needed to be alone with her and that wasn’t going to happen inside Slánaigh. I called out for her again and she emerged, her face expectant.
I cleared my throat to control the emotions threatening to boil over. I locked my knees to keep them from buckling beneath me.
“Yes?” she asked, a breathtaking smile on her face.
“Come here, Fin,” I told her.
“Why so serious?” she teased. “It’s over. You’re alive. You’re here. We’re together. We will be all right!” she said, her arms extended out, her lips shouting toward the sun.
I choked on the words hovering on my tongue so I took her hand and led her down to the beach, down to the cove full of cerulean water and ragged, jutting cliffs. A juxtaposition of dismay and calm dispassion. It described our situation perfectly. It described us perfectly.
When we’d reached the shore, I kicked off my boots and she tossed away her flip-flops. We walked until our toes met the edge of the water.
“It’s so beautiful,” she said, admiring the cove.
I looked on her, desperate to memorize every feature, every tick of muscle, every breath she inhaled. “You are beautiful,” I declared. “You are the beautiful one here. All of this,” I said, gesturing to the earth and water surrounding us. “It is humbled by you, plain when it shares space with you. It could only beg to sit at your feet, this earth. That is how remarkable you are, Finley Dyer.”
I sucked in an incredible breath. ”I was so desperate to keep you that I lost you,” I told her.
Her face fell at my last sentence. “What do you mean?” she quieted.
“Do you know how much I love you?” I asked her, ignoring her question. “Do you know what I wouldn’t have done for you? I can tell you. It is nothing. I would have captured a speeding train, if you’d asked me. I would have torn down Everest for you, if you had even mentioned it in passing.”
I fell to my knees in the sand, the pain not even registering within my body. I was too consumed by the loss of what could have been to have even noticed.
Finley kneeled beside me, resting her hands on my face. I grabbed them in my own and clasped them together, shoving them into my chest, wishing I could swallow them, swallow her, keep her in me, close to me, always with me.
I yelled at the top of my lungs, longing for a way to turn back the time, to erase what I had done.
I looked at her. But now you must be yet another victim. You must suffer because of me.
“Fin,” I said, my eyes blurred with tears.
“Ethan, you’re scaring me.”
“Fin, I, uh, I’m not going to be able to return with you to Montana.”
“Why not?” she asked, her chest rising and falling.
I wiped my eyes on the sleeves of my T-shirt. “Because I have to go to Tran. I have to turn myself in.”
She took her hands back from me, resting them against her throat. “No, n-no you don’t.”
“Yes, I do,” I said, gripping her face in my hands.
Tears spilled anew down her cheeks. “Ethan, what are you saying? What exactly are you saying?”
My face contorted with the effort to keep myself in check. “I have to turn myself in, Fin.”
“No! You don’t! And you will not, Ethan Moonsong. Over my dead body!”
“Fin,” I said, trying to reason with her.
But how could I reason? Would I be reasonable if the situation had been reversed? No. In fact, I would have thrown her over my shoulder and walked back to Montana.
She wept, her teeth gnashing in frustration and anger. She began to hit me, pelting me in the chest, and I took the pain, took her fists willingly. I let her hit me until she’d had enough, until her hands fell at her sides in defeat. I knew that defeat. I felt that defeat.
“I cannot believe you would do this to me,” she told me. “Do you know how long I have wanted you? You cannot comprehend the solace the memory of your face brought me when I had needed it most, when I didn’t think I could take a single minute more of my horrific life.” She sat back on her heels and stared out into the water. “You were a reason to get up in the morning, Ethan. You still are. You will always be the reason I get up in the morning.
“When those men would touch me, when they would do vile, terrible things to me, Ethan,” she said, turning her gaze on me, “yours is the face I’d always imagined saving me.” Tears flowed down her face. “I didn’t even know then why, but your face was something my mind unwillingly thrust upon me, a sort of shelter from the damage they were causing. You were a shelter I’d never even asked for. You are still my shelter, Ethan.”
Her teeth gritted. She bellowed at the earth with venom, with a desperate, lonesome hurt. “I am not meant to be happy,” she stated. “I have been destined for a life of torment. In a way, I guess I’d always known and now I can see it all so clearly and I feel like such a fool.”
Her words devastated me and made a liar out of me.
“It’s all my fault,” I told her. “I’d promised you forever. I’d promised you love, and I failed you.”
Her body sagged. “You have not failed me, Ethan Moonsong. I know why you did it. I look at the faces of all the innocents you saved and I cannot ever fault you for that. I know your reasons. I admire your reasons, but I loathe the execution,” she declared, double meaning and all.
