Kisses for Revenge

John Fletcher, from Romantic Magazine v09 n52 (1938)

Adapted for 20 min. reading

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KISSES FOR REVENGE

I. The Letter

By the time Joey’s cable and letter reached me, I was two thousand miles up the Amazon, staying with a friend whose husband ran a small hospital on a rubber plantation.
The rains had washed out the wires; for weeks nothing had come through. When his message finally arrived, the envelope was soft at the corners, the ink blurred in places.

The letter itself was not long.

“Mimi—
I’m in prison. Five years. Fletcher asked for twenty.
I played the fool with his wife; then the accident.
They say I killed a man and ran.
Come if you can.
Joey.”

I left as soon as I could.
Three weeks to the coast.
Two more by boat to New York.
A flight to Chicago, then a train out to a town I had never seen—Graywood, the place where Joey had fallen in love and ruined his life.

Betty Lambert’s house was big and old and dark, ringed with iron fence and guarded by iron dogs on the lawn. She met me at the door and took me straight upstairs, to her room. We closed the door behind us; then she was in my arms, clinging, shaking.

We had gone to the same finishing school. I had introduced her to Joey. They had fallen in love quickly, almost inevitably. She had always been a small, bright, laughing thing. Now, in my arms, she was thin and brittle. I could feel the edges of her shoulder blades under my hands. Her hair smelled the same, but even that seemed tired.

“It’s my fault, Mimi,” she said into my shoulder. “All of it. If I hadn’t fought with him at the club. If I hadn’t given him back his ring and gone home in a sulk. If he hadn’t stayed and drunk himself stupid. If Midge hadn’t been there. If John hadn’t—”

She broke off, swallowing.

“Tell me,” I said. “From the beginning.”

So she did.

The story was ugly, and simple.

Midge Fletcher—John Fletcher’s wife—had been after Joey for months. She was bored with her husband, bored with Graywood, and fascinated by Joey’s youth and money. Betty had seen it, tried to warn him, tried to fight. On the night everything happened, there had been a quarrel at the country club. Betty had given Joey back his ring and left. Angry and hurt, he had stayed. He drank. Midge helped him.

Later, on the balcony, John Fletcher had found them together.

Sometime after that, Joey had taken his car and gone out into the night. A tramp—or some man walking along the road—had been struck and killed. Joey had driven several miles before turning back. He claimed he had not seen the man until it was too late. The state called it manslaughter and “hit-and-run.” The prosecutor, John Fletcher, demanded twenty years.

“Jess Wagner defended him,” Betty said. “He’s one of the best lawyers in the state. He got it cut to five. But Fletcher pushed. You could see it.”

Her face twisted.

“He hated Joey. He knew his wife had been making a play for him. And he crushed him anyway.”

I sat quietly and let her talk, then asked the only question that had burned all through my journey home.

“Is it true,” I said, “that if anyone else had prosecuted Joey, he’d probably have got a fine and a short sentence? That the fact he turned back would have helped him—if it hadn’t been Fletcher?”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s what everyone says. Even Wagner. Fletcher made it as hard as he possibly could.”

I felt a cold, deliberate anger rise in me, cutting through my exhaustion.

“Then I know what I’m doing here,” I said. “I’m here to make that man pay.”

---

II. The Prosecutor

I asked Betty about John Fletcher.

She watched me closely as she spoke, as if weighing every word.

“He’s about thirty,” she said. “Tall. Broad-shouldered. That jaw you see on magazine covers when they talk about ‘self-made men.’ He has that look. Red hair—well, a deep copper brown really. Ambitious. He’s running for Congress on the Independent ticket, against the state machine… and against Jess Wagner, who defended Joey. Wagner and his people would love to find something on him. They haven’t.”

She hesitated.

“He isn’t a woman’s man,” she added. “At least, not in the usual way. I doubt he really looks at anyone but his wife. And even her—not so much these last years. She’s given him enough reason to be tired of women. If you’re thinking of going after him that way, I don’t know that it would even work. And once he knows who you are—Joey’s sister—he’d be on guard from the start.”

“He doesn’t have to know,” I said.

She frowned, startled.

“No one knows me in Graywood,” I went on. “Not even your father. Joey and I don’t look alike—he’s fair, I’m dark. My legal name is Muriel Leason. I can be Muriel Leason here. Your friend from the East.”

