Epilogue
MARK
Five years later…
The gate recognizes my car before I reach it. Fifteen seconds later, I'm pulling into the circular drive, and the first thing I notice isn't the house or the manicured grounds or any of the things I used to come home to.
It's the sound.
Laughter. High-pitched squeals. The kind of chaos that only happens when small humans are involved in something they probably shouldn't be doing.
I cut the engine and walk around the side of the house toward the backyard, loosening my tie as I go. The noise gets louder with each step, and when I round the corner, I stop.
Maura sits cross-legged in the grass, holding Maeve on her lap. Our youngest has chocolate smeared across her cheek and is reaching for something in Maura's hand with the determined focus of a one-year-old who knows exactly what she wants.
Mick is doing cartwheels nearby—messy, lopsided attempts that land him in the flower bed more often than upright. Maya has found the garden hose and is creating what appears to be a small lake by the rose bushes, her sundress soaked through, dark hair plastered to her head.
And in the center of it all is my wife, laughing as Maeve succeeds in grabbing whatever she was reaching for, completely unbothered by the fact that our four-year-old is destroying the landscaping and our three-year-old has turned the backyard into a swamp.
I watch them. The man who once sat in cars outside apartment buildings, who monitored feeds from across the city, now stands twenty feet away in broad daylight and finds the view better than any surveillance system I ever built.
Maura looks up and spots me. Her face lights up the way it does every evening when I come home, like she's genuinely glad to see me after eight hours of meetings and phone calls and the kind of problems that used to be my entire world.
"Daddy!" Mick abandons his cartwheel project and runs toward me, grass stains on his knees, dirt under his fingernails. Maya drops the hose and follows, leaving a trail of muddy footprints across the stone patio.
I scoop them both up, one in each arm, and they immediately start talking over each other about their day, their voices overlapping in the way only children manage. Maeve squeals from Maura's arms and holds out her chocolate-covered hands toward me.
Maura stands, shifting our youngest to her hip, and walks over to kiss me. Brief and warm, tasting faintly of whatever sugar our kids have been consuming.
"How was your day?"
"Fine. Would have been better if I'd had ice cream for lunch."
Her eyes widen. The realization hits immediately—the secret afternoon treat she thought was between her and the kids, the indulgence she assumed happened beyond my line of sight.
Her gaze narrows, but she's fighting a smile. "Have you been watching me again?"
The question that started everything. Five years later, it's still our language, our shorthand, the joke that makes other people uncomfortable and makes us laugh.
"I always watch you, Maura. Have you forgotten? I'm obsessed with you."
The same tone I used to confess to stalking her. Now they make her laugh in a backyard full of children and sunlight.
"I love you," she says.
"I love you too."