I fell forward, my hands finding sand. I captured thousands of grains in the palms of my hands and brought my fists up. Sand fell through, blowing away with the wind, and no matter how tightly I’d held on to it, it refused to hold there.
“I was so desperate to keep you that I lost you.”
If someone gives themselves to you freely, yo
u just have to accept the gift.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Ethan
Finley and I stayed wrapped in one another’s arms on the shore of the cove that belonged to Slánaigh, intertwined in such a way that you could not decipher what limb belonged to whom. There wasn’t a single minute of that night wasted as we talked throughout, clinging to each other’s words as well as our bodies bathed in the soft light of a full moon.
“Tell me what our lives would have been,” she asked me.
My tongue felt too heavy but I answered anyway. “We would have left here,” I began. “We would have gone back home but only until we’d had enough saved to move somewhere exotic, somewhere tropical, somewhere beautiful. We would have bought some land, built a pretty little house. Maybe our little plot of land somewhere allowed for a vegetable garden, been near the beach.” I’d known for several weeks into our trip to Vietnam that I’d never wanted go back to Montana and its cold. I’d pitched the idea out in the air near Fin one day, hoping she’d latch on to the prospect with enthusiasm, and, of course, she had.
“Eventually we’d marry, share a room, share a bed. We’d maybe take up surfing, or paddleboarding, or whatever, and we’d live simply, learning the land around us when we weren’t learning each other,” I told her, clutching her to me. Regret laid heavily in my grasp. The what-could-have-beens laid heavily between us. Her body wracked with sobs. “Do you want me to stop?” I asked her.
“No. Please, keep going.”
“We’d own a big, stupid dog with long hair that shed all over our furniture. Daily you’d complain about it, but you’d be the first one out the door with it when it was time for its walk. We’d eat mangos on our little covered porch and watch the sun as it set, our dog at our very bare feet.” She laughed in spite of the tears. “We’d make our money any way it would come, and my dad would visit for weeks at a time.” I took a deep breath. “Eventually we’d have a baby.” She sniffed at this, her pain so evident in the simple sound. “Girl or boy we wouldn’t care. I’d place my hands on your belly as he or she grew. Devour annoying and pointless books on having and raising a baby but realizing they were useless when it really came down to it because when you gave birth to our baby, we’d see everything we needed in their eyes.
“We’d take turns during the sleepless nights, switching off when one couldn’t take it anymore and just needed sleep. I’d make you breakfast in bed just because I could. If you ever wanted for anything I would get it for you. I would have pleased you, I think, Finley.”
“Yes, I believe you would have,” she said as the sun rose over the cove.
I kissed Finley then—a kiss to cherish, a kiss to remember, a kiss of what could have been.
We stood together, both of us covered in sand, but neither of us cared. We made our way toward the beach, under the canopy of trees, and up the path to the shell gravel drive. We sat on the bike together, starting it up, and heading out toward the main road, not a single word spoken to one another. I, for fear I would change my mind and risk my soul, our souls. She, I believe, in fear that she’d let me.
We drove through town slowly and before either of us were ready, we’d arrived at Tran’s police station.
Finley and I got off the bike and hugged one another so fiercely bones risked snapping.
Fin had tried to be brave but she failed when she saw me succumb to the anguish that was saying goodbye to the love of your life, knowing you would probably never see them ever again.
“I love you,” she said, wounding me with her simple yet profound words.
“I love you,” I secreted into her ear.
I kissed her my last goodbye, our last goodbye, and tore myself away from her, fighting myself with the strength of ten men, wrestling the demons who’d brought me there in the first place and heaving them into the street at my feet.
I refused to look back until the very last second. I made sure she’d gotten back on the bike and started to leave.
“Finley!” I shouted, and her head whipped my direction. I choked on the emotion settling in my throat. “Finally!” I told her. “Finally!”
She paused as if to collect herself. “I love you too,” she declared, a hitch in her voice.
I turned to the door of the police station, unable to look on her it hurt so badly, and swung it open.
I didn’t bother taking in my surroundings, as nothing mattered to me then. I knew nothing would ever matter to me ever again.
I was a murderer of child molesters and sex traffickers, and I was prepared to pay for my crimes that although bent toward the righteous were tainted with sin.
I stood at the entrance, my head hung low, and yelled for Tran. Without realizing anyone had been near me, I was yanked by my arm. I looked up and found Tran’s face.
