A Spark of Light(25)

“No!” Hugh said quickly. “Look. I didn’t know she was in there when you and I started talking.”

Find a bridge between you.

“She never even told me she was going to the clinic,” Hugh added. “You know what that’s like.”

Hugh held his breath. He hated talking this way about Wren. No, he hadn’t known she was going to the clinic. Yes, he hated himself for the fact that she had asked Bex to take her, and not him. But he didn’t blame Wren for not feeling comfortable. He blamed his own parenting, for not making it clear that no question, no request, nothing was off-limits.

How many parents had he sat with in their own living rooms, while the medical examiner’s team removed the body of their teenage child behind them, raw with the marks of a noose or the cuts of a razor? I didn’t know, they would say, dazed. She never told me.

Hugh never said it out loud, but sometimes thought: Well, did you ask?

And he had. He would poke his head into Wren’s room and say, Anyone picking on you at school? Anything you want to talk about?

She would look up from her homework. You mean other than the pipe bomb I’m building in my closet? Then she would grin. No suicidal thoughts, Dad. All clear.

But there were a hundred mines a teenager could step on daily. One of them had slipped through his defense.

Suddenly everything in Hugh went still. Yes, George had a vital piece of information now—that one of his hostages was related to the negotiator. He thought it gave him an advantage. But what if Hugh could use the knowledge of that information to tip the scales in his own favor?

“Listen,” Hugh said. “Both our kids snuck around behind our backs. You couldn’t stop your daughter, George. But you were able to stop mine. You saved her from making a terrible mistake.”

It was not true. Wren had not gone to the Center to get an abortion. Hugh knew this. But George didn’t.

“You know why I want this to be over, George?” Hugh said.

“You’re worried about your kid.”

“Yeah. But I also want to meet my grandchild, one day. Because of you, that’s possible.”

Silence.

“It’d be like getting a second chance. I’m a single parent, George. Just like you. I may not always have been the best father, but I tried to be. You know?”

There was a huff of response on the other end of the telephone line, which Hugh took as assent.

“But I’m also worried about what she thinks of me. I want her to be proud. I want her to think I did everything I possibly could for her.”

“We can’t both be the hero.”

“Hero is just a label,” Hugh said. “But honor—that’s a legacy. You have a chance, George. A chance to redeem yourself. To do what’s right.”

He was taking a risk, raising the specter of integrity to a man who had only hours ago gone off the deep end due to a question about his reputation. But then it stood to reason that a person whose dignity had been questioned might crave respect. So much so that he would be willing to surrender in order to get it.

“It’s not honorable to quit,” George said, but Hugh could hear it—the weakening of bonds between the syllables of his conviction. The what if.

“Depends on the circumstances. Sometimes you have to make a choice that isn’t what you want to do, but what you have to do. That’s honor.”

“You’re the guy in the white hat,” George scoffed. “You’ve probably never even jaywalked. Everyone looks up to you.”

Hugh met Captain Quandt’s gaze. “Not everyone.”

“You got no idea what you might do when you feel trapped.”

George was retreating into his own defensive armor, making excuses for his behavior and using it to sever the connection that Hugh had built with him. He could continue down this rabbit hole, and take all the hostages with him—it would be fast, and it would be bloody, and it would be over.

Or.

Hugh could say something, do something, that would make George realize he was not stuck. That there was a way out.

He stared at Quandt, silently begging the man for a grace period. But the SWAT commander took off his headphones and turned to rally his team.

“You told me you started this for your daughter,” he said to George. “Now end it for her.”





Three p.m.





HUGH STARED AT THE WINDOWS OF THE CLINIC, MIRRORED LIKE aviator sunglasses. He assumed they were a later addition, when the protesters grew in number. This gave the women inside a sense that once they crossed the threshold, their business was their business alone. Those windows were meant to protect, but today, they were obstacles. No one knew what was happening inside those walls.

He glanced at the phone in his hand, the line dead. One minute he’d been talking with George, seemingly making progress, and the next, he had been disconnected. He dialed again, and again, but there was no answer. His heart was racing, and not just because he’d lost contact with the hostage taker. The last sound he’d heard before George hung up on him was Wren’s voice.

Which meant— Oh fuck, he didn’t even want to go there.

He opened to the text thread he’d had with his daughter. Wren, he typed. ?





R U OK


He held his breath, and the three telltale dots appeared.