Too bad she wasn’t stopping there.
“I’m not going to work for you, but that’s not all.”
He pursed his lips and looked like he knew exactly what she was going to say next. She took a breath, gathering up her courage to say what she had on her mind, but she was surprised when he spoke first.
“You only have this one life,” he said. “I know. I’ve seen a lot of death in my life. First, my sweet Sarah, who I miss every day. I’ve buried a wife and a child, and I’ve buried a monster that I thought loved me. I lost my best friend, and when I stepped into his shoes and took over his office, I found that I was not half the man that he was.”
“Sir,” Kate said, intent on correcting him, but Pearce held his hand up to stop her.
“Nothing you can say is going to convince me otherwise. I made a mess of things, and I let myself be manipulated into doing things that I’m not proud of. Being in love is no excuse, and I’m sorry for all the damage I unknowingly caused. But I’ve learned something from all this, and I would be lying if I said that I didn’t expect you to tell me that you would not be working for me.”
Kate nodded, intrigued now and wondering where Pearce was going with this.
“I’ve been thinking about a lot of things, and it seems that New Hope needs a new direction. We’re heading right back into the traps that we fell into before, and I’m starting to think that Canada was right to throw up that wall to keep their people safe from us. We have a lot of problems as a country that we need to work out, and I’m not sure that I even know where to begin. But I do know that I loved how the people of Aman treated each other, and now that I’ve spent some time with some of the missing people from Aldeia that finally made their way into the city about a week ago, what I do know is that I need help taking New Hope into the next decade. We need change, and cooperation is the key. The more I think about it, the more I think that I need to get Eli and his family to help me figure out how to change our path and find our way out of this rut we’re in. There’s more to life than being buried in tech and chasing the almighty dollar. I have to start somewhere, and I think that I have a plan that will benefit us both.”
He smiled then, and a million thoughts ran through Kate’s mind. Was he going to make her a liaison to Aman? Would she travel often and get to see Jason? It wasn’t the same as living there full-time, but it was a start, and it was better than being chained to a desk in New Hope. Maybe he would only have her traveling a few times a year, but if she was lucky, she could parlay that into monthly trips to Aman, and then she would be able to see Jason often enough that the time in between wouldn’t feel like its own little death. They could make it work, and it was a way for her to serve her country and take care of herself. Maybe it wasn’t the purest definition of a win-win situation, but it was better than Kate had imagined.
“I think I see where you’re going with this, and I think that having someone travel back and forth between Aman and New Hope would be perfect. I could work closely with the King to help us shift our own territory in a better direction, all while improving the relations between our two territories.”
Pearce smiled, but he was shaking his head and chuckling softly.
“I don’t think you get it,” he said. “There’s not going to be any travel.”
When her face fell, Pearce frowned and sighed heavily before he continued.
“I guess I’m not explaining it well,” he said after a moment of silence while he gathered his thoughts. “Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll lay it all out on the table. If you don’t want the job, I’m not going to force you to take it. But if you give me a chance to explain, I think you’ll love what I have in mind.”
Kate sat down, her hopes already dashed when he’d said that there wouldn’t be any travel. She was willing to hear him out, but she doubted that what he had to offer was going to make anything right. All she wanted was to make sure that she could see Jason every one to two months, but it seemed that Pearce had other plans. Kate held her emotions in check and prepared herself to listen intently to what Pearce had to say. At least he was giving her options; that was more than most people got. But it didn’t really matter when the only thing that she wanted was so far out of reach.
*
Epilogue
One week later
Lucy picked at her food, pushing it across the table and wrinkling her nose at it.
“I’m not hungry,” she declared as she had every night for the past week.
Anna sighed, but she didn’t argue. She knew that Lucy’s lack of appetite had nothing to do with the food, but Anna couldn’t fix Lucy’s problem. Lucy missed Kate, and Kate wasn’t coming back. She’d left one morning without so much as a farewell, and her abrupt departure had left many in Aman in shock. Even Jason had eventually admitted to Eli that Kate had jumped out of bed that day and left without much explanation. She’d given up her last day of vacation with Jason and left as quickly as she’d showed up a few weeks before when they had first met her. If Jason’s quiet behavior and sullen expression of late was any indication, Jason was as crushed as Lucy was by the loss of their friend.
Lucy grumbled again, but Anna let it go. She was masking her pain with anger, and Anna didn’t blame her. They were all surprised by Kate’s sudden departure, and though she was mature for her age, Lucy didn’t have much life experience to process this type of loss. She was dealing with it as best as she could, and Anna wasn’t upset with her.
If she were Lucy, she would be moping around, too.
Anna reached out to take Lucy’s hand, but Lucy yanked her hand away and stood up. Her blue eyes flashed, and she started pacing, too agitated to sit still.
“She didn’t even say goodbye,” Lucy said angrily, her eyes welling with tears. “What kind of friend doesn’t say goodbye?”
“Sometimes goodbyes are too hard for people, and they just can’t do it,” Anna tried to explain.
“So?” Lucy shot back. “A lot of things are hard, and we do them anyway. Only cowards run away.”
Anna sighed and shot Eli a look, but Eli shrugged and put his hands up as if to say he had no idea what to do about Lucy. It was the first time that they were dealing with this kind of upset, and Anna was a little bit surprised that all the betrayal and the near-death experiences that Lucy had gone through during her short life had still left her feeling unprepared. Of all the things that Lucy had been through in her short life, having a friend run out on her without explanation seemed like the least of them. It definitely didn’t compare to being kidnapped and used for bait to draw out a murderous WereDragon.