Chapter 8 - THE GHOSTS OF LAKE MICHIGANThat evening, the temperature in Chicago plummeted below zero, and a howling blizzard swept off Lake Michigan, turning the city streets into gray, frozen glass.
Beneath the Roosevelt Road overpass, the wind whipped through the steel support pillars like an attacking army.
A black Lincoln Navigator pulled slowly to the curb with its lights off.
The back door opened, and a pair of polished black shoes stepped out onto the snow. Nathan Kang stood in the freezing wind, wearing his heavy charcoal wool coat, his silver-touched hair blowing across his forehead. He walked slowly across the empty concrete patch, stopping right where a nine-year-old girl had once stood with frozen fingers and a dying little brother tucked against her side.
Footsteps crunched softly in the snow behind him.
Nathan didn't turn around. He knew who it was.
Mara walked up beside him. She wasn't wearing her oversized black blazer or her professional suit today. She wore a heavy dark coat and a red knit hat pulled tight over her brown hair.
She stood beside him, looking out at the dark, churning waters of the lake in the distance.
“You used to stand right here and look at me like I was a monster,” Nathan said quietly, his breath pluming in the freezing air.
Mara kept her eyes fixed on the horizon. “You were a monster.”
“And what am I now?” Nathan asked, turning his head to look at her.
Mara finally turned her head, meeting his dark eyes with a look of profound, unbreakable affection.
“You’re family,” she said softly.
Nathan’s lips curved into a rare, genuine smile. He reached into his coat, pulled out a small, foil-wrapped container of hot soup from the city’s oldest diner, and handed it to her.
Mara took it, her fingers warming instantly against the heat of the container.
She looked down at the soup, then up at the dark, endless Chicago sky, whispering softly to the wind:
May you like
“We made it to the moon, Eli.”
And for the first time in his life, Nathan Kang felt completely, perfectly safe.
