Page 52 of Rebel Moon

“What were they then?”

“Everything he told me, I took after he died and shrank into a fistful of rules I could keep. Because if I followed them—if I just did everything exactly right—then maybe no one else could get taken from me.” His voice roughened. “I thought the rules kept me safe. Really they just kept me in a cage.” He looked into the fire. “I don’t know why, but a lot of things have become clear since I came here.”

“For me too,” I said.

We sat there for a moment. A staff member came by to throw a few more logs onto the fire. After she left, I turned to him.

“Do you want to see a photo of Mindy Sue?” I asked.

“If you want to show me, yes.”

I took out my phone and pulled up the photo I kept of me at twelve years old. A reminder of the person I never wanted to be again. She kept me on track. One look at the picture, and I remembered my purpose. I turned the screen around and held it out to him. “That’s Mindy Sue Price. She’s twelve there.” My teeth were crooked. I sported a bowl hair cut by my mother. Chubby cheeks covered with pimples. And that awful nose. A pig nose. That’s what a boy at school had called it, which spread like wild fire. Someone started calling me Watson from Mercy Watson to the Rescue, a story about a pig who loved buttered toast.

He took my phone in his large hand, looking down at the photo.

“That’s my real nose. The teeth I fixed the same year as the nose with braces I paid for myself. No amount of praying had sent magical money to my mother’s bank account to pay for them when I was a kid.” I was talking too fast. “Mindy’s chubby because we ate what was cheap, and what’s cheap is what makes you look like that. And her clothes are wrong. You can’t see it maybe but they’re out of style, bought at the thrift store. Other kids can smell that on you. The scent of poverty. They made sure I knew what they thought of me. Over and over again.” I stopped to take in a deep breath. “That’s who I actually am, Knox. After a nose job and elocution lessons I paid a woman four hundred dollars an hour for. That’s the factory setting.”

He didn’t say anything. He was still looking at the photograph.

“I keep her right here on my phone so I never forget who I used to be. Then I put my armor on and take Madeleine into the world. I never, ever let anybody see Mindy Sue because she’s dead. I killed her. Only thing left of her is this photo.” My eyes were burning. “Which, I’ve never shown to anyone. Not even Rhett.”

He looked at the photo a moment longer. And then he gazed up at me, his eyes damp. I braced for a platitude, a kind lie that would tell me he didn’t truly understand the power of the photograph and the way it shaped my thinking every moment of every day. You were beautiful, or you’re beautiful now.

He didn’t say any of that.

“You look exactly the same.”

“What?” I sat up straighter, sure he was joking.

“I mean, your nose and teeth are different. You lost your baby fat. Your hair’s now handled by professionals. But I know her.” He turned the phone back around and looked at twelve-year-old me one more time. He smiled gently and tapped the screen with the pads of his fingers. “She’s a girl with so much grit and courage that she found a way out of the cycle of poverty. She’s a survivor. A warrior. Yeah, that’s who I see when I look at her. So yes, you look exactly the same.”

He handed the phone back to me, and his hand closed over mine for a second, warm and dry. “You look at a picture of the bravest person you’ve ever known and use it to keep yourself in line. That’s the part that makes me sad. Mindy Sue’s the reason you’re here. She did all of it. She got you out. So don’t tell me she’s anything but perfect. You don’t need her as a cautionary tale. She is you and you are her and for that you should be grateful, not scared or ashamed.”

I closed my eyes, really taking in what he said, and allowed myself, for the length of one held breath, to believe his words were true. Even though I knew, when we left the firelight in this beautiful snow globe of a lodge where nothing real could reach us, it would not last.

He reached into his back pocket to pull out his own phone. “You want to see a picture of me and Gramps?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, pulling up a photo and then handing it over to me. “I’m eight there.”

I looked down at an eight-year-old version of Knox Harley. He wore a pair of jean overalls and held a line with a fish on the end. He was grinning from ear to ear, gaps where his front teeth should have been. Next to him stood a man with a shock of white hair, but, unlike Knox, he wasn’t looking at the camera. His gaze was focused on his grandson, and his expression of love told me everything I needed to know about this man who had been Knox’s special person.

“Do you remember when it was taken?” I asked, my voice husky.

“Sure, I do. I don’t know who was prouder of that fish, him or me. But you know, it was just one day of many. Wouldn’t be the same if it weren’t just an ordinary Sunday, you know? It was the cumulative Sundays that turned me into the man I am now. The hours the two of us sat on the bank of a fishing hole and communicated without even needing to talk. He was always there for me, without judgment. Just loved me the way I was. I guess I’ve been chasing that kind of love ever since. Finally found it with Jack and the boys.”

“The little boy he helped raise turned into a fine man.”

“You really think so?” The stark vulnerability in his eyes stopped me cold.

“I know so.”

“I’m sorry about the times my principles combined with my hot head have caused you trouble,” Knox said. “I’ve been wanting to say that to you.”

I smiled, reaching over to touch his cheek, wanting to kiss him. “I never thought I’d say this out loud, but I kind of got a kick out of it. Not every day you see a man risk his reputation by setting merch made by kids on fire in protest. Which we didn’t know, by the way. I should have thanked you for figuring it out.”

He blinked, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He leaned closer until his mouth was inches from mine. “How do you feel about public displays of affection?”