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“That’s a lie, Miriam,” Noelle spat out, her whole body rejecting Miriam’s words. “The only person you’re doing this for is you. And it’s going to hurt you more than it hurts anyone. You’re a coward.”

Noelle stalked back to the house, her hands stuffed into her jacket, her head down. In her peripheral vision, she could see Miriam had sunk down on her knees, sobbing.

Noelle left her there and just kept walking.

Part 3

Christmas to Tu B’Shevat

Chapter 20

Miriam

Miriam spent the next hour packing her clothes robotically. Everything she’d bought since coming here wouldn’t fit in the little roll-on suitcase she’d arrived with back in October, and her brain couldn’t process what to do about it.

She was staring blankly at a pair of jeans when Cole knocked on her door. As soon as he was inside, his huge frame wrapped around her, his warmth surrounding her. The smell of him, ocean salt mixed with bergamot and vetiver, was one of the safest smells in her world. It pierced the fog that had enveloped her when her panic had risen up. All of the fight or flight drained out of her body.

“What the fuck am I going to do, Cole? I’m in a nightmare.”

He pulled away and looked down at her. “Your dad wants you to run. He wants to keep you thinking he’s the bogeyman and he’s going to pop out any minute. So you should stay put and fight for this. Tell him you’re not scared of him and he can go fuck himself.”

“Iamscared of him, Cole,” Miriam reminded him. “Very scared.”

“Fake it until you make it, baby.” Cole did sad little jazz hands.

Miriam hugged herself, feeling her ability to reason instead of just run slowly returning. “If he really will pull the offer if I leave, I have to go. I can’t put myself before Carrigan’s again.”

“But Carrigan’s All Year won’t work without you, Mimi. You’re the linchpin. If you go, there’s nothing to take to the bank. Staying and fighting is the only thing that might work.”

He pulled her back into a hug, leaning over to rest his head on her curls. Miriam anchored herself to him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about me and Tara and the golf course,” he said, finally. “I was worried that if I wasn’t the fun friend, you might do a runner on me, too.”

“Well, considering my behavior today, you were probably not wrong,” she said, squeezing him back. She’d told herself all her life that she wasn’t running, just strategically retreating, but she’d been lying to herself. “I freaked out. So badly. I saw white and heard buzzing and I couldn’t breathe. I don’t even know what I said.”

“We can probably fix it. If you stay.”

“I want to stay,” she whispered, “but I don’t know if they’ll still have me.”

Her mom knocked in the open doorway. Cole left them alone, squeezing her shoulder as he went.

“I called Richard,” her mom said, sitting on her bed, her hands clasped in front of her.

Miriam cocked her head, preparing for the final blow to her time at Carrigan’s, the ultimatum that would cut her off forever. She expected Ziva to say that her dad had offered a deal: he’d leave Carrigan’s alone if she stayed away.

“He won’t pull the offer,” Ziva said instead. “He’s going to go ahead with it whether you stay or go. I’m sorry. I thought I might be able to stop him. Whatever you need from me now, Miri, I’ll do it.”

Miriam sank down in her chair and dropped her elbows on her knees. “Fuck.”

She felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over her head, all of the fog finally gone. She looked around, really seeing her surroundings. She’d given her dad’s terror ten years, and she’d almost just given him the rest of her life too. She’d panicked, and she hadn’t thought.

She hadn’t thought about what it would be like, trying to make a life after this. She also hadn’t considered how much it would hurt Noelle if she ran, after promising she wouldn’t. She hadn’t imagined living with that regret every day, putting her emotions back on autopilot. She remembered Noelle quoting Rumi to her and knew, without a doubt, that she couldn’t go back to sleep.

Miriam looked up at her mom, who was watching her cautiously.

“Okay,” she said, bracing herself. “We annihilate him. Gather everyone. We need a war council.”

“We could hire an assassin on the Dark Web, so your mom would get the life insurance money,” Cole offered.