Chapter 24 - Jamie #2
Neither of us said anything for a long beat. We didn't have to.
"She's something else, that kid," Sam said finally.
"Yeah." I wiped my face. "She really is."
"How's it going?"
I looked around the half-empty apartment. The bare walls where photos used to hang. Our suitcase by the door. Rosie on the couch with Biscuit pressed to her chest.
"Almost done. Flight's in the morning."
"You okay?"
"Yeah," I said. "I'm okay. I'm ready to come home."
Home. I said it without thinking.
Sam was quiet for a moment.
"I can't wait to see you," he said.
"Me too."
I hung up and sat with the phone in my hand for a long moment. Havensworth was home now. Sam was home.
Someone knocked on the door.
I wasn't expecting anyone.
I opened the door and Mark was standing in the hallway. Hands in the pockets of a coat I recognized. Hair a little damp from the walk over.
"Hey."
I stared at him for a second longer than I meant to.
"Mark."
"I'm sorry to just show up. I ran into Arthur and Cathy yesterday. They mentioned they'd seen you."
I'd run into them outside the Natural History Museum.
Cathy had cooed over Rosie for ten minutes and Arthur had asked polite questions about Havensworth.
I'd given polite answers. We parted on the sidewalk with the kind of warm goodbye you give people you don't expect to see again. I hadn't thought about it since.
He shifted his weight. "I wanted to say goodbye before you left. Properly."
I stepped back from the door.
"Come in."
He came in the way someone comes into an apartment they used to know well. He noticed the bare walls. The suitcase by the door. Rosie on the couch with Biscuit tucked under her chin. He smiled at her and she gave him the small wave she gave strangers.
"I thought I'd take you to dinner," he said. "If you haven't eaten. There's a place a few blocks down that's good with kids."
I hesitated.
I should have said no. I'd just hung up with Sam. My apartment was packed. My flight was in the morning. There was no reason to spend my last full night in the city across a table from the man I'd left.
But Mark had been decent to me for a year. He deserved better than the way we'd ended on the phone, and I'd known it then and every week since. If he'd walked over here in the cold to say a proper goodbye, I could give him a dinner.
"Let me get her shoes," I said.
The place was small and warm and low-lit.
The waiter brought Rosie a coloring sheet and a cup of crayons without being asked.
She settled into her chair and went to work on it with the seriousness of someone taking a test. Mark ordered.
Butter noodles for Rosie. The usual for me—penne with tomato sauce, no cheese, coffee black—he still remembered.
We talked about nothing for a while. I asked him how the deal had turned out—the one he'd been closing when I left. He told me it had gone through. He asked about the reform proposal. I told him we'd gotten a few more signatures than I'd expected.
For a few minutes I almost felt like the woman I'd been before I went home. I could have sat in that version of myself for a long time.
Then Mark set down his glass.
"So you're really doing it," he said. "Staying in Havensworth."
"Yeah. I'm really doing it."
He nodded slowly. Looked at Rosie for a moment, her head bent over her coloring sheet, then back at me.
"I've been thinking. A lot. About us. About what I said."
I waited.
"I was scared. When you asked if I was ready to be a father. I panicked and said the wrong thing."
"You said the truth."
"I said what I felt in that moment. But I've had time to think." He leaned forward. "I want to try, Jamie. For you. I want to try."
I looked at him. This man I'd almost built a life with. He was good, kind, safe. The version of myself who'd planned a future with him hadn't been wrong about him. He was exactly what he'd seemed to be. A different woman would have taken what he was offering and been happy.
But try wasn't enough. Not for Rosie.
"Mark." I kept my voice low so Rosie wouldn't hear. "I can't move her to New York, let her get attached to you and then watch you decide it's too hard."
He didn't have an answer.
I knew he'd try. He'd try the way he did everything, carefully—the way a man who was good at his life went about adding something new to it.
He had the means and loved me well. He would show up for her the way he showed up for me—on time, prepared, and decent.
He would learn her the way he'd learned me.
But Rosie already had someone. And Sam wasn't just trying.
Sam had shown up before she needed him, before any of us knew she would.
He was the reason we'd made it out of the fire.
He was the man who'd slept on a couch too small for him for three weeks so she could have a bed.
He was the one who'd bought her a stuffed dog at a hospital gift shop at 6:00 a.m. and called her brave.
If I was choosing a father for her, she deserved one who loved her the way Jack did. And Sam already did.
Mark nodded slowly and accepted it.
"I had to ask," he said. "I had to at least ask."
"I know."
We finished the meal. Mark was good with Rosie the rest of the way, asking her about her drawing, letting her tell him the names of the animals she was coloring.
He paid the check and walked us back to my apartment in the cold.
At the door of my building he crouched down and said goodnight to Rosie.
She gave him a small hug around the knees, and he closed his eyes for a second when she did.
Then he stood.
"Can I see you off at the airport?"
"Mark, we—"
"Please."
I should have said no. But this felt like the proper goodbye we both deserved.
"Okay."
He nodded. Touched my arm. Turned and walked down the block.
I took Rosie upstairs and put her to bed.
Mark picked us up in the morning.
The drive to JFK was quiet. Rosie was half-asleep in the back seat with Biscuit tucked under her chin, her head tipped against the window. I watched the city go by from the passenger seat. The bridges. The water. The skyline pulling away behind us.
At the terminal he helped me with the suitcase. We stood together on the curb with the airport noise moving around us. Rosie held my hand. There was nothing left to say that we hadn't already said.
"If you ever find yourself back in New York," Mark said, "my door is always open."
I knew it wasn't realistic. Mark would move on.
He'd meet someone new. He'd build a life with someone who could give him what he wanted.
Six months from now he'd be sitting across from her at the place he'd taken me on my birthday, and she'd laugh at something he said, and he'd look at her and mean it.
But the tears came anyway. This was goodbye. To Mark. To New York. To the woman I'd built here and loved and said goodbye to all week without quite admitting I was doing it.
He crouched down to Rosie.
"You take care of your Auntie Jamie, okay?"
Rosie nodded, serious. "Okay."
He stepped close and kissed my forehead.
"Goodbye, Jamie."
I took Rosie's hand and turned toward the doors before I could break down completely.
I was heading home.
I was heading home to Sam.