I wanted to kill Marid Illéa.

In the days following Gavril's pronouncement that with my approval ratings plummeting, we needed to do something for my father's birthday, I found myself spending an increasing amount of my spare time daydreaming about his death. No longer was it satisfying for me to receive a report from General Leger that guards had found him and killed him. Now I wanted to be the one to issue the order of his death myself. I wanted to cut out his tongue, burn down his house (with him inside), and then hit it with a nuclear warhead just for good measure. It was one thing to mess with my reign. It was another to ruin my parents' happiness.

I was positively seething as I sat in the wings of the stage as Mom and Dad did a special Report interview with Gavril, celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary. Their wedding anniversaries had abruptly taken a back seat due to the Selection and my own impeding matrimony. Even so, people had stopped really observing them after Kaden was born and they had many royal birthdays to celebrate instead.

"You're smiling like a shark about to eat a dolphin for dinner," Eikko whispered to me as I watched Mom effortlessly navigate Gavril's probing questions. Why couldn't I have that same poise?

"Is that a good thing or bad thing?" I asked through my teeth.

"Considering you're supposed to be happy for your parents and you look like you'd rather rip out their teeth, I would say it's a bad thing." I sigh and let my face fall. None of the cameras facing me were on anyway. My cheeks hurt from being forced to smile for so long. "Where are you?" he whispered tenderly.

He wouldn't leave me alone about it if I told him that it was nothing, so why not let him share my misery? "Hudson, Kent, Panama."

Eikko seemed to be expecting Hudson and Kent but he was clearly surprised to hear about Panama. "Panama? Ah, the hurricane." He nodded. "Any word from Kile?"

"No. Not since I told him that we could send them supplies to help prepare for it's landfall and he turned me down."

"Idiot," Kaden muttered under his breath, sitting on the other side of me. "Does he seriously think that he's better off on his own? This hurricane is bigger than any other hurricane that's hit the area in over fifty years. You should be evacuating everyone, Eadlyn."

"He'd never forgive me if I forced him to leave."

Kaden raised his eyebrows at me. "Yeah, because Kile's regard for you is more important than the lives of the citizens in Panama," he said sarcastically.

"Shut up, Kaden," I snapped. "The mayor of Panama evacuated everyone at my suggestion; Kile isn't held to that order since he is an employee to the crown. And if they really don't think I care, I'm visiting them for a couple days after my honeymoon."

"Excuse me, peanut gallery?" Mom's voice piped up with laughter from the rest of the crew in the studio. I blushed, realizing that everyone was looking at us. Thank goodness none of us were wearing microphones. "Seems that even after eighteen years of being on the Report, they still can't keep their mouths shut for a whole hour and listen to their boring mom and dad," she teased. "Some things don't change, after all."

We all apologized and went back to sitting straight in our chairs, staring ahead with graceful smiles and glassy eyes. Osten was probably the only one who had managed to sit through the whole Report quietly, thus far. He had been relatively quiet overall in the last few days. I thanked my lucky stars that we only had to suffer from one prank during the summit that was pulled on Nicoletta where he switched out her wine for squid ink. Since the end of the summit, though, I had rarely seen him with a phone pressed to his ear or running around up to no good.

Following the Report, all of the members of our family – Ahren, Camille, Mom, Dad, Ostin, Kaden, Eikko and me – gathered in the family room on the third floor that had always been our family meeting space. Dad's birthday was the next day but he had made it pretty clear that he and Mom wanted their alone time, especially since they were finally properly celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary. We ate chocolate cake and laughed and exchanged presents, none of us the wiser that anything could have been wrong.

Early the next morning, Eikko and I had a briefing with General Leger about the search for Marid in Hudson and Kent. "So far, my agents have had very little to report," he said sadly.

"How?" I demanded.

"Marid is a ghost. He's proving to be a much more difficult target to apprehend. Every time we think we are on him, he disappears without a trace. I'm pulling my guards out of Hudson. There's no reason for him to still be there, if he even was there. He tipped off that Hudson news station on the phone."

"That's not good enough!" I exclaimed. "We need to find him and get him here before he can do any more damage."

"What do you want me to say?" he fired back at me. "I want to find him just as much as you, Eadlyn. He's just a few steps ahead of us."

"How?" Eikko asked calmly, his arms folded.

