Free Sins of the Storm by Jenna Mills Page A

retrieved his flashlight, jerked the beam away from the mural on the wall. “Come on,” he said, heading toward the door. “We should—”
    “No.” With one last glance at the room she’d slept in for eighteen years, she turned and joined him in the hallway. “Not yet.”
     
    He’d been in Gabe’s room. They’d been listening to the debut album of a new Irish rock band. Gabe had been sitting on the edge of his bed. He’d just broken up with his girlfriend. Jack had been on the floor, munching on the popcorn Camille had brought them.
    The gunshot barely sounded above the lyrics.
    I will follow…
    But the scream had stopped his heart.
    They’d been on their feet and running, racing through the darkness toward the scream that just kept echoing. And within seconds, they’d found her, Gabe’s mom, kneeling in blood and draped over Gabe’s father.
    It had been obvious Mr. Troy was gone.
    Jack watched her now, watched Camille kneel in the same spot her mother had. With mechanical movements—and absolutely no emotion—she ran her hand along the scarred hardwood floor, where the shattered remains of the stained glass had been found.
    “I didn’t hear the argument,” she said, but he wasn’t even sure she realized he was there. That kind of control, he’d seen it before. In combat. Soldiers were taught to suppress feeling, to shut it all out. That if they didn’t, it could destroy.
    “I didn’t see the stained glass,” she said. “I slipped in when they were fighting…”
    The gun had gone off. Troy had fallen.
    “Camille.” He saw her flinch, saw her jerk. She twisted toward him, exposed him to eyes as horror-drenched as the morning he’d found her, two days later.
    “No.” Her voice was remote, controlled. “Not yet.”
    The sight of her reliving it all ripped through him. He knew better than to move, knew better than to touch, but something drove him to crouch beside her.
    “You shouldn’t be here,” he said roughly. Sister, he told himself. She was Gabe’s sister, for God’s sake. Once she’d trusted him. “It can’t be healthy—”
    “It’s not about healthy.” Very little light leaked from the windows into the room, but her eyes glowed. “It’s about unlocking doors,” she said. “About coming to terms with what happened here.”
    “Closure.” He realized.
    Her answering smile surprised him. It was sad…reflective. “I’ve been running a long time,” she acknowledged in that same quiet voice, the one that sounded grown-up and like a little girl all at the same time. “It’s time to stop.”
    “And then what?” he asked, but did not let himself touch, not even to slide back the hair that had slipped from her ponytail and stuck against her mouth. “What happens when you stop?”
    Her smile faded. She looked away, toward the windows, and stood. She crossed the room and lifted a hand to the pane. But she didn’t say a word.
    Somehow, he still heard.
    She didn’t know. She didn’t know what would happen when she stopped.
    But he did. He knew what happened when you stopped, when the stillness seeped in. The quiet. He knew what happened when the memories were scraped away and cataloged, when the past was laid to rest and the future stretched like a long road in front of you. He knew what happened when the dreams died and the nightmares went quiet. He knew what the silence sounded like.
    “You don’t need to do this,” he said. Watching the way she stood without moving, looking into the backyard where the fort had stood, he crossed to her. She stiffened, but he put his hands to her shoulders anyway.
    “Do what?” she asked.
    “Make yourself remember.” With the words, the truth formed. “Torture yourself.” As some sort of misplaced penance. “To make up for your perceived sins…to do what you couldn’t do before.”
    There was nowhere for her to go, captured as she was between his body and the window.
    She took a step back anyway. “This isn’t about