Page 3 of Say You Will

“You call your father by his first name?”

“That’s how it is. Sometimes dads don’t like to be ‘Dad.’”

She shifts slightly. “What was that word? About the dark?”

“Stygian?”

“I like that word.Stygian.” She stretches the syllables out. “It sounds like a warrior in the dark. A good one. A place for secret battles where the warrior fights his enemies. Like one of my mom’s movies. She played a lady named Helen, and whole countries fought for her.”

I smile. “You’re brave enough to be a warrior. You’re going on an adventure to Vermont.”

She smiles. “Really?The Stygian Warrior,” she intones like she’s voicing a movie trailer.

Now that I can make out her shape in the darkness, I carry the projector over to where she remains prone on the carpet. After I place the object on the floor, I lie next to her with about two feet between us. “Are you still watching the ceiling?”

“Yes.”

When I flick a switch, the girl gasps as my bedroom becomes a planetarium. Fake, of course. Just a light show. But Dad’s research and development company designed it for me. I know Dad was trying to give me something else to think about other than the screaming and blood. It’s a relatively sophisticated piece of equipment that I can program with latitude, longitude, and a date, and the computer inside configures the constellations.

I’m about to explain, but she points and says, “There’s a W.”

“That’s Cassiopeia.”

“Pretty.”

“I guess it is.”

“My name’s Francesca, by the way,” she says. “But everybody calls me Franki.”

“My name is Henry. Everyone calls me Henry.”

We lie there for a long time. In my head, I silently name all the constellations. Then I picture star charts for different times of the year for the Northern Hemisphere. I don’t tell her about them, though, because I think she might need the quiet as she struggles with the pain in her heart.

Finally, I peer at her through the gloom. The deep darkness is lit by a wash of violet and blue with stunning diamond-bright points of light that play across her round little face. Like this, I can’t see the red of her nose or the tears still hovering at the edge of her lashes.

Much later, when she’s left, I close my eyes and try to sleep. For the first time since that night, it isn’t blood I see when I do. In my mind’s eye, I only see stars. Reflected off Franki’s glasses and sparkling in her pretty brown eyes.

one

Henry

Present Day

Fire | Barns Courtney

I don’t give a shit that a yacht is on fire behind me. People, mostly men, but some women, scream pointlessly in desperation, begging us to bring our smaller crafts closer. To do something to save them.

There are no lifeboats or life jackets for the guests onboardFelicity’s Folly.I know because I’m the one who made certain of it.

My brother Gabriel, dressed in black, approaches with a teenage girl wrapped in a thin blanket. “Tell him what you told me,” he says, voice altered by his obsidian helmet to a mechanical tone.

The girl, maybe fourteen years old, thin, with dark brown skin ashen from stress, swallows hard. “You missed one of us. She was really little and climbed inside a duffel bag because she thought no one would look there. I didn’t know you were saving us.” The longer she speaks, the higher her voice gets.

My gut tightens, but my voice, disguised by my own helmet, is matter-of-fact. “Same place I found you?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I was afraid.”

“Not your fault. It’s going to be okay.” Gabriel soothes as he motions for Brooke, one of the women on our team, to come over and take the girl back to the others.

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