Epilogue #2
When the session wound toward its close and children began to be collected from the doorway, Catherine came to stand beside Theodora and said, without preamble: "Josiah told me about the grant."
"He texted you?”
“Mhm,” Catherine's hand found the small of Theodora’s back, brief and warm. "Three years. The program is going to be more than okay."
“It already is,” Theodora said.
Catherine felt a small tug on her sleeve and looked down to find one of the younger students waiting for her attention. She crouched beside her.
“Thank you, Miss Matthews,” the girl said, and then wrapped her arms around Catherine’s neck with the wholehearted certainty children had about these things.
Catherine caught her automatically, steadying them both, still faintly surprised by the easy confidence with which children decided someone was safe.
It had been happening for a year now, since she’d started the Wednesday music club at The Mission, and she still hadn’t entirely grown used to it, that unfiltered affection offered without negotiation or caution. Each time it arrived with the same small moment of adjustment before she accepted it.
Next to her, she could feel Theodora watching. Catherine suspected Theodora was enjoying the moment.
* * *
"Right," Mary announced, moving to stand with the care her hip required. Luis was beside her before she'd finished the word, offering an arm she took without ceremony. "I'm going home to get started on dinner. Natalie, you coming for dinner Thursday too?”
"I’d love to," Natalie confirmed, and hugged her.
Mary turned to Catherine, took her face in both hands the way she always did now, held it for a moment with an expression that said everything she didn't need to put into words.
Then she turned to Theo. "Make sure she eats something proper before her performance on Friday. Something that isn't coffee."
"You and I both know that telling Catherine to do anything will not go down well," Theo said.
"Tell her anyway. That's what love is. Saying the thing even when you know you'll be ignored." She patted Theo's cheek and turned with Luis toward the door, and Theo heard her say in what she clearly believed was a quieter voice: "Six months. I'm telling you. Less."
"You said that six months ago," Luis said.
"Then I'm overdue." And she was gone.
Natalie pulled Theo into a hug on her way out that lasted a moment longer than the usual version.
“I ran into your mom in the surgical suite this morning,” she said. “She had a case there.”
Theo blinked. “At Presbyterian?”
“Yep. She stopped by before she went in and asked me, and I quote, ‘Do you think Theo would mind if I called Catherine to ask if she’d play something at Patrick’s retirement party?
’ She said he’d be thrilled. Apparently, he hasn’t stopped listening to classical music in the OR since Catherine played that Mozart piece during your last visit. ”
Theo laughed. “I’ll ask Catherine, but I’m pretty sure she’ll say yes.”
She felt the warmth that had become reliably present when her parents came up in conversation now. Cautious, uncomplicated. The feeling of something that had once been difficult settling into something easier, or at least easy enough that it no longer cost her anything to feel it.
* * *
Theodora crossed the room as Catherine finished lowering the lid. Still on the bench, she reached up and pulled her down into a kiss, quick at first and then not quite as quick.
They might have stayed like that longer, but someone cleared their throat.
They jumped apart like they'd been caught stealing.
Noah was leaning against the piano with his bag over one shoulder, looking at them the way only a fifteen-year-old could, not scandalized, just deeply, profoundly over it.
Catherine gathered herself despite the color rising in her cheeks. "The Brahms. Thursday. Make sure you bring your annotated sheet music.”
“I know, I’ve already set a reminder on my phone,” Noah said as he looked at them both for a moment. "You two are seriously embarrassing you know that?”
"Thank you," Theodora said, smirking.
"That's entirely the goal," Catherine agreed.
Noah shook his head with the long-suffering affection of someone who had made his peace with the situation. On his way out, he slapped Theodora a high five without breaking stride.
When the room had cleared out, Theodora wrapped her arms around Catherine's waist from behind, chin settling on Catherine's shoulder, and Catherine leaned back into the embrace with contentment that felt almost overwhelming.
"Dinner?" Theodora asked, her breath warm against Catherine's ear.
"Already taken care of." Catherine turned her head to press a kiss against Theodora's jaw.
Theo's arms tightened briefly. “Amazing. Let’s go home.”
"Lead the way."
* * *
Their apartment on a Wednesday evening had a quality Theo loved.
