Chapter 29
When Leo walked into the office, seemingly everyone turned to stare, everyone except the person he most wanted to see. Esther, he knew, would be in the zone. It would take something special and unexpected to snap her out of it. He shuffled the tidy stack of papers in his fingers and marched determinedly forward.
She sat with her back to him in their former cubicle, hair significantly shorter but still long. He sighed a note of relief. Same hair, same Esther. He took a piece of paper from the stack and set it before her, waiting for her to read it.
Absquatulate: to leave without saying goodbye.
Her shoulders stiffened and she turned, facing him. He held up the next paper in his stack.
Tacenda: Things better left unsaid.
And the next, and then the others, holding them aloft like flashcards.
Cimmerian: very dark, gloomy.
Toska: A dull ache of the soul, a sick pining, spiritual anguish.
Lacuna: A blank space, a missing part.
Seelenverwandt: Two souls who are not blood related but are two of a kind.
Sarang: The feeling of wanting to be with someone until death.
Redamancy: The act of loving the one who loves you; a love returned in full.
He set the stack of papers aside and waited for some reaction. He had walked out on her when she was still unconscious, abandoned her to her father’s care without a word because he was too afraid to stay and face her, too guilty she’d taken a bullet meant for him, too certain of his own deficiencies. He was out of the room getting a coffee when her parents arrived. By the time he returned they had settled in and reclaimed ownership of her. Leo had hovered in the doorway, watching unobserved while her mother pressed a tender hand to her forehead and her father clasped her hand protectively. Why does she need me when she has them and they do such a better job of taking care of her, he wondered. Then he eased away and disappeared. And now he was back, and did she hate him? She should.
Wordlessly, she reached behind her and withdrew a book. Homebuilding For Dummies, only she had used a marker to scratch out “Dummies” and written “Leo” instead.
She knew. Somehow, she knew even before he did that he wouldn’t fall apart and revert to old ways, that he would continue with the plan, begin to save money, get his life in order, and plan for his future home. She had more faith in him than he did, as ever.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I know,” she said.
“I just needed to…”
She pressed her fingers to his lips. “Leo, I know . It’s okay. I recovered, I went to Quantico. I haven’t exactly been idle in your absence. I’m not one of those women who falls apart without my man.”
“You cut your hair,” he said, touching the ends. It was so much curlier and more buoyant now.
“Oh, right. Amelia’s very persuasive. She cornered me at a party.”
“I love it, she was right. It suits you. You went to a party?”
“Yes, and I didn’t blurt anything alienating. At least I don’t think I did. I do remember quoting the stats on salmonella when the egg salad sat out past the three hour mark, but no one seemed to mind that helpful tidbit,” she said.
He laughed and suddenly Babs and Blue popped over the adjoining cubicle like prairie dogs. “Hey, Leo,” Blue said. The two wore matching, ornery grins. Clearly they’d been eavesdropping the entire time. “Did Esther tell you I’m getting married next weekend? She’s going to need a date.”
“The security guard’s not available?” Leo asked, tone turning crisp with jealousy.
“Aw, snap,” Babs muttered.
“You mean Hank? He’s sixty, if he’s a day, although he did propose after I brought him some of my homemade cinnamon bread,” Esther said.
Leo scowled. “Stupid Ridge.” He had purposely taunted him to make him jealous. And, like an idiot, it worked. There was so much more to say, but Babs and Blue were both still grinning goofily.
“The happily ever after is my favorite part,” Blue said.
“For sure,” Babs agreed, and they high fived.
“Maybe we could move this into the soundproof room with the door,” Leo said, taking Esther’s hand and leading her away.
“Don’t be like that. We’ll go back to pretending we’re not hanging on every word,” Babs called.
“You better not run off and get married before next weekend. Jane will literally kill me,” Blue added.
Esther, chuckling, trotted to keep up with his long strides. Leo opened the door, herded her inside, and leaned on it when it was closed. And then at long last he did what he had been longing and aching and itching to do the longest six months of his life—he gathered her up in an enveloping hug and stuffed his face to her neck, inhaling. Home. Esther was the missing ingredient in every plan, every design, every plot of land he’d inspected and rejected. The Dawdy haus wasn’t a magical healing field because it was isolated, it was always because Esther was there. Home was not a place, it was a person, this person, his person.
“I feel like I can finally breathe again,” he said, words muffled by her throat.
“I missed you,” she said, flat and expressionless, and he smiled. If he didn’t know her, he might think it was a rebuff, but he did know her and therefore read all she left unsaid.
He pulled back and kissed her wet cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” she said.
“Why are you sorry?”
“Because you’ve been going through things without me there to care for you,” she said.
