He might as well have heard her words: Why you? Because if she’d had to pick one son to survive, Grayson knew it would never have been him. Not that he blamed her for it; if he’d had a choice in the matter, he’d have done anything in his power to have his brothers come home instead.
Matters had only grown worse when they held a service for his brothers. Grayson had been supposed to speak. He’d had hours of stories he could have told—things that only he knew, stories of what his brothers had done, what they’d planned together—and yet standing there in a crowd humming with expectation, he’d somehow not been able to utter a word. Not one.
He’d turned and left, and that had only made the gulf grow.
There was a reason he didn’t make it home as often as he should. The emptiness. The quiet. But most of all, the knowledge that no matter how much his mother loved him—and she did love him—he always reminded her that with any justice in the world, it would have been someone else who survived. And his mama loved justice.
“I don’t worry,” Grayson told her. “I haven’t the time.”
She let out a huff at this. “So. How long are you here for?”
“Not long enough, I’m afraid.”
She fixed him with a look. “A month, at least.”
“Five days,” he admitted. “And not an iota longer.”
“Really.” Adrian stared at him. “Really? You’ve come how many thousands of miles, and five days is what you have to offer?”
“It will take fourteen days to cross the country,” he said, ticking time off on his fingers. “The Celerity headed back to Hong Kong after we laid the cable to Myriad, so I’m on commercial transport back to Asia. Twenty days from San Francisco to Yokohama, if I’m lucky, then eight days from there to Shanghai. I have a meeting with the Taotai of Shanghai on February the sixteenth that I cannot miss. I must be there by the twelfth to prepare.”
His parents exchanged glances.
“It will be better,” he said, “once we’ve finished the Pacific line. We’ll start making a profit on what we’ve put in. I’ll be able to have some time off.”
That was what he said. Truth was he had a plan. He couldn’t do anything about the fact his brothers were gone, but after he’d left the service, after he’d found himself struck to silence, he’d wandered alone on roads he’d once trodden with his brothers. He’d thought about the journals in which he’d chronicled their plans for a telegraphic network.
He hadn’t been able to speak them aloud. But what if he did it one better? What if he made it?
A telegraphic network wasn’t enough, but it would be something, something he could give to his parents, something that would serve as a monument to what his family had lost.
So he’d formed a plan. He’d finish the transpacific line. He would show them his journals. He’d talk about what Noah added, what Harry had said, what John had conceived. And his mother wouldn’t stop resenting him, he didn’t think, but maybe, if he did enough, she would understand that he was trying to make up for it all.
“So.” She frowned. “What I’m hearing is that next year you can spare yourself. I don’t suppose you could manage any sooner for the sake of your dear mother?”
The fact that she was pressing it meant that she wanted it—really and truly wanted it.
Grayson didn’t want to deny her.
He sighed. “Maybe I can manage a week in April. I’ll be in San Francisco to inspect the cable aboard the Victory for the last segment then. If I don’t go back with the Victory… She’s slow.”
She made a face. “Only another week?”
Until he finished the transpacific line, until he had something to offer her… This was the best he could do. More time with her wouldn’t make the gap between them any narrower.
She said only a week, but a week of this emptiness was a week of remembering. It was a week spent feeling the grief he tried to hold in. It was a week knowing that he wasn’t enough, that he could never fill the gaping hole in their lives, but that he had to try harder to do it.
It shouldn’t have been Grayson who’d survived—but it had been.
He looked in his mother’s eyes, then his father’s. “I’m sorry,” Grayson said. “I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you one day. I promise.”
It was not February the twelfth when Grayson arrived in Shanghai. It was the fifteenth, the evening before the planned meeting with the taotai. Grayson arrived with the skies spitting water that froze to slippery danger on the Shanghai pavements and into daggers of ice dripping from bare tree branches.
He was chilled through and through, rubbing his hands against the cotton towel he’d been given at the entry as he ascended the stairs to Mrs. Smith’s office. He came to stand in the doorway, and that was how he saw Amelia Smith for the first time in so many months. Lightning struck. That was how he felt all over again.
She had changed. She was wearing loose Chinese trousers and a Western blouse covered by a smart jacket. Her hair was pinned up messily with rosewood hair sticks. She stood at her desk, arms folded, shaking her head.
“Stop whining,” she was saying to Benedict. “If Captain Hunter really doesn’t show, you will have to do it all. I’m not going to let you muff the formalities. Try that bow again.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Benedict said, giving her a salute.
She didn’t seem embarrassed to be receiving it.
God. She was beautiful. Grayson had been aware before he’d left that he had a problem where she was concerned. He’d kissed her, after all. He’d thought about her. He’d wondered how she was getting along, not just for the code, but for herself. He’d pored over the occasional stripped-down telegrams he’d received aboard the Victory. Even the packet of letters that had awaited him in Yokohama explaining the code in detail, with a sample presentation for him to give to the taotai, had brought her to his mind. He could sense her exuberant enthusiasm even in those few pages. He’d felt it in the completeness of the packet, her evident pride in work well done.
He’d been lightning struck before. He’d known he had a problem, a deep one, a yearning one that pulled her to him.
He’d known nothing. Watching her now, watching her be comfortable where she had once been hesitant, confident where she had used to be unsure… It was worse. How had it gotten so much worse?
She glanced in his direction. Their eyes met. And he felt his world tilt off its axis.
“Oh.” Her face lit in a smile. “You’re finally here! I had feared we were doomed.”
“Doomed.” He found himself echoing her smile and her words. “Doomed.” It sounded prophetic. He felt doomed in that moment—drawn into her, his hands frozen by rain when her entire person seemed to radiate warmth. “Why would we be doomed?”
She just smiled at him. “We need someone to make the introduction to the taotai. We’re glad it’s you.”
Grayson folded the towel he’d been using to swipe water off him. His hands still felt clammy, but she was here with him. It felt as if his frozen limbs were awakening to pins and needles, slapped to life by her presence.