General Leger looked perplexed. "He had ears in this office for almost two whole weeks. He knows your moves, how you think, how you react."

I collapsed into my chair and covered my face with my hands. "We have to find him," I groaned.

Eikko's soft footsteps got closer and then his hands clapped down on my shoulders, digging his thumbs into the tense muscles there. "We'll find him. It's just one of him against the whole royal guard. He'll make a mistake eventually and that will lead us right to him. After that, you can expose what he's done and convict him." With his gentle tone of voice, I actually believed him.

General Leger cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty, but we actually won't be able to convict him."

Eikko's hands stopped moving as we both tensed. "What?" I asked.

"Unless you want to release all of those recordings that he's using to blackmail you which would then release all of your secrets, you have nothing to prove that he's done anything wrong." He shook his head. "It's a genius plan, actually. He knows that you'll never risk your approval ratings just for the sake of arresting him."

"I wouldn't risk my approval ratings for the sake of arresting him," I agreed. "But I would risk them for the sake of killing him."

We all pretended that we didn't see the little flash of a smile on General Leger's lips. "Not that I don't agree with the idea of killing him, we need sufficient reason. If he puts your life in danger, he can be killed. But treason? Treason that you can't really prove without exposing yourself? We can't kill him."

"There has to be something to trace," Eikko urged. "We have one of the world's most powerful militaries at our disposal and we can't locate one measly rebel?"

"One measly rebel who happens to be the son of two of the greatest rebels this country has ever seen. Even if they aren't helping, August and Georgia have surely given him some pointers for how to fly under the radar. Not to mention the fact that there are plenty of other rebels still lingering that would be more than willing to help him," General Leger explained to him. Eikko put his hands on his hips and both men looked to me for answers.

I chewed on my bottom lip, my mind processing. Wars and treaties would come and go but this was a moment that would dictate my reign. I could feel it in my bones. I had to get Marid while he was still in striking distance. "You said he called the news station to tip them off?"

"Yes."

"Can you trace the call?"

"Do you know how many phone calls a news station gets every day? It's been nearly a week since the phone call. You expect us to comb through each one?"

I finally met General Leger's eyes again, him clearly reading the fire in mine and standing up straight. "If it's your only chance of finding him, then you will do it."

Eikko frowned and crossed his arms again. "What if he used a burner?"

I shook my head. "Maybe he did use a burner but I doubt he did. I'm sure it's a secure line of some sort but if he is working within a rebel underground and getting assistance from them, he would have a phone secured just for that."

"It's valid. Marid thrives on gossip," General Leger said in agreement. "He would need something for people to supply him with that gossip. It would be a cell phone of some sort."

"What if it's snail mail, though?"

General Leger narrowed his eyes in thought, considering it. "He wouldn't do that. It's too slow and too easy to trace. A lot could go wrong with a paper trail. No, he has to have a cell phone. Or…" He trailed off, something igniting in his mind. "The radio."

"The radio?" I repeated. But then I figured it out too. "How the rebels communicated twenty years ago. Radio chatter. Do we still have our spies in northern Sota?"

"They can get there."

"What's in Sota?" Eikko asked, lost.

"Sota, Hudson, and Denbeigh meet in one corner in a town called Satellite that is also the central most point in all of Illéa," General Leger explained, starting to walk out of my office. We followed him down to the office located exactly between my office and Mom's personal study. He leaned over one of the tables housing a map of Illéa with his troops locations on it. He pointed to that one corner of Denbeigh, Hudson, and Sota. "Denbeigh negotiated a deal with Maxon and America to not house any troops if they patrolled it themselves. Hudson has been a bit volatile lately with their negotiations with Kent for the lake so I moved most of our troops in Sota to Hudson. I can get my spies to Satellite by dinnertime tonight."

Eikko was obviously trying to play catch up. "And why are we sending spies to Satellite?"

"Because Satellite is the very center of Illéa, they are the center of radio communication in Illéa, via satellites," General Leger said, raising his eyebrows as if it was self-explanatory. "If Marid is communicating with any old colleagues of his parents through radio chatter, they'll hear it in Satellite. I have spies specifically trained in this sort of stuff. If they work in there for a few days, they should be able to find something."

I nodded in approval. "That will have to work. Can we have IT looking into the phone theory from here? It's dangerous for them to get caught. I'd like for them to have the safety of the palace if they're spying on a traitor."

