Brock was gone for weeks at a time for work. That may’ve been their saving grace. The girls were used to being without him. She’d been used to time without him too. But this was different.

Every night, she cried herself to sleep because, in her heart, she loved the man she’d thought she knew. He was long gone, maybe never really existed. She’d learned more about Brock in the week living with the enemy than she had in a decade of marriage.

She’d been naïve. Purposely or not, she’d closed her mind to what he did on his work trips. When he came home with gunshot wounds or explosive burns, she knew it was because he’d saved someone’s life. Not taken another’s.

Surrounded by half-emptied boxes in her mom’s Pennsylvania guest house, Sarah wondered how life in Virginia had been so… sheltered.

Her cell phone rang. She grabbed it as the girls ran outside. Sugar. “Hey—”

“Are you sulking or surviving?”

If there was one thing she’d learned about Sugar, it was that the woman was direct. “Surviving. Mostly.”

“What about the girls?”

She stared out a window, wrapping and rewrapping a dishtowel around her hands. “They seem excited to be in a normal school. It’s small, private, not overwhelming. So it’s working. Much different from homeschooling them.”

“What about you? You run up north, how’s that going to help your problems?’

Sarah swallowed the lump in her throat. “Meaning?”

“Brock.”

His name made her arm feel like stone. It fell to her side. The towel dangled, as lifeless as she felt. “You know him better than me, Sugar. Definitely in a different light.”

“Bull.”

She laughed sadly. Sugar never held anything back. “I miss him and wish things could’ve been different.”

“Cut the crap, Sarah. That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said to me. I was ATF. I was trained. If he was too panicked to use Titan and had to do something to save his family, I was a good bet. I’d survive. No one was taking me out like that.”

“I just feel—”

“If you spout some woe-is-me shit, I’ll probably come to PA and kick some sense into you. Give the guy a break.”

“Excuse me?”

“Give him a chance to explain.”

“You’ve forgiven him for what he did to you? Fine.” She snapped the towel. “Well, I can’t.”

“That’s my burden to bear, babe. He was trying to save you.”

“If he’d made different choices, if I’d known the kids were in so much danger…” She turned to see if they could hear her, but Kelly and Jessica were occupied terrorizing each other. “If he’d—”