Chapter 13: Say It Again

Nobody said anything for a long time.

The wind filled the quiet.

Cecelia looked at the ring on Cormac's hand, and then she looked at me, and her face came apart.

"It was supposed to be gentle," she said. "We were going to tell you after."

"How did it start?" I asked.

I didn't want to know, but I wanted her to have to say it.

"A late night in the edit bay," Cecelia said. "You'd gone home, and Cormac stayed to walk me to the car."

"Nine months ago."

"You were always behind a camera, Em. I'd look up and you'd be a voice in my ear."

"I was in the room."

"You were in the room and not in the room."

Cormac spoke for the first time.

His voice was low and even.

"Don't put it all on her. I wanted it a year before she did."

"Does that make it better?" I asked.

"No."

At least he didn't dress it up.

Cecelia wiped her face with the heel of her hand.

Then she did what I had known she would do, and it still reached me for one second.

She stepped closer and put her hand on my sleeve.

"Em. Say it's okay."

I looked at her hand.

"Say it again," she said. "Say okay, the way you always do, and then we fix it. Say okay, and I'll tell Cormac to go, right now."

"You'd send him away."

"For you. Yes."

It was the offer I would have taken at twenty-three, and at twenty-five, and at any point in six years.

I had built a whole life on saying okay.

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