She had given up her lease in Queens a year ago and moved back into The Lenox, into 14D, which had already become theirs by the time she did.
Neither of them could have said exactly when that had happened, when her mug stopped being a thing she'd left behind and started being a thing that lived there, when Catherine stopped thinking of the second side of the bed as empty and started thinking of it as hers.
The kitchen smelled of whatever Catherine had put in the crockpot before they left.
Books double-stacked on every shelf because they had run out of space six months after she moved in and dealt with it by adding more books.
The chipped blue mug in the cabinet alongside the better ones.
The framed photograph from the gala on the wall between two of Catherine's performance posters, all three imperceptibly crooked in a way that Catherine straightened periodically and Theo nudged back out of alignment because the mild exasperation it produced was one of her favorite things to cause.
Theo changed while Catherine checked on dinner, and came back to find wine poured and Catherine leaning against the counter with the small frown she made when she was overthinking.
“Your mom?” Theo said.
"I wrote back to her this afternoon,” Catherine said, handing Theo a glass. "She's trying. It's slow, and it isn't everything I might have wanted when I was younger, but it's genuine. I can tell the difference now."
"How do you feel about it?"
Catherine considered this with the honesty she had learned to give difficult questions rather than the careful deflection she would once have offered.
"Like I'm learning to want less from her than I used to, and finding that what's left is actually enough.
Some days more than others." She paused.
"Florence says that's often what forgiveness looks like in practice.
Not a reconciliation. Just a gradual reduction in what you need the other person to be. "
"That's a very Florence thing to say."
"She is very Florence." The corner of Catherine's mouth lifted. "I told her you said that. She was pleased."
They ended up on the couch the way they usually did after dinner, without really deciding to.
Catherine's feet in Theo's lap, a book open on her chest, nominally reading while Theo worked through the latest reality series Catherine had declared she had no interest in and was now, covertly, watching.
After a while, Theo said, "Mary thinks it's six months."
Catherine didn't look up from her book. "Until what?"
"Until we're engaged. She told Luis she was overdue."
Catherine smirked and turned a page she hadn't read. "My love, she's been saying six months since the week we started talking again."
"She's very invested."
"She had us married since that first confrontation in the hallway." Catherine set the book down. "Though I have been thinking about it. The future."
Theo shifted slowly, drawing Catherine back against her so she could hold her properly, her arms coming around her from behind as she hit pause on their TV. “And what exactly were you thinking?”
Catherine settled into her, her head tipping back against Theo's shoulder. "I know we’ve spoken about it before…About children.”
Theo pressed her lips to the side of Catherine's neck and left them there for a moment.
“…And, I think we should start looking into it properly. I know at my age, the risks are higher, so I’d prefer you to carry, if you want to.
Or we could look into surrogacy, but either way, I want a mini Theodora.
Red hair, bright green eyes, too much sass, and all the right kind of trouble.
" She paused, her smile turning almost mischievous.
"Though knowing our luck, she'd get my perfectionism and your stubborn determination, and we'd spend eighteen years being completely outmaneuvered by a tiny genius. "
Theo laughed, her eyes bright. "I'm happy to carry," she said. "Completely, absolutely, yes to that."
"Good." Catherine took her hand, where they rested against her stomach. "Then we're agreed on the children question."
"We're agreed." Theo looked at their hands. "We should probably also agree on the other thing. The thing Mary is counting down to."
Catherine was quiet for a moment. Then she said: "Matthews-Brennan." Not trying it out, but stating it. "On the buzzer downstairs."
"Or Brennan-Matthews," Theo said. "Alphabetical order."
Catherine tilted her head, considering. Then she shifted closer, one hand resting against Theo's jaw, turning her face, and pressed her lips to the spot just behind her ear. She stayed there a moment before she said it, quietly, like it was only ever meant for that particular inch of skin.
"Mrs. Theodora Rose Matthews-Brennan."
Theo made a sound that wasn't quite a word. “You do not play fair.”
"I know." Catherine sounded entirely unrepentant.
Theo pulled back just enough to look at her, then stood before Catherine could deploy any further tactics. She moved to their desk, reached back into the drawer for something to write on, and came out with a pad of sticky notes.
Neon green.