He took a breath, the first deep one in half a year, and let it out slowly. And then he had to sit down because it was too much all at once and he felt like he might buckle from the weight of joy and relief. Esther sat in his lap but, unlike her previously chaste side-saddle arrangement, straddled him, putting them intimately face to face.
“How are you? How’s the lung?” he asked, touching a finger in the center of her chest, his finger smoothing lightly over a puckered scar.
“It’s good, I’m fine.”
He tipped his head at her.
“No, really, I am. Running at Quantico was a bit of a strain, I got a little breathless. But someone must have warned them because no one gave me a hard time about it. And they didn’t make me fight.”
“Did you love it? I want to hear everything,” he said.
“I loved it. I’ll tell you all I can remember.”
“You remember everything.”
“It’s going to be a long conversation. What about you? What’s been happening?”
“Let’s see, you took a bullet meant for me, but it didn’t matter because I’m the one who died. I’ve been in a coma the last six months, and now I’m awake again. The end.”
“That is not true. I am not the center of your universe.”
“Aren’t you? You could have fooled me,” he said. “That day at the thrift store, when you told those girls the story of how we met, you weren’t lying, were you? You knew from the beginning about us.”
“Yes. I’m not what you’d call intuitive, thanks to this whole autism thing.” She waved her hand in front of her face. “But I saw you in that airport, and I knew we belonged to each other.”
“Then why did you try to set me up with the baby store girl?” he asked, exasperated.
“Because I didn’t have a crush on you, at least not then. I thought we would be the sort of friends who always took care of each other. It never occurred to me we would fall in love. I thought I was unlovable.”
“I thought I was unlovable.”
“I’m glad we proved each other wrong,” she said. He bent to kiss her, but she pulled away. “Wait, I have to tell you something.”
“What?”
“I held Ridge and Maggie’s baby.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve held 168 babies in my lifetime, an actual number because I count all the things. My mom was always handing me a sibling or cousin or baby she delivered in the hope that it would spark some sense of normalcy in my broken brain, that suddenly I would want to be a wife and mom, give up career notions, and settle down with full feelings like an actual girl.”
“Didn’t happen?” he guessed.
“Not once, but apparently the 169 th baby is the charm. He has Ridge’s looks and Maggie’s sweetness.”
Leo scowled. “You think Ridge is nice looking?”
“Leo, Ridge is indisputably one of the prettiest humans I’ve ever seen. The proportionality of his face could launch a doctoral thesis in mathematics. But you are the only man I have ever loved, will ever love, could ever love, so your jealousy is sort of wasted effort.”
“Point taken,” he said. “You were holding Ridge and Maggie’s bundle of joy and feeling…”
“That’s it, I was feeling. Usually to me, holding a baby is like holding a bag of wet flour. I literally couldn’t care less about what’s in my hands. But this time my heart started to flutter. It was like being shot all over again because for the first time I pictured our baby, yours and mine, and I think I might want that. I know you’re not big into kids or parenthood, but I needed to let you know it’s on the table now.”
The thought of being someone’s father sent him into a panic spiral. He wasn’t ready, might never be ready, would royally screw it up. But then he pictured Esther, her belly round with his baby, their baby, and his heart also stuttered. “It’s something to discuss,” he said, pressing his palm on her belly, heart thudding. “But you know, Esther, there’s really only one way to get a baby.”
“Get married?”
“Yes, but after that.”
“This seems like a good time to tell you I got a new book.”
He smiled, her tone telling him he was going to like what he was about to hear. “Yeah?”
“It’s similar to the one my mom got me but, um, better, I think.”
“Not gross?” he asked.
She shook her head. “A little scary, but wholly intriguing.”
“Everything that is within me seems programmed to take care of you in every way. I promise it will not be scary, okay?”
She nodded. “I liked your words,” she whispered shyly.
“It was how I coped with being apart. I collected words to try and patch the missing pieces inside me. Didn’t work, but I found some to give to you.”
“I collected some words, too,” she said.
“For me?” he asked.
“No, for the people who wrote the kissing book. I thought I would write and tell them there are so many better options than fruits and vegetables.”
He was beaming like the love-addled idiot he was. To think he would get to partake of her for the rest of his life was an unspeakable and overwhelming gift he in no way deserved. “What words?”
She leaned closer and let her lips brush his as she spoke. “Mellifluous, perspicacious, onomatopoeia, recalibration, indivisible, paleopidemiological. Shall I go on?”
“Have mercy, Esther,” he croaked, sweating.
“Okay, Leo,” she replied and kissed him.
T hank you for reading The Finder and The Keeper, the eighth book in the Spies Like Us series .