"I'll tell them right away," General Leger promised, bowing his head.

"Good. I expect a report by this evening, confirming that our spies are on the ground in Satellite and IT is going through the phone records," I told him. "Marid's not getting away this time."

General Leger followed us out of his office, saying, "With all due respect, Eadlyn, but I think you can officially call Marid a terrorist."

"He's a terrorist but we can't convict him?"

"We'll find a way," he swore.

A door at the end of the hallway opened and Dad emerged, dressed in the same clothes he was wearing the day before. We all stopped and watched him walk quietly and carefully down the hallway to the entrance of a secret passageway. General Leger cleared his throat loudly, making Dad jump when he saw us standing there, watching him.

"Dammit, what are you all doing out here?" Dad asked, looking shocked to see us standing in the hallway between all of our offices at nine o'clock on a Wednesday morning.

"Working," I said. "What are you doing?"

He straightened and stammered, searching desperately for an excuse. "I'm playing hide-and-go-seek with Osten."

I ignored the fact that Osten had graduated from hide-and-go-seek level mischief before he was even five years old. "In yesterday's clothes?"

"He woke me up early. I put on the first thing I could find."

There were many things my father couldn't do. He couldn't cook, he couldn't command armies (at least, not very effectively), he couldn't play baseball, and he definitely could not tell a convincing lie. We all let it slide and waved at him as we went our separate ways from General Leger. I felt infinitely times better leaving him to go fulfill our mission of finding Marid than I did a week ago when he was just going to let his troops handle it. With technology and elite spies involved, he would have to keep closer tabs on everything and have more information to report firsthand.

"What do you have next for the day?" I asked Eikko.

"A thrilling meeting with the chief of parks and tourism in Illéa to discuss the current upkeep of our national parks," he answered, feigning enthusiasm dramatically.

"I'll trade you that meeting for a meeting with Raelynn for final approval on fabrics being used at our reception for chair covers."

Eikko smiled quietly. "I think I'll leave that one to you, tempting as it is."

"Are you sure? It's really exciting stuff. One wrong choice in silk and New Asia could declare war on us, all because of a chair cover."

"I think we should avoid that risk altogether and skip the chair covers," he suggested.

"Ah, but the German Federation would be deeply offended by having to sit on naked chairs."

He laughed. "You're cute when you're talking about the maintenance of world peace."

I nudged his shoulder playfully. "Lunch in my study at one?"

"How about on your balcony?"

"I like the way you think. One o'clock, my balcony. Be there or I'll eat all of the halibut myself."

He clutched his heart, pretending to be wounded. "Not the halibut!" he exclaimed, making a guard stationed near us chuckle.

I was on my way down to dinner that night when a guard told me that I was needed by the front doors of the palace. He didn't give me any serious details other than there being guests that the queen had to welcome. An unfamiliar female voice echoed through the hallway as I turned the corner. The guard stationed at the corner frowned when he saw me approaching. "Your Majesty?" he greeted reluctantly.

"Officer Miles," I answered, flashing him a smile.

I finally entered the main foyer and gasped as my eyes landed on someone I hadn't seen in over ten years and had only seen in pictures since then. Next to him stood a pretty woman with light brown hair and bad highlights. Her makeup was clearly done herself with the way one of her eyebrows was filled in slightly darker than the other.

"Eadlyn," Uncle Kota said, holding his arms out to hug me. I actually clasped my hands behind my back to make it clear that a hug was not welcome. I hadn't seen him in a decade and he barely had the decency to send us presents for Christmas and for our birthdays with cards full of vague well wishes. Other than that, he was a stranger to me. I wasn't about to hug him. He got that. He swept his arm over to the woman standing at his side. "This is my wife, Leah."

"It's an honor to meet you, Queen Eadlyn," she said, actually being smart enough to curtsy. That was more than I could say about Uncle Kota.

"Likewise." I narrowed my eyes. "What, exactly, brings you here? To my home? Without an invitation?"

"Actually, my sister invited us," Uncle Kota said. His tone was somewhat defensive and possessive, as if the fact that Mom was his sister made him more important to her than me. "I believe your aunt and other uncle are arriving later this evening."

I raised one of my eyebrows. "My mom invited you?" I asked dubiously.

