Chapter 9 - What Memory Could Not Erase
With Victor and Natalie in custody, the immediate danger diminished.
For the first time, Jackson and Emily had time to talk.
Not about conspiracies.
About them.
Emily showed him photographs.
Jackson and Emily at Coney Island.
Jackson cooking badly in her tiny apartment.
Emily asleep against his shoulder.
Christmas.
Birthdays.
A weekend at a lake.
Then the photograph that destroyed him.
Jackson kneeling beneath strings of rooftop lights.
Emily covering her mouth.
The ring in his hand.
“I don't remember proposing.”
“You were terrified.”
“I look terrified.”
Emily laughed.
The sound triggered something.
A memory.
Her laughter on that rooftop.
Then another.
Her whisper:
Yes.
Jackson closed his eyes.
“I remember your answer.”
Emily stopped breathing.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
She cried.
Jackson reached for her.
Their foreheads touched.
“I lost you.”
Emily shook her head.
“You were injured.”
“I should have found you.”
“You did.”
“Three years later.”
“But you did.”
Jackson kissed her gently.
It wasn't the desperate kiss of people trying to reclaim a past.
It was slower.
A beginning.
Later that night, Jackson found another photograph.
Emily beside his father.
Impossible.
“My father died years before we met.”
Emily frowned.
“I've never seen that.”
The photograph had been hidden among his father's documents.
On the back were four words:
PROTECT HER AT ALL COSTS.
Emily stared at it.
“Why would your father have my photograph?”
May you like
Jackson didn't know.
But the mystery of Emily Carter had just become much older than either of them realized.
