Chapter 21: The Voice in the Smoke

I stayed on the floor with my hands in his and did not say a word.

Around us, men carried the wounded out on doors and tabletops, and someone was sweeping glass.

"Say it again," I said at last.

"I died in the same fire you did."

"On Fifth Avenue."

"At the Santoro hotel, on the service stairs, after the cars left."

I pulled my hands away.

I stood up on legs I couldn't feel and walked to the end of the warehouse, where the lamps were still whole.

He followed and stopped a few feet behind me.

"You were the voice in the smoke," I said, without turning around.

"Yes."

"I knew it the moment you spoke at the gate."

"I knew about you in the greenhouse."

"You said three times, and I had never told you the number."

"I understood then that you remembered."

"Then why didn't you say so?"

"Because you said later," he said. "And I was afraid of what you'd do when I said it."

I turned around.

"You let me stand in front of the whole household and say yes, and you knew what I'd lost."

"I did."

"You knew the date of the siege."

"You came to the gate on the first morning you could, because the clock was running."

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