"At the insistence of your father, I'm sure." When it came to Uncle Kota's relationship with my father, he was absolutely delusional. He believed that my father was what kept him in my mother's favor. It wasn't true at all though. Unlike Mom, Dad saw no reason to reconcile with Uncle Kota. There were two men that Dad essentially forbade any of us from reconciling with. August Illéa was one, Uncle Kota was the other. Mom tried to get back on civil ground with Uncle Kota, especially after Aunt Kenna passed away but it seemed to be no use. Uncle Kota was what we was and no one could change that. He wasn't even invited to my wedding.

But Mom invited him to come to the palace on Dad's birthday. She knowingly invited one of the few people that Dad genuinely hated into her home on his birthday. Dad sneaking around the palace in yesterday's clothes, the invitation to an estranged uncle, Mom's obvious melancholia…something was very wrong and they weren't telling me.

I had no idea what to say or do. I didn't know which rooms they would be staying in and I didn't have the patience to invite them to dinner, a meal that was supposed to be shared with just us kids and our parents that evening. Uncle Kota did not belong.

Luckily, Mom came to my rescue. Still looking worse for wear in sweatpants and a sweater and her hair in a messy braid, she welcomed Uncle Kota and his wife – I refused to call her Aunt Leah – with a tentative smile. I didn't say another word as she left to show them to their rooms.

I ran to the dining room, relieved to see that Mom and Dad weren't there yet. All of my siblings were though, along with Eikko. Ahren seemed to be regaling Eikko with the tale of my first time falling off of my horse. "Hey, yeah, we have a problem," I announced to them all, glancing anxiously at the door to check for Mom and Dad. "Uncle Kota is here."

"Uncle Kota?" Ahren asked, frowning.

"Like, the Uncle Kota?" Eikko clarified.

I nodded. "He's here with his wife. Uncle Gerad and Aunt May are apparently on their way here too. Mom invited them all."

"For Dad's birthday?" Kaden asked seriously.

"No. If she wanted them here for Dad's birthday, they would have been invited here last night. Not tonight, before they're spending all day together tomorrow," I told them. "And she certainly wouldn't have invited Uncle Kota to celebrate Dad's birthday."

"So then why is he here? We didn't even invite him to the wedding," said Eikko.

"He hasn't been invited to anything in close to ten years," Ahren added. "Dad has wanted nothing to do with him. It must be serious if he's letting him come here, on his birthday, no less."

Osten pouted. "He gave me soap for Christmas one year," he mumbled petulantly.

"We need to get to the bottom of this," I said decisively.

"I'll help!" Osten volunteered, his hand shooting into the air. "I've been waiting for Uncle Kota to visit for years," he said, perhaps a little too enthusiastically.

Every bit of my conscience was telling me to say no to Osten. Uncle Kota was a very proud man; Osten could only make things worse by insulting him. This was the first time I'd seen Osten get excited about trouble in days though and I couldn't deny him this, no matter how much trouble I knew he could get into with Mom and Dad. "Fine. Just don't do any permanent damage," I reminded him.

"Unless it's to his pride," Ahren added with a wink. Camille nudged him and shook her head at him but even she couldn't keep from smiling at Osten.

"Want to have some Jacuzzi time?" I asked Eikko after dinner as we walked back up to the third floor. Camille and Ahren had disappeared for alone time (she claimed that she had work to do but Eikko and I didn't believe her one bit), Kaden went to his room to work on his lessons from his tutor, and Osten dashed off to start planning his attack on Uncle Kota, leaving Eikko and I with a glorious bit of free time.

"Ah, I would love to," Eikko said, "but I didn't get everything done this afternoon."

"Do you need help?" I would do extra work as long as it meant spending time with him.

He shook his head. "No, I should only be a half hour or so. You can head down and I'll catch up to you."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. Take the time to relax, you need it." He kissed my cheek and continued up to his office on the fourth floor.

I took my time changing into my bikini and letting my hair down from its updo. I didn't have the heart to call on Eloise to tame it for me so I just braided it simply. If I looked at my reflection long enough, I could pick out the tiny things that made me resemble Mom. The shapes of my eyes were the same and the little line between my eyebrows from stress was most assuredly hers. My lips puckered naturally like hers; a quality that made her look slightly younger than she was by giving her a bit of a baby face. Dad had once said that people called her looks plain but I had never thought of her as anything but beautiful. I could only hope that with the combination of my grandmother Amberly and my mother, I could be just as gorgeous as them someday.