Betty lowered herself onto the bed and stared at me.

“You really mean it.”

“I do,” I said. “Listen to me. I’m not denying that Joey did something terribly wrong. He killed a man, even if he didn’t mean to. He should have been punished. But Fletcher didn’t just prosecute him. He used his office to push his sentence as hard as he could—while his own wife was chasing Joey like a cat after a bird. I can’t forgive him for that. I won’t.”

I thought of Joey’s cramped handwriting, his breathless lines from a prison cell, his shame and horror and fear.

“I want to hurt John Fletcher,” I said quietly. “As much as he’s hurt Joey.”

Betty looked at me for a long time, then sighed.

“There aren’t many men you couldn’t hurt if you tried,” she said. “But John… I don’t know, Mimi.”

She stood up, squaring her small shoulders.

“All right. If you’re going to do this, we start tonight. There’s a dinner dance at the club. He’ll be there. Midge will see to that. I’ll introduce you. As my friend. Muriel Leason.”

That evening, I dressed as if for battle. I chose a gown that made the most of my height, my dark hair, the whiteness of my skin. My mouth, painted red, looked like a deliberate challenge in the mirror.

Downstairs, the country club dining room glowed with light and chatter. Betty and I were quickly surrounded by a group of men and women. Glasses clinked. Someone laughed too loudly. Over their heads, I saw him.

He filled the doorway, then the room, simply by walking into it.

That was my first clear sight of John Fletcher. For years afterward, I could close my eyes and see him exactly as he looked at that moment: the big frame, the rough, strong planes of the face; that copper hair catching the light. It was absurd, but some old childhood memory rose up in me—the image of a man with flaming hair standing in the middle of a page of fire in a half-forgotten book. A picture I had stared at until the paper wore thin. An ideal I had unknowingly been measuring other men against for years, and always finding them lacking.

Then he moved closer, and a small, golden-haired woman appeared on his arm—Midge. My fantasy vanished. I was back in the heavy air of the dining room, the reality of what I had come to do closing around me like a net.

Betty’s voice had an edge as she performed the introductions.

“John, Midge—this is my friend Muriel Leason, visiting from the East. Muriel, this is John Fletcher, Graywood’s famous prosecutor and newly minted candidate for Congress. Aren’t you thrilled? And his wife, Midge. Midge is wonderful about ‘showing my friends around.’”

Her smile was sugar; her eyes were ice. Then she added, lightly:

“And I want Muriel to have a nice time here—but not a five-year stay.”

For a second, no one spoke. A flush touched Midge’s pretty face, but her eyes and mouth curved in a practiced social smile. She said something polite. I didn’t really hear it.

John looked at me across the little circle, and I heard my own voice, distant and calm, saying:

“How do you do, Mr. Fletcher.”

A few minutes later, he asked me to dance.

---

III. The Dance and the Bars

We stepped out onto the floor. He was enormously tall; even I, who am not short, felt small in his hands.

“I’ve never seen a woman so tall and so very beautiful,” he said quietly. “You remind me of a white birch in the wind. Have you ever seen birches with the moon behind them and the night breeze in their leaves?”

It was the kind of line that should have made me smile. Instead, it cut something loose in me. Joey loved trees, loved wind in the woods. We had spent summers camping in the north, lying awake to listen to branches knock and leaves whisper.

For a moment I had forgotten Joey, forgotten prison, forgotten what this man had done.

“I imagine men sentenced to prison don’t see much of that,” I said softly. “The night wind in the birches.”

I felt his body stiffen. We finished the dance in silence.

Then he led me out onto a wide balcony. The sky was high and dark, spattered with stars, the air smelling faintly of woodsmoke and autumn.

“You chose that remark carefully,” he said finally. His voice was heavy. “You said it because you’re Betty’s friend and you wanted to hurt me.”

He gave a short, mirthless laugh.

“I thought I was beyond being hurt by anything a woman might say. Apparently I was mistaken.”

He turned toward me, his eyes hard.

“You think,” he said, “that I sent Joey Deming to prison because I caught him making love to my wife. Betty thinks so. Wagner thinks so. Half this town thinks so, though they don’t dare say it. But it is not true.”

His voice roughened.

