Epilogue
Two Years Later
“Test. Test, test, test, teeeeeeeeeeest .”
Every time Jaime set up the camera and asked Scarlett to say something while he checked the sound levels, this was what she went with. She’d switched it when he pointed out that Testing, one, two, three, testing was generic.
He had to hand it to her, she could hold that eeeh sound for an incredibly long time.
“Got it. We’re good to go.” Jaime looked through the camera lens. Scarlett was sitting on a rock framed by pine trees, with a stunning Appalachian vista spread out behind her.
And just like always, it was his wife’s beauty that took his breath away.
It was a good thing he’d gotten his head out of his ass and she’d forgiven him, because otherwise, Jaime didn’t know what he would’ve done with himself.
Scarlett was looking at him straight on, a slightly smug smile on her lips, as if she knew he was admiring her and thinking he was the luckiest man on earth. Which she probably did. He said it to her often enough.
“You can start now,” he said after a ridiculously long pause. The kind of pause that was going to be mortifying to explain to the editor later on.
Well, you see, I was checking out Scarlett, but his editor should be used to it by now. Everyone else who interacted with them had already commented on it.
“What do you want me to talk about again?” Scarlett asked teasingly. “I clean forgot we were filming there.”
“The camp’s mission.”
“Right.” Her attention shifted from him down into the valley. There was a slight breeze that made her hair wave against her cheek. She was flushed from the walk over here and probably from what they’d been up to before they’d gone on that walk.
One thing was certainly true: life with Scarlett Arbuthnot was never boring.
After a second, she turned her attention back to the camera. “It’s the camp I wish I’d had. It’s free, and we provide high-level chess coaching, the kind that most kids can’t get in their high schools.”
They were able to make it free because Scarlett was incredible at raising money. CEOs were putty in her hands. Within weeks of having the idea, she’d established a foundation and filled the coffers. Jaime had been able to provide some Hollywood contacts with a major assist from Clara Hess, who was becoming an A-lister. Scarlett and she were planning a splashy fundraiser in LA next year.
When Jaime and Scarlett worked together, they made quite a team.
“What I didn’t expect from that first group last year was how many of them would tell us that the benefit was social ,” Scarlett told the camera. “So many of the players who came feel like weirdos because they don’t know anyone else in person who plays as well as they do. Or they don’t know anyone who plays who looks like them.”
She meant the camp prioritized admitting girls, trans and nonbinary players, nonwhite kids, and low-income kids. All the folks who didn’t fit the stereotype of the chess genius.
“We were able to provide support and a lot of great in-person play. But we were also able to give them a community, to help them feel less alone.”
“So it’s going to be bigger and better this year?”
“Well, of course it is, Jaime. I don’t do small or mediocre.”
No, she did not. Even when things didn’t go her way, she still managed to fall short fabulously.
In the end, Scarlett hadn’t made the open-division world championship game. She’d been painfully close. One more win for her or one more loss from the eventual winner at Candidates, and she would have been able to play for it.
If it had been Jaime, he would have tortured himself, scrutinized every mistake and become fixated on the past. And there had been a few weeks of game analysis, for sure. Everyone—Kit, Martina, and Nate—had come home to Virginia with Scarlett and him. Nate and Jaime had worked all day on Queen’s Kiss in his office, while Kit, Martina, and Scarlett had taken over the den.
But one night at dinner, Scarlett had looked up from her plate and said, “Okay, it’s done.”
As far as Jaime could tell, that had been it for her. She’d examined all her games, whined about them, sobbed about them, and then closed the book on her second Candidates Tournament. She had the most endless capacity to look toward the future, and he was in awe of it. He was in awe of her.
Scarlett was already gearing up to make another run at it, convinced this cycle was going to be hers. But she was also beginning to think about what her life was going to look like once she was done with competitive chess.
That was part of why she’d started the foundation: her legacy could still be impressive, even if she never managed to win the open-division world championship. She was so much more than any title could be.
“What else is your foundation up to?” Jaime knew, of course, but he needed her to explain it on camera for the documentary he was making.
“We have hardship grants for individuals who can’t afford to travel for tournaments, and grants that school chess teams can apply for, to support supplies, coaching, and travel. And then there’s our prison chess program.”