As I was passing a parlor on the second floor, I heard raised voices coming from within. It was the parlor that connected to Grandma's usual room she stayed in. Inside, I heard her voice rise above the other voices that were mixing together chaotically. "I don't know why we even are discussing this. This should be all of your own personal decisions," she said.

"Ames and I are just looking out for you all," Dad said, making me frown. I checked the hallway for guards and seeing that there were only Mom and Dad's personal guards standing at either end of the hall, I pressed my ear to the door. "After the loss of Shalom and then Kenna, we want you to be assured that you can have the best health care if you ever need it."

"You don't know anything about the death of our father. You only met him one time!" Uncle Kota exclaimed.

I turned my head slightly so that I could see through the crack. Aunt May and Mom were sitting next to each other, Dad standing protectively in front of them, squared off against Uncle Kota. Grandma was sitting somewhere I couldn't see in the slim portal I had to gaze through but I could see the edge of Uncle Gerad's silhouette by the windows.

"It doesn't matter how much time I spent with him. I know how important he was to my wife and her family, which has subsequently become my family. I may not know how it felt to lose Shalom as a father but I know how it feels to lose both parents to a violent act of terrorism and rebellion. Just like I want to prevent that from happening to my own children and have worked to get them the peace that would prevent that, I want to help you all avoid any other early losses." He reached behind him and held Mom's hand, no doubt thinking about how close we all were to losing her.

"Why aren't you insisting that your children get all of this testing done? The very woman who is queen right now could have this disease," Uncle Kota said harshly.

Mom sighed. "Kota, for heaven's sake, we know. We've known that since she was born. All of our children have regular checkups to monitor for any signs of heart disease. Are you really so pigheaded to be refusing world-class health care, offered to you from your monarchs, to make sure you live to at least be fifty?" she snapped.

"You're not my monarchs!" Kota exploded. "You're my little sister who pretends to be all high and mighty even though all you've managed to do in the last twenty years is dismantle the only sort of order this country had!"

"Oh please, you're just angry that you never got to be a Two," Aunt May muttered.

"I would have," he growled to her.

"I'll do it," Uncle Gerad said suddenly, turning away from the windows to look at everyone in the room.

There was a beat of silence before Grandma asked quietly, "Gerad? You'll do it?"

"Bess and I have begun talking about starting a family. I don't want to have kids if I won't be able to be there for them."

"Gerad, thank you," Mom said gratefully, putting her free hand to her chest in relief.

"This changes nothing, you know," Uncle Kota said, directing his words at Dad. "Her heart is still defective. She's still probably going to die because you swindled her into a job that was too stressful for her to handle."

"It's not her," Dad insisted.

Mom also jumped in. "This job is stressful for anyone."

"Yeah, but for a Five with an educated limited to what her mother could teach her at the kitchen table? It's not exactly good preparation for a life of trade negotiations and illegal arms deals. Although I guess it doesn't take much intelligence to pick out china, right, Sis?"

Dad stalked up to Uncle Kota so that they were nose to nose. "You do not come into my home and insult my wife's intelligence, understand? She is your queen, whether you like it or not. The minute you walked out of her life, you walked out of being her brother. Gerad is her brother, not you. We are trying to do something nice for you even though you have done nothing to deserve it. The least you could do is pretend to be grateful."

"The least you could do is pretend that you didn't see the advantage to picking a dirty little Five as your wife," Uncle Kota snarled. Mom gasped and Aunt May shot to her feet.

I was convinced that Dad was about to hit him. The air electrified as Dad took several heavy breaths. His hands were clenched tightly at his sides, trembling. He stepped back out of my view and released a shuddering breath. The crisis seemed to be averted. At least until Uncle Gerad took Dad's place in front of Uncle Kota and in the blink of an eye, had punched him in the jaw.

Uncle Gerad walked away coolly. "I'm not king. I can punch who I want," he said.

"Maxon, wait," Mom pleaded.

I just barely got out of the way of the door before it swung open and Dad stormed past me, not even noticing me standing there. I was expecting Mom to go after him but instead she stood and started yelling at Uncle Kota. No one was following Dad so I abandoned my mission to go down to the pool and followed him to the third floor myself.