“I’m not denying I knew what my wife is capable of. There have been… incidents before. I am not naïve. But that had nothing to do with the sentence. A drunken driver kills a man and drives on—eight miles, Miss Leason. I asked for twenty years. I still think he deserved them. He got five. And if I have anything to say about it, he will serve every day.”

He stepped closer. His hands closed over my wrists. I could see the strain in his face, the tired lines carved along his mouth.

“You don’t believe that,” he said. “I know you don’t. I don’t really know why I’m trying to make you. But when you spoke to me like that—back there—I knew I had to try. Before you leave this town, I am going to convince you I did what my office required. No more. No less.”

Then, abruptly, he pulled me toward him and kissed me.

It was not a gentle kiss. It was angry, almost contemptuous, as if he were punishing me as much as himself. Before I could gather my thoughts, footsteps moved on the stone. Betty appeared in the doorway. I knew she had seen us. She only said that it was time to go home.

In the car, she did not speak.
It was only when we were back in her room that she turned and looked straight at me.

“I heard what he said,” she said. “And I saw what he did. Don’t imagine you’ve ‘got’ him, Mimi. A man like that doesn’t fall because of one kiss. He talked a jury into five years for Joey. Before you’re done, he might talk you into believing Joey deserved it.”

“He’ll have the best chance in the world to try,” I said. “Because I’m not finished.”

---

IV. Joey and the Plan

The next morning, I went to see Joey.

I will not dwell on the smell in the prison waiting room, or the sound of women whispering to themselves, or the worn shawls and tired hands. A woman moved over to make room for me on the bench.

“First time?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. My voice shook.

“It’s worst then,” she said. “I’ve been coming every week for four years. My Mickey. Yours is your man, I suppose?”

“My brother,” I said. “He killed a man with his car. They gave him five years.”

She touched my hand.

“Poor lad,” she said. “Drink?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “And bad company.”

It was only later that I realized I had taken that phrase straight from her.

Seeing Joey through the screen was worse than I had imagined. I had prepared myself for the uniform, for the bars, for the wire netting between us. I had not prepared myself for what prison had done to his face.

He tried to sound cheerful, but his voice kept fraying at the edges.

“Mimi,” he said, “don’t look at me like that. I’m not made of glass. I can stand it.”

“You never ran away from anything,” I said. “But they say you drove on. Eight miles.”

“I didn’t see him,” he said. “Not until the car was on him. I swear I didn’t. I did drive on, yes. I was half drunk and scared and… it took five, ten miles to realize what had happened. I turned back. I did.”

He took a breath.

“As for Midge—yes, I was playing around with her. More than playing. I was crazy about her for a while. I can’t explain it. I loved Betty. I still love Betty. But Midge… knows what she’s doing. She’d been making a play for me ever since I came to Graywood. Betty saw it. That night, we fought at the club. Betty gave me back the ring. I started drinking. Midge helped.”

He stared down at his hands.

“She and I were out on the balcony when Fletcher found us. He’s a big man. He lifted me like I was mud and threw me off his premises, told me to get out or he’d break my neck and hers. I got out. Took the car. You know the rest.”

“And Fletcher?” I asked. “Do you really think he pushed your sentence because of her?”

“Of course he did,” Joey said. “Wagner could have got me off with a fine and a short term in a workhouse if it had been any other prosecutor. But Fletcher… you should have heard him. It made my skin crawl. He wanted twenty years. Wagner fought him down to five. But if it would bring that man back to life, I’d serve the twenty.”

He leaned forward, his eyes suddenly burning.

“Don’t go after Fletcher,” he said. “Promise me. He sent me here because I killed a man with my car. That’s the truth. Yes, he had it in for me because of Midge. But he did his job, too. Don’t make it worse.”

I promised nothing.

On the way home, I thought of his words and Betty’s tears and the way John’s hands had felt on my wrists. By the time I crawled into bed that night beside Betty’s silent, exhausted body, my hate had crystalized into something sharp and cold and entirely my own.

Later, when Betty accused me of “enjoying” the company of the man who had destroyed Joey, I answered her quietly.

“You think I have no plan,” I said. “I do.”

She glared at me through red-rimmed eyes.

“What do you read first in those cheap tabloids, Betty?” I asked. “When they want to tear a man like Fletcher down, what do they go after?”

She stared, then answered unwillingly.

