Page 38 of Blood Orange Christmas
“Side-door chain cut and rehung proud. Cheap cigarette near the press bend. A branch moved at the wrong time. And the air is wrong.”
If she says the air is wrong, it’s wrong.
We slide under saints with their painted hands stuck up like a choir that can’t help. We take the back passage for feet that don’t want to be counted. The greenhouse smacks warm and wet. Sugar dust still shines on dark concrete. A blue mitten lies on its side like a fallen bird. I pocket it like a talisman and hate the superstition.
The trail drops to scrub, then into the suggestion of a track locals use when they want to smoke where their wives can’t see them. Far below, water talks to itself in an older language. Voices chew their way back from the ravine, wrong in the bones.
“Hold,” Harrison breathes from somewhere ahead. “Left flank. Two on the line. Child between.”
I run like a man with rules, then like men who’ve used up their rules. Fir needles slap. Leaves skate. Stones offer the kind of help you pay for later. The goat path appears, tries to disappear again.
The shelf opens—rock sweating under skim snow, a scraggly fir rooted like a stubborn old man. Under it, our boy. Knees tight. Chin down. Scarf’s red line breathing. Very aware. Ten feet off, two men dressed like the wrong kind of local. Up-slope, a third man unlaces from a pine’s shadow—lean, patient, stitched to the hill like he belongs more than we do.
“Hold,” Harrison murmurs, sliding into edge and then into stillness so complete the air forgets him. From the right, Rocco becomes brush and bad ideas. Camilla lives in my ear. “Two minutes of clean before the signal degrades. Then I’m blind.”
Up-slope, the third looks toward the house, toward the woman, toward the boy. Half a smile. He isn’t here for ransom. He’s here for theater. He writes the invitation and tells the waiter what it means.Bring the cook.I taste wax and blank crests and want to break every hand that’s ever held that seal.
“Mark on my count,” Harrison says, breath barely a word.
The older man holds Marco’s hand. I can see the milk-white of squeezed fingers. The younger worries a cheap pistol under his coat like Google can teach him courage. Up-slope, the third shifts. Snow forgives the movement.
Quiet has weight. I let it work.
The shadow man drops first—slow, then quick, like a bad idea deciding to be worse. He doesn’t touch Marco. He touches the elder’s wrist with a small, certain twist that speaks fluent joint. The grip fails. The boy’s fingers come free.
“Reverse,” Serena breathes.
Marco takes one careful step back the way you do when you’re carrying soup and want the story to end well.
The younger starts his draw. Rocco steals it. A clatter. The gun disappears into brush like it remembers it isn’t invited.
“Now,” Harrison says.
We move—not a run, a committed slide across bad ground. I’m under the fir before the men have a new thought. Serena is in front of me, because she’s always in front of me when it matters.
The older man snatches at the scarf. Wool and air. His heel finds marbles where there are none. Serena’s citrus blade kisses hisforearm and tells it the truth. He screams once, sloppy. I don’t like the sound of men suffering. I like that one.
Up-slope, the third watches, interested, not alarmed. No shot. No panic. He notes what we break, then slides sideways and lets the hill swallow him. He wants me to pick my war in the next minute. He’s polite about it.
I’m already on my knees in the small green chapel under the fir, hands on my son. My son. Warm under wool. Shaking the way brave boys shake after their bodies save them.
“It’s me,” I say, stupid with relief. “Piccolo. It’s me.”
His hand rises slow, careful, like he’s touching a rumor. He finds my jaw, checks the lines. His mouth works once, no sound. Two quick breaths that stutter. One that doesn’t.
“You’re my papa, aren’t you?” he whispers, trying a door he’s been told not to open.
A life breaks in good ways. I let it. “Yes.” No velvet. No trick. “I am.”
He studies my face like a plate that might hold. Decides. His forehead finds the notch of my shoulder. He makes the low animal sound people make when someone finally turns the world down.
“Alive,” Harrison says behind me, toe on pulse, two fingers on pressure, ledger calm.
“No hospital,” I say, eyes on my boy. “Not until he tells me who taught him doors. If he dies, it isn’t under bad lights with a phone.”
“That’s a choice,” Harrison notes, not judging.
“Second one contained,” Rocco says. “Third ghosts upslope. I don’t like how easily he moves.”