He ducked into his personal study and was pacing when I poked my head in. "Daddy?" I asked timidly. I wasn't sure if I was overstepping my role as daughter by intruding but I wasn't just going to leave him alone if he was upset. He didn't tell me to leave so I stepped fully into the room, shutting the door behind me. "Daddy, tell me what's wrong."

"We didn't want to tell you. With the summit last week and then the wedding coming up, we didn't want to worry any of you." He paused and weighed his words, collecting his thoughts. "It wasn't heartburn back before the summit. Her bypass in the spring didn't cure anything. Her other arteries are still narrowing. Dr. Cleary has scheduled her for surgery next month."

"Next month?" I repeated, trying to absorb all of this information. My mind was reeling. "But, can you wait that long? If she's in pain…couldn't that be dangerous?"

"It's next month or before your wedding. She doesn't want to be recovering from heart surgery during your wedding."

I shook my head. "Dad, I my wedding is not nearly as impossible as her health."

"I know that! I just want my wife to be healthy," Dad said, pulling at his tie roughly to loosen it. "Did I do this to her, Eady? Is this my doing?"

"Dad, you did not cause this. Whether she's here as queen or in Carolina as a Five, she would have this disease. The only difference is that if were a Five, she wouldn't have any chance of surviving. Daddy, you've saved her."

"I'm sorry you can't just have a normal family, Eadlyn. Your cousins are constantly trying to overthrow your power, your uncle can't even be civil to his own family, and your mother and I can't even be a stable support ground for you to stand on."

I put a hand on his shoulder. "Dad, you are the best father I could have ever asked for you. I know that being king and a father and a husband is hard and somehow you manage to do it all for us. You have nothing to apologize for."

Someone knocked on the door. "Max," Mom sighed as she walked toward us. I stepped back so that she could wrap her arms around his shoulder. I could hear her whispering to him, too faint for me to hear what she was saying exactly from where I was standing. Realizing that I was intruding, I decided to take my exit.

As I was leaving, Dad said, "I'm so sorry Ames."

"Hey, listen to me," Mom told him fervently. "I've broken your heart too many times to count. It's only fair to let you break mine. It's only yours to break."

They seemed to have this fascination with breaking each other's hearts. I had a good feeling that it had something to do with how they fought during their Selection. When I found Eikko later that night in the Jacuzzi and told him about Mom, he just pulled me close. "I wish I could tell you that everything is going to be okay," he whispered, kissing my hair.

"Even if you could, I wouldn't want you to. I'm queen and queens don't rely on hope. We have to rely on logic."

He was quiet as I lazily traced a finger around his belly button. I tucked my head under his chin further so that I could listen to his heartbeat under my cheek. Finally he said, his chest vibrating as he spoke, "Not with me."

"What?"

"You're not the queen with me."

"It's hard to separate Eady from Queen Eadlyn."

He shrugged. "I'd like to make a proposal to my queen, then."

"Okay."

"A separation of church and state," he said simply, his thumb stroking my shoulder. "We can talk about work in our studies and anywhere on the fourth floor or even during meals but I want a safe word that signals time when we won't be talking about foreign policy or budgets or approval ratings."

I sat up but slung my leg over his so that we were still close. "Okay. And what do you propose that word is?"

"Perhe," he said decisively.

"Perhe? But I thought that was just a safe word in general for us."

He smiled slightly. "Perhe means family, right? Family means safety, security, love, comfort. I don't want to spend all of my alone time with you in worry. I want to have this time be something sacred between us, just like family. So right now, it's family time. And you're just Eadlyn to me and you're allowed to be weak because it's just you and me here and as your fiancée, soon-to-be-husband, and all-around confidante, you're more than welcome to fall apart in front of me."

"What if I can't stop? What if I let go and I can't go back?" I asked, barely holding my tears back.

"What if you don't ever let go? You'd explode and get shiny, red Eadlyn-shrapnel all over everyone."

I laughed miserably but my laugh turned into a sob and that was it, I was gone. I clung to him so tightly that was sure I would be sore the next morning. I eventually just climbed into his lap and curled up there, my forehead pressed to his breastbone, watching my tears drip into the water swirling around us. He seemed to know not to tell me that he loved me or that I would get through this. He just held me and then, when my sobs turned into quiet hiccups, he whispered simply, "Perhe."