That one, she’d surprised him with.
As soon as she’d moved in with Jaime, she’d started visiting Dad with him. She was amazing at making conversation with Dad, at letting the strangeness of the setting flow over her without comment, and at treating everyone with grace and humor and kindness.
Jaime had been making that pilgrimage for eighteen years, but from the first time, Scarlett had been able to be so chill and normal about it. It made Jaime feel foolish and stuffy and unnatural.
“How many facilities are you in now?”
“Eighty-five.”
Jaime had to clear his throat against the emotion rising there before going on. “And the early results?”
“Really promising. So, you know me—I see that, and I want even more. To raise more money, hire more instructors, and to get in more places. There are just so many benefits for the folks in our programs: the strategy, the concentration, the socialization—those are all transferable skills. Plus, it’s fun. Who doesn’t love chess?”
Who indeed?
Queen’s Kiss had been a massive hit for Videon, and it had done everything for Jaime’s career that he could’ve wanted. More awards, and more publicity, sure, but more importantly, Videon had given him a bunch of money to find up-and-coming documentary filmmakers and support their work before giving them a massive distribution platform. And he and Nate were working on the script for their first feature film, a completely fictional story about teens coming of age in 1970s Appalachia against the backdrop of a coal-workers’ strike.
But all of that felt small against the things that had shifted in his personal life.
Scarlett and Mom—they got on surprisingly well, in the end. They were both strategic thinkers, and they both had carefully developed public personas. People thought they knew who the women were and judged them harshly, and from that shared experience, his wife and his mother had forged a bond.
Of course, Evelyn couldn’t be more delighted to have Scarlett in the family, and it had expanded, too, to include Alma and Kit and Nate and Martina. Scarlett had joined Emery’s book club, and she was the honorary coach of the Musgrove High Chess Club. At this point, even Scarlett was having trouble pretending she was all alone in the world now, when it was so clear she wasn’t.
As for Jaime ... for so long, he’d been running, pretending that if he just kept moving, he could undo what had happened. He could take care of his mom, and he could raise his sister, and he could get everything he’d wanted before his dad had been arrested. Then later he could become the critically acclaimed filmmaker, and he could build the house, and he could keep himself relatively sane through it all.
Look, Mom, no hands , or some shit.
When he’d walked into Scarlett’s lobby that day to ask for the rights to her book, all that frantic need to take care of everyone had come crashing down. He’d smacked into some hard and implacable truths, but also into the limits of what he could get done on his own. And maybe the loneliness of the hamster wheel he’d built for himself.
Snagging every one of your goals could feel damn lonely if you didn’t have someone by your side who made you laugh at yourself. Who would sit by you in a prison visiting room or at the Emmys. Who wanted, even more fiercely than you did, to make the world a better place.
Scarlett centered Jaime. She was his magnetic north, the location to which he would always point, no matter where else his attention might be pulled.
With her, the past didn’t seem so scary, and the future was bright as the noon sun pouring down on her nose, turning her hair to flame and pinkening her cheeks.
Thank Christ she’d taken him back. Forgiveness was the most precious substance on earth, Jaime was fairly sure, and Scarlett’s supply of it was endless.
She was opening up, too, bit by bit. From the start, Scarlett had shared her worries about quitting competitive chess with him.
“So what should I do?” she’d asked.
In that moment, Jaime had to admit he couldn’t really help with the situation in which she found herself. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t solve this conundrum for her. But the fact that she’d talked to him about it was all he wanted. At the end of the day, he wanted nothing more than to be a valued member of her team.
“Well, hell, Jaime, why didn’t you say that in the first place?” she’d retorted.
And just like that, it had become easy. His past worries seemed so silly, now that he could see how they were, and would be, together.
Here and now, Scarlett repeated her question into the camera. “Who doesn’t love chess?”
“No one,” he answered. “But that’s because you’re an incredible teacher.” Jaime was only half teasing. Scarlett had raised the popularity of the sport and made it sexy and glamorous in ways PAWN still couldn’t seem to adjust to.
And she’d basically done it all in her spare time.
She was a wonder.
Scarlett’s eyes caught the light and flashed at him. “I’m incredible at lots of things.”
Jaime would never forget it again.