“This way,” he said quietly, his head turning about his neck quickly, taking in his surroundings. I followed where he led, into a small office. He shut the door behind us.
Finley
I stood on Slánaigh’s porch hugging Sister Marguerite, crying, and wishing the pain would stop, but I knew that it would not. I knew I was unspeakably altered.
“I feel like my purpose has been ripped out from underneath me,” I told Sister.
“No, child, it has not,” her French accent soothed. “If in this life you are not meant with Ethan, in the next you are.”
This truth made me sob even harder. “Please, I hope you are right.”
We broke down together, sat united at the end of the porch, near Slánaigh’s door.
“He’d promised me the most glorious life, Sister. We were going to conquer the world together, and I believe it would have been the best life I could have ever had.”
She took my hand, soothing me with her own delicate ones, and prayed under her breath for me.
We sat quietly for many minutes, maybe an hour, until Father had met us. He stood on the stairs facing us.
“Ach, my choild! I’m sorry for ya. So sorry for ya.”
“I know, Father,” I told him.
“‘Spite it all, he’s still the most wonderful boy, he is. That he is. I’m ta go ta him late this evenin’, discover what ’tis Tran can do fer him.”
Unable to speak, I only nodded my head.
I stood with every intention of going to my room, falling into my borrowed bed, and staying there for days. At least until I found out what could be done for Ethan. I knew I needed to call his father in Montana soon, but not until I could glean a little more information on what was to happen to him. The possibility of death haunted me and I refused to think of it, though I knew it was their favorite option, especially for someone who had hit their own dirty pocketbooks with such a vengeance.
I was afraid for Ethan. I was more afraid than I had ever been in my entire life.
And that’s saying something.
Ethan
Tran’s office owned a bland khaki color all over—from the floor, the chairs, the walls, the tile ceiling, even Tran’s desk. He plopped into his tan chair and it creaked under his weight. He signaled toward a metal chair in front of his desk. I sat under his command.
“Ethan,” he said.
“Detective Tran,” I greeted.
We sat in silence for half a minute.
“I suppose you know why I’m here,” I told him.
“You are here to confess to your crimes, I assume.”
I swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“What crimes are these?” he asked, knowing the answer already.
I took three deep breaths, my heart sped to a dangerous rate. “I murdered countless men.”
“Who were these men you murdered?” he asked.
“Sex traffickers and their customers.”
“No, who were these men you murdered?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Describe these victims to me.”
“Uh, men who kidnapped innocent children and sold them into sex slavery and the men who molested them.”
 
; Tran leaned back in his chair. He turned to where his side sat flush with the line of the front of the desk. His elbow met the surface. He brought his hand down and played with a rubber band, running it in circles with his index finger.
Tran’s head met the back of his chair. “Did Father Connolly ever tell you why I became a detective, Ethan?” he asked the ceiling, baffling me.
“No. He mentioned once you’d been doing it for over fifteen years or something like that.”
He sat up, turning to face me once more. He laid his forearms on the desktop and leaned forward.
“I have been a detective for sixteen years, three months, two weeks, two days,” he admitted, startling me.
“Committed,” I acknowledged, knowing the hell he got daily for being a straight cop in a crooked city.
“I decided to become a detective seventeen years, six months, three weeks, six days ago.” My brows drew together, perplexed. “That was five days after my daughter had gone missing,” he stated, astonishing me.
I shook my head in disbelief, not knowing what I could possibly say to him.
His eyes grew glassy. “She was beautiful,” he said. He leaned back and grabbed a framed picture of a little girl. His fingers traced her face before setting the picture face down. “I can’t look at her sometimes it’s so painful,” he explained. He took a deep breath. “She would have been just a little bit older than you. She would have been twenty-two this year.” He grew quiet, searching precious memories, it seemed. “I never found her. I have no idea if she is still alive, whether she’s happy or not. I have no idea if she is alive, Ethan,” he said, his voice breaking. “What keeps me awake at night is knowing that if she was, I would think she would have come home by now.”
“I am so sorry,” I told him seriously, honestly.
“It was a beautiful day out. I’d sent Hanh to fetch some broth at the market. I’d expected her back a half hour prior so I left the house to look for her. I can admit it now, though for years I couldn’t, but I had left our home furious with her. When I arrived at the market, I searched the ice cream shop, so sure she would have been there, but when I discovered that she wasn’t, I moved to the shops that held jewelry since she loved to try on the different pieces, but I could not find her there either. Frantic at that point, I tore through the market yelling her name repeatedly but no answer came.