Epilogue
Atlas
I didn’t want to be dragged to Martha’s Vineyard for the Hamilton reunion, but somehow that’s where I found myself, standing on Charlotte Hamilton’s brilliant green lawn and sipping champagne with Cal and Ten.
Isabel, Zara, and Rowan were standing a little apart from us, chatting with Charlotte who was holding court like a queen. Somehow Rowan had convinced Caitlyn to come too, so she was standing next to Charlotte. She looked awkward as hell, but at least she was chatting to her mother so that was something.
Rowan had just passed the three month mark with her pregnancy and she was blooming. She stood all swathed in a gorgeous blue silk dress that I’d bought her, hair spilling down her back in an inky waterfall. Around her neck was a little gold necklace that spelled her name. It was the one I’d given her back when she’d turned sixteen, the one I’d never seen her wear.
She’d turned up wearing it as we’d left this morning and the sight of it had taken my breath away. She’d told me she’d kept it all these years, not knowing what to do with it, but that she knew what to do with it now. I’d had to kiss her senseless after that, then murmur that I was going to get her another necklace, one that said ‘Atlas’s’.
She’d only laughed.
She was so fucking beautiful.
“We’re lucky bastards don’t you think?” Cal said meditatively as we all stared in the direction of our women.
“Fucking lucky,” I agreed.
Rowan had decided she didn’t want to get an MBA after all. She wanted to study law instead and was gunning for Harvard, because of course she was. She was nothing if not ambitious and once the baby was born, I had no doubt she’d get in. She was a woman who went out and got what she wanted, and I was the perfect example.
“Charlotte destroyed the proof she had of Sir George’s murder,” Ten said conversationally, as if he hadn’t just dropped a massive fucking bombshell.
“What the fuck?” Cal said, turning to him. “When?”
“Oh, earlier,” Ten said airily. “When we arrived.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” I said. “Why was that not the first thing you said?”
He shrugged. “It slipped my mind.”
“Ten,” I began.
“She decided, after speaking with Isabel and Rowan that she wanted to be a family, and a decent family,” Ten went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And as a gesture of good faith, she got rid of it.” He smiled at me, a rare thing. “We’re in the clear, Atlas.”
“Well, that’s something to celebrate,” Cal said.
“Fucking A.” I held up my glass and the two dutifully clinked it.
Not a minute after that, Rowan approached over the grass, the breeze catching her hair and my heart along with it.
My toy. My beauty. My Rowan.
My past would probably never completely leave me, but the shadow it cast got smaller every day. Because every day had her in it.
She made everything worth it and she always would.