“His private life,” she said. “Some woman. Some scandal.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Headline: ‘Congress Candidate Caught With Woman in Hotel Room.’ Or: ‘Secret Love Life of Prosecutor Exposed.’ Wagner and his people would eat it up. They want something on Fletcher. I can give it to them.”

“You’re insane,” she said. “You couldn’t do that. It would ruin Joey as much as him. It would drag your name through the mud. Ours. Everything.”

“Joey is already ruined,” I said. “Why should I be any better? We were born together. Perhaps we’ll be disgraced together, too.”

I spoke coolly, but underneath I was shaking.

Betty wrapped her arms around herself.

“You’ll end up marrying him,” she muttered. “He’ll get a divorce and marry you. That’s how these things work.”

“His wife won’t give him a divorce,” I said. “Her kind never does unless they have a better prospect. And he probably couldn’t get one even if he tried. Don’t worry, Betty. I won’t be rescued that way.”

---

V. The Trap

From that night on, I played my part with a careful, ruthless consistency.

Looks. Small touches. Half words. A deliberate softness here, an unexpected withdrawal there. I let John see my dislike of him, but also my fascination. Perhaps it would have been harder if he had been shallow or vain. He wasn’t. He resisted. He fought himself. He kept his distance in public, then sought me out in private. The tension between us grew, day by day.

And then, one night at the club, as we sat waiting for our bridge partners, he spoke without looking up from the cards in his hands.

“I asked Midge for a divorce yesterday,” he said. “She laughed in my face. She told me there was nothing I could do that would make her give me one. That if I tried, she’d sue you for alienation of affections and take every cent you have. And she would. You’d be dragged through every newspaper from here to the coast, and I still wouldn’t be free.”

He laid the cards down and raised his eyes slowly to mine.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “I love you.”

It was the first time he had said the words so plainly.

“I have to leave tonight for Chicago,” he went on. “A legal trip. I’ll be there over the weekend. I want to ask you something I never thought I’d ask any woman. I want you to meet me there. Just for one night. One night to remember. The only night we’ll ever have.”

His voice was level, but his hands were tense on the table.

“I want you so much I find myself beyond pride. You can walk away and never look back, and I’ll have no right to reproach you. But if you came…”

I thought of Joey wasted behind bars. I thought of John’s face bent over me on the balcony. I thought of my own heart, already far more entangled than I cared to admit.

“I’ll come,” I heard myself say. “Tell me when and where.”

“The Shrevor Hotel,” he said. “I’ll wire the room number.”

That night, Betty came back from visiting Joey, pale and trembling. She told me he was in the prison hospital now—something like madness from fear and confinement eating away at him.

She also told me this: Wagner had asked John to join him in petitioning the governor for a pardon. John had refused.

“He said Joey is no better than any other boy who killed a man with his car,” Betty said. “That he must serve his time.”

Her eyes were desperate.

“What are we going to do, Mimi?”

“I know what I’m going to do,” I said.

The telegram arrived in the morning.

“Room 408, Shrevor. 8:30 p.m.”

I put it in my purse and went to see Jess Wagner.

His headquarters were crowded and smoky. People moved in and out. He ushered me into a side office, closing the door behind us.

“Miss Leason,” he said. Betty had already warned him of my assumed name.

“I won’t waste time,” I said. “Betty tells me you’ve tried everything for Joey. That Fletcher refused to help with a pardon. Is that so?”

“Yes,” he said. “I did what I could at the trial. I’ve done what I can since. The fact that Joey turned back should have helped him. It would have, with any other prosecutor. But Fletcher’s connection to the case… complicated matters.”

“And Fletcher complicates matters for you politically, too,” I said. “Doesn’t he?”

He blinked, then smiled faintly.

“Let us say,” he replied, “that I would not weep to see him stumble.”

I leaned forward.

“What if I told you that tonight, at eight-thirty, John Fletcher will be in Room 408 at the Shrevor Hotel in Chicago—with a woman who is not his wife?” I said. “That if you sent someone there at nine o’clock, you would probably find them together?”

He stared at me.

“And you know this because—?”

“Never mind how,” I said. “Answer the question. What would that mean for you?”

After a moment, he said quietly:

“It would probably mean I win the election.”

He studied my face.

“But I have never framed a man in my life,” he added. “I won’t start now. Not even Fletcher.”

“It isn’t framing him to walk in on what he has freely chosen to do,” I said. “He invited me. He begged me. This is his choice. Not yours.”

