“What?”

“You said you had him in your sights. All you had to do was pull the trigger, right?”

“Yeah.”

“He killed Sandy. He killed Peter and Mrs. Molinar. He killed your friend. Why didn’t you pull the trigger?”

“It wouldn’t have been right.”

“After all that he’d done?”

“But letting Reed Harris live doesn’t erase what I did to Mikhail.”

“You want the world to be black-and-white, Max, but it’s not. Good and bad aren’t absolutes.”

“I don’t feel sorry for killing him. I’ll carry that night with me for the rest of my life, but if I had to do it all over, I’d still send Mikhail to his grave. Do you understand now… why I needed to come here? Why I pushed you away? As much as I want to be with you—and, God, I want to be with you—you shouldn’t be with a man like me. You deserve so much more.”

Niki turned again to look out through the glass. Now the snow was coming down in larger flakes, covering the porch outside. She watched it fall for a while, then said, “My mother has a scar, just below her shoulder. As a child I asked her about it, and she told me that she caught her arm on a piece of tin when she was a child in Vietnam. I never questioned it. But that wasn’t the truth.”

Niki put a finger to the glass to trace a droplet of melting snow. “When I was old enough, my aunt told me the truth, a story I’ve never told anyone.” She paused again, leaning her forehead against the cold glass.

Max held his breath, afraid to move.

“Before my family escaped Vietnam, my father spent four years in a reeducation camp. When he got out, he was half dead. My mother knew that she had to get him out of the country. She’d been working on a plan to cross the mountains into Thailand. She had forged their papers and sold all of their possessions to buy an old truck. Near the border, they were stopped at a checkpoint manned by a lone soldier. He must have spotted something wrong, because he started to arrest my parents. My mom…”

Niki took in a slow breath, her gaze fixed on the falling snow. “My mom knew that my father wouldn’t survive another term in the camp, so she begged for mercy. When the soldier refused… she pulled a knife from her sleeve and stabbed him to death. Her scar came from the blade of his bayonet as he tried to stop her.”

Niki turned and faced Max, the light outside softening the curve of her cheek. “That soldier was just doing his job. Maybe he had a family waiting for him. The world isn’t black-and-white, Max; sometimes it’s gray. I don’t judge my mother for what she did. I don’t have that right. I wasn’t there. And I’m not going to judge you.”

“You can’t ignore it, either, Niki.”