Chapter 22
Bonnie woke up the morning after.
She was groggy, with tubes in places, but the pink color in her cheeks was the first real sign of life I’d recognized in her.
She looked at me. "Mom."
"Hi, baby."
"I'm thirsty."
"I’ll get some water for you, baby."
"I'm very thirsty. Mom. I would like — "
"They will let me give you ice chips in a few minutes."
"May I have them now, please?"
The recovery week was quiet.
Mrs. Park brought soup — her own, in a thermos, the same soup she had been making for me whenever I fell sick. Kit brought magazines that he had paid too much for at the hospital gift shop and a stack of his bad jokes that Bonnie pretended not to find funny, but did.
Cade and Suzanne came on the second day after the surgery.
Vivienne came every day — in the morning with coffee and stayed sometimes for the whole afternoon and sometimes for just an hour.
Beau wasn't there.
I hadn't invited him.
Bonnie asked once. "Mom, where is Beau?"
"He is busy with some work, baby."
Bonnie didn't ask twice, simply filing away the answer for later.
Bonnie's birthday came in the hospital.
Mrs. Park came in with a cake that had three tiers, a fondant cat on the top — a black cat, with a piece of green fondant for an eye. She placed planets in fondant on the second tier because Bonnie had requested that.
Kit brought streamers, and he hung them from the rail above Bonnie's bed and around the window and across the bathroom door. He had used it to decorate the Half Past on New Year's two years ago, and it had always been in his apartment since.
Cade and Suzanne brought her new plushies and Vivienne brought a junior telescope. It had Bonnie's name engraved on the brass, and Vivienne wouldn't, when asked, tell us how much the telescope cost.
Bonnie blew out the candles. It went out in two passes, and she held her wish for a beat.
She looked at me. "I wish Beau were here."
The room went quiet for a half-second.
Vivienne was the one who broke the quiet. She said, "Bonnie, tell me about Saturn."
Bonnie looked at her, and by the look on her face, she didn’t want to tell anyone about Saturn at that minute. But she told us about Saturn anyway.
She talked about Saturn for a few minutes, then she ate cake and got tired.
When Bonnie was napping, Mrs. Park had gone to the cafeteria, while Kit had gone home. Suzanne and Cade had gone to a gallery appointment, and the room had emptied out, but Vivienne stayed.
Vivienne sat in the chair beside me.
She had her hands in her lap.
I waited. I was getting good at sitting with a quiet person and not filling the quiet.
"Sabrina, may I tell you what my son has been doing?"
I looked at her. "I told him not to tell me."
"He hasn't, but I'm telling you. Well, he didn't ask me to. I want you to know that part. He didn't put me up to this. But Cade has been filling me with the details, and I'm telling you because I want you to know."
"Vivienne — "
"Sabrina, just listen to what I have to say about Beau."
She told me about the Kesslers' house, about Beau having driven to Queens, about Marta, Simon, and Dylan on the couch with a one-eyed dinosaur, and about the Philadelphia evaluation Beau had set up overnight.
She told me about Langone Health.
She told me Beau had spent three days sitting in a family room near the ICU with the parents of a girl named Lily, who had been in a coma for some months.
She told me about Lily's mother signing the papers.
She told me the Kesslers had flown to Philadelphia.
The Wednesday surgery was tomorrow. Beau had personally funded the transport, the lodging, and the surgery.
He had set up the donor lead. He had been at Langone Health every day until Lily's parents had decided.
She told me about the board.
The board had gotten wind of it. A board member had leaked what he did.
The story broke — there were three news vans at the corner of Beau's block.
The board had met and had stripped Beau of his allocation authority.
They had reversed the priority on the foundation queue.
Beau was still chairman in name. He no longer made the queue calls.
He wasn't, by the board's emergency action, going to be making decisions like the one he had made for Bonnie ever again.
He hadn't called me.
He had been in his apartment alone since.
"He won't come here," Vivienne said. "He doesn't believe he deserves a reason to."
I looked at the ceiling. "Vivienne, did he do it the way I asked?"
"Exactly the way you asked. He didn't tell you. He did it because it was right. He didn't protect himself."
I looked at the ceiling for a long time. "I have to go see him."
"Bonnie is asleep. I'm here. I’ll watch over her."
I drove to Beau's building.