I gave him the name of the hotel and the room. He tried to ask more questions, but I was already at the door.

“Will you be there,” I asked, “or won’t you?”

At last he nodded.

“I’ll be there,” he said. “God help us all.”

---

VI. Room 408

The train to Chicago was late by fifteen minutes. I spent the entire journey reading a magazine I hardly saw.

By the time I climbed the stairs to Room 408, my hands were cold and my throat dry. I knocked.

The door opened at once. John stood there, tall and tired and alive. For a moment the sight of him drove everything else from my mind.

“You came,” he said. His voice broke on the word.

He drew me in, closed the door gently behind us, took my coat, my bag. His movements were oddly tender for a man of his size. He led me to the couch with the careful hands of someone who fears his strength.

“This day has felt like a year,” he said, kneeling beside me, his forehead against my hands. “I was afraid you might change your mind. That I’d be here alone, knowing you’d decided I wasn’t worth the risk.”

I did not answer. The room was quiet. The lamp on the table cast a soft circle of light over us. He lifted my hand and kissed it, then my wrist.

“Put your arms around me,” he murmured. “Just for a moment. Let me feel the heart of the woman who loves me.”

I saw his watch as he moved. The hands pointed to nine.

Any minute, I thought. Any minute now.

There was a knock at the door.

I stopped breathing. John got to his feet and went to answer it. The seconds stretched.

It was only a bellboy with a menu from the dining room.

While John ordered something vaguely, I realized two things at once.

First: I had just tasted, for an instant, the terror of a condemned prisoner offered last-minute reprieve.

Second: I could not go through with this. Not anymore.

I stumbled to my feet, found my coat, my hat, my bag.

“I have to go,” I thought. “If I leave now, before Wagner comes—if I can get away…”

But it was too late.

Another set of footsteps sounded in the corridor, more than one pair. They stopped outside our door. There was a firm, insistent knock.

I reached John in two strides and caught his arm.

“John, listen to me,” I said. My voice sounded strange in my own ears. “You have to hide me. Please. It’s Wagner and his men out there. I told them to come. I wanted them to find us here.”

He stared at me.

“My name isn’t Leason,” I said. “It’s Deming. Joey Deming is my brother. I came to Graywood to ruin you. I meant to work my way into your life and hand you over to your enemies. I told Wagner you’d be here tonight.”

The knocking grew louder. I could almost hear Wagner’s breath on the other side.

“But I can’t do it,” I said. “Not now. Because I love you. I don’t know when it happened, but I do. I love you. Please—there must be a fire escape, some back way. Let me slip out before they come in. Don’t let them see me here with you. You’ll be finished.”

His hands closed over my shoulders. His fingers dug into my flesh.

“Joey Deming’s sister,” he said slowly. His face had gone very pale.

“All this time,” he went on, “I thought I had finally found a woman who loved me for myself. You let me say things to you I’ve never said to anyone. You let me believe I mattered to you. All the while you were using me, selling my life to my enemies.”

He gave a short, harsh laugh.

“Revenge,” he said. “Hate. So that’s what I’ve been seeing in your eyes, all this time.”

The knocking came again, heavier now.

He released me and crossed the room in three strides. I tried to reach the door first, but he flung me aside as if I were weightless. I hit a chair and grabbed at it to keep from falling.

He threw the door open.

“Come in, gentlemen,” he said. “Don’t be shy. You’ve been most eager to see me, I understand.”

But it was not a cluster of reporters and detectives that entered.

Jess Wagner stood in the doorway, his face purple and damp with sweat. Behind him, pushing past, was Betty.

She ran straight to me, put her arms around me, half laughing, half crying.

“Mimi,” she said, “thank God. Thank God I found you in time.”

“Joey is free,” she said into my hair. “He’s free.”

I stared at her.

“What are you talking about?”

She turned toward John then, her expression shifting. Her voice trembled, but it was steady enough.

“Tell him,” she said to Wagner.

Wagner cleared his throat.

“Fletcher,” he said, “you’d better sit down.”

John did not move.

“Your wife came to see me,” Wagner went on. “After Betty and I confronted her. We… suggested that Joey had told us the full story of that night—the part he never did tell us. It wasn’t true at the time. But it shook her. She gave us a signed confession.”

He spoke more quietly.

“Your wife was driving Joey’s car that night.”

The room slowed around me.

