Chapter 38

Jason sat at his desk staring sightlessly at his monitor. Margaret Prescott’s journals were stacked neatly on one side on his desk. He’d brewed himself coffee, a thinking habit that he knew he’d pay for when it came time to sleep.

He was thinking about the evening at the Caine-Prescott mansion.

The chaos of it. The warmth. The way conversations overlapped and interrupted each other, but somehow everyone still felt heard. Uncle Theodore argued about labor politics while Aunt Theodora read auras, and Catherine told stories about family history while the kids played, chasing through rooms while the adults talked.

The scene was everything Jason had never had.

He’d been an outsider his whole life. He had a sort of family with Mr. Finnegan, and even in the military, which had been the closest he’d come to family, there was always the awareness that brotherhood was conditional on continued service, that connections would dissolve when people rotated to different assignments or left for civilian life.

Jason picked up one of Margaret’s journals, handling it carefully. The handwriting was precise and determined:

“Father says I cannot travel unaccompanied to Alaska. He says it is too dangerous, too improper, too unthinkable for a young woman of my station. He does not understand that remaining in Seattle, being groomed for marriage to Theodore Chambers, is its own kind of death. I would rather face actual danger than the slow suffocation of becoming what everyone expects me to be. But I must confess the thought of cutting my beautiful hair is painful.”