Dead Reckoning
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 12
I have been putting Anne off.
Not because I don’t know what to say. Because I know exactly what to say and saying it means accepting that she is gone from my life as completely as the Soldier is gone, as completely as the child is gone, as completely as everything I have ever loved is gone, and I have been using the pages between then and now to build up to that acceptance the way you build up to cold water.
You don’t ease into cold water.
You go in.
Anne Bonny was the most alive person I have ever known.
I want to start there because everything else about her proceeds from that fact. She was alive in a way that made other people seem like they were conserving something, holding back, rationing their presence in the world against some future need. Anne had no interest in conservation. She spent herself completely in every moment she occupied and somehow had more left than anyone around her.
I have known brave people. Flanders produced them in quantity, men who walked into artillery fire with a steadiness that had no rational explanation. I have known intelligent people, quick people, people of genuine skill and competence. I have known people who were kind and people who were loyal and people who were both.
I have known one Anne Bonny.
She was all of those things and none of them adequately describes her because the sum of her parts did not produce her. She was something that arrived whole and complete and entirely herself and the world could accommodate her or not and she had made her peace with either outcome before I ever met her.
I think she was born that way.
I think some people are.
We could hear each other through the wall.
Not conversations exactly. The walls were thick and the prison was loud with its own particular noise, other prisoners, guards, the sounds that institutions make when they are processing human beings through their machinery. But in the quiet hours, the deep middle of the night when everything else stilled, you could hear through the stone if you put your ear against it and the other person did the same.
We developed a system. Practical, efficient, entirely Anne in its construction. One knock meant I am here and I am alive. Two knocks meant I am here and I am thinking of you. Three knocks meant I need you to hear my voice.
Three knocks required us to press our mouths against the crack at the base of the wall where the mortar had crumbled and speak into the gap and hope enough sound traveled through to be intelligible on the other side. It was undignified and uncomfortable and worked perhaps half the time.
We used it anyway.
She three knocked me the night after her father came.
I pressed my mouth against the cold stone and listened.
She said her father was going to get her out. She said it was going to take time but that he had the means and the connections and the determination of a man whose primary motivation was removing an embarrassment from public record, which was sufficient motivation for the purpose even if it was not flattering.
I said that was good.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said — Come with me.
I pressed my forehead against the stone and closed my eyes.
I said — You know I can’t.
She said — I know you can’t. I’m saying it anyway.
I said — Anne.
She said — I know.
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