“She picked him up outside the club, terrified you’d kill her if she didn’t get away for a while. She told him he’d got her into this mess and would have to see her through. When he refused to drive, she took the wheel herself. She saw the man too late to stop. Joey tried to, but she wouldn’t let him. By the time he could get control, they were far down the road. She was hysterical. She made him let her out near your house. He turned back alone. He took the blame.”

Wagner swallowed.

“He told us none of this. Neither did she. We only found out because Betty wouldn’t give up. She suspected Midge from the beginning. A maid told her your wife had come home late that night with mud on her shoes and her dress torn. That was enough. We confronted her. She broke.”

He spread his hands.

“We’ve already been to the governor,” he said. “And to the warden. Joey walks out today.”

He looked at John, then around the room with a kind of weary disgust.

“As for this place,” he added quietly, “I’ll make sure nothing gets out. I want the election, but not like this.”

Betty held me harder.

“Midge killed herself,” she whispered later, as we rode the train back to Graywood. “After she heard she was going to be arrested.”

I sat with my hands in my lap and felt something inside me tear loose and fall away. There was no sense of triumph. Only a hollow ache and a mounting, relentless shame.

John had been wrong about Joey—but right about his duty. And I had used his love, such as it was, as bait in a trap.

He would never forgive me. I could hardly blame him.

---

VII. After

Back in Graywood, Joey was brought home. He was thin and pale and quieter than I had ever known him, but his eyes were clear. He and Betty were to be married almost at once and go abroad for a year. Mr. Lambert insisted.

For three days after their wedding, I moved through the house like a sleepwalker. I packed and unpacked the same things. I ate when someone put food in front of me. I went to my room and lay there, staring at the ceiling.

On the fifth day, I got up, dressed, and walked alone to John Fletcher’s office.

His secretary was not there yet. The outer office was empty. Through the open door, I saw him at his desk, sorting the morning mail. His face looked older. His hair had lost its brightness.

“Miss Teller, I have some dictation,” he said without looking up. “If you’ll bring your—”

Then he saw me.

I stepped inside.

“I’ve come to say good-bye,” I said. My voice sounded thin. “Joey and Betty are leaving today. I’m going as far as New York with them. After that I don’t know where I’ll go. But I won’t come back to Graywood. I won’t see you again.”

He said nothing.

“I wanted to tell you,” I went on, “how sorry I am about Midge. About everything. Perhaps this isn’t the right moment to say it, but it’s the only one I’ll have: what I told you in Chicago was true. I do love you. I think I always will.”

I took a breath.

“You have every right to hate me,” I said. “Whatever you feel about me, it can’t equal what I feel about myself.”

I didn’t wait for an answer. I turned and left.

---

The hours blurred after that. The ceremony. The little gathering afterward. The endless fussing over bags and timetables. At last, Joey came to find me.

“You’re wanted in the library,” he said. “Something about the certificate. A signature. Come on.”

I followed him down the stairs.

The big, dark room was full of late afternoon light. It pooled on the floor and across the old walnut panels, washed over the rows of books. For an instant I thought the minister had been delayed.

Then I saw him.

John was standing near the tall French windows, along the path of light. The sun caught his hair and set the copper in it burning again. His eyes were very dark.

Joey closed the door quietly behind me. I heard his footsteps recede, and then there was only the ticking of the clock.

We looked at each other across the sunlit floor.

He came toward me without speaking, his arms open.

I went to him.

For a while there were no words. My face was against his shoulder; his hand was in my hair. I felt him breathe.

When we finally spoke, our words were very small and ordinary, almost absurdly so.

“Go if you must,” he said. “With them. You should. You’ve been through enough. But don’t go too far. As soon as I can, I’ll come to you. I don’t know how, or when, or in what capacity. I only know I can’t give you up.”

He paused.

“You know that,” he said. “You know I love you.”

“Yes,” I said. My voice shook. “I know.”

Outside, somewhere in the town, a church bell rang. Through the open window a woman’s voice drifted in, soft and low, singing a child to sleep.

We stood in the center of the room, in that beam of late light, and held on to each other as if the whole confused story behind us might, for one moment, become something quieter—something that felt very much like a promise.

And that was how my revenge ended.

Not neatly. Not cleanly. But with forgiveness offered, and something like peace found in the arms of the man I had once sworn to destroy.

---

END