Three A.M., Overseas Time
Chapter 10 - Three A.M., Overseas Time
Emily woke at three in the morning out of old habit, the specific internal clock deployment had trained into her years ago, still faithfully firing at the exact hour patrols used to change over half a world away.
Daniel slept beside her, undisturbed, and Emily lay awake in the dark, thinking not about the case, not about the numbers, but about the version of herself who'd sat in a hospital bed in Germany, believing her own parents when they said they'd think about five thousand dollars.
*I trusted them because I had to trust someone while I was over there,* she thought. *The whole system depends on that trust. They knew that. They used it anyway.*
She got up, careful not to wake Daniel, and sat in the dark kitchen with a cup of tea she didn't really want, letting herself feel, finally, the specific grief underneath the anger that had carried her through the past month of spreadsheets and demand letters and Captain Reyes's careful, measured updates.
It wasn't really about the forty seven thousand dollars, not entirely. It was about five years of believing a version of her parents that had never actually existed, five years of trusting people who'd been quietly building a yacht and a boutique and a comfortable life on the back of money she'd earned bleeding for a country that trusted her more than her own family had.
She thought about calling Nia, decided against it, wanting to sit with this particular grief alone for once, the way she'd learned to sit with hard things overseas when there wasn't always someone available at three in the morning to help carry it.
*You don't have to forgive them to heal,* Nia had told her once, in a different context, a different wound. *Those are two different jobs.*
Emily understood that lesson more fully now than she had the first time she'd heard it. She wasn't healing by forgiving. She was healing by finally seeing clearly, by refusing to let a well-rehearsed performance on a dock substitute for actual accountability.
Daniel found her there an hour later, having woken and noticed her absence the way he always did.
"Can't sleep," he said, settling beside her without needing to ask more than that.
"I keep thinking about five years," Emily said. "Not just the money. Five years of trusting people I shouldn't have trusted, and not knowing it the whole time."
"You know it now," Daniel said. "That's not nothing. A lot of people never get the chance to know."
May you like
"I know," Emily said. "I'm still allowed to grieve the five years I didn't know, though. Even while I'm grateful I finally do."
Daniel didn't argue with that, just sat with her in the quiet kitchen, three in the morning, letting her feel exactly as unresolved as she needed to feel before the next day's spreadsheets and phone calls picked back up.