There were three news vans on the corner, two photographers on the sidewalk, and a group of people with phones up. They were ordinary people who had heard that something was happening on this block and had come to see if they could find something to put on their phones.
They didn't know my face.
I walked past them with my head down. The doorman knew me. He had been in the lobby the night Beau had taken me up to his apartment for the first time. He let me pass.
The elevator went up, and I got off at Beau's floor. I walked to his door and knocked.
Beau opened the door.
He looked like a man who hadn't slept in five days. His beard had grown since he hadn't shaved. He wore the same gray sweater he'd been wearing the night I sent him to the hospital lounge to fix his mistake. He had a coffee in one hand. The coffee was cold by the look of it.
He stepped back as I walked in.
He wasn't going to put his hands anywhere near me until he had been asked to. I had to start. My heart was pounding out of my chest. My hands were sweating. I had to tell him. I was ready to face it.
"Beau." His name left my mouth before I could stop it.
"Sabrina, are you okay?” He placed his coffee on the entry table. He kept his eyes on me when I said it, steady and warm, the way they always were when it was just the two of us.
I took a breath. Let it out. My palms were damp, and my throat burned, but the words had been pressing against my ribs, and I was so tired of holding them in.
"I love you."
He looked at me and didn't move. He didn't breathe for a second.
"Sabrina, I — "
"I love you. I have loved you for some weeks. I had told myself I wouldn't say it ever, but I had told myself I was going to say it after the surgery…"
"Sabrina."
"I'm saying it because I want you to know. I'm saying it because I'm not going to keep waiting for the right time."
He was looking at me. His eyes were wet. "Sabrina, I have loved you since the alley."
I gasped, "You what?”
"Since the night I was drunk, and you took care of me when you didn’t have to. I have loved you since then. I haven't, in any of the weeks since, stopped,” he continued.
"Beau." My voice was shaking.
"I'm sorry, Sabrina. I don't know how to say it any other way than the way I'm saying it now. I'm sorry for what I did. I'm sorry for who I did it to. I'm sorry I have made it about me when it wasn't about me. I'm sorry."
I leaned forward.
"Beau, what you did — "
"I know."
"I'm angry, I'm grateful, and I'm in love with you all at once. You didn’t have to do any of that, but you did, and I owe you my life for it for saving my daughter and for making things right."
"Yes."
"I have conditions."
"What is it?"
"I want the boring kind of man."
"Sabrina — "
"Listen to me, Beau. I've been a single mother for nine years.
I haven't been a single mother because I love being one.
I've been a single mother because the man who left me when I was nineteen wasn't a responsible one.
I don't want a man who'll pin to a parking lot wall and kiss me just because of his passion and desire.I want a man who shows up, who sits in folding chairs at recitals, and doesn't check his phone, someone who is around for Bonnie and me. I want a man who stays, Beau."
"I'll stay, Sabrina. I promise."
"I'm not asking you to be Bonnie's father. I'm asking you to be the man who is in the room."
"I want to be that man."
I told him about Bonnie's father.
I hadn't told anyone in nine years what I told Beau in the next few minutes. I told him about Bonnie, at four years old, asking me at the kitchen table why she didn't have one. I told him about the longing in my daughter that I hadn't been able to address.
He listened. When I was done, he didn’t say anything right away, just sat with it for a few minutes.
"Sabrina, I want to be someone you ask for. I can’t make promises for now, but I’m working to be the man you need me to be."
I kissed him, and we sat on the couch.
I kissed him in his apartment with the press downstairs, his beard against my chin, his cold coffee forgotten on the entry table, and his hand finally, finally coming up to the side of my face after days of holding back.
We kissed for a long time.
I recognized, against his mouth, that he had loved me enough to give up everything he had spent his life building for a thing that was right.
He had given up his authority at the foundation.
He had given up his name in the news. He had handed his father's legacy over to a different man and was no longer allowed to allocate it.
He had done it because I'd asked him to make things right and because he had been, somewhere underneath all of it, the man I'd wanted him to be.
At some point, he pulled back.
"I don't know what we are going to do about the press downstairs."
"Leave them. They will get tired. Something more interesting will happen soon somewhere, and they will all run after it."
He laughed.
I climbed onto his lap and kissed him.
"I love you,” I whispered in his ear.
He smiled and whispered back, "I love you more."