Epilogue
REVA
Cal comes home on a Tuesday.
He complains the entire way from the car to the terrace.
Technically, it’s Delia’s house now. Mari’s too. Cal’s, once he stops threatening to discharge himself from every room containing pillows, medication schedules, or people with opinions. The rest of us still slip and call it Isabel’s house sometimes, mostly because old ghosts take time to evict.
The punishment rooms are gone. Burned, stripped, sealed, then gutted again because Delia decided the first destruction didn’t feel complete enough.
The rose wallpaper in Isabel’s private sitting room has been torn down.
The chapel doors stay open now, though no one is forced to kneel inside.
Half the staff left. Some came back. Some cried when Delia told them they could go.
Others stayed because freedom sounds simple until someone has to teach you what to do with it.
La Rosa still has teeth.
I’m less na?ve than I used to be. Maybe that’s saying very little, because I came to New Orleans with a gun, a fake name, and the assumption that revenge had a finish line.
It doesn’t.
Revenge is a door. You open it, and there’s always another dirty room behind the first that someone has to clean.
Delia is cleaning hers with ledgers, lawyers, weapons, and a truly terrifying capacity for quiet disappointment.
Mari helps.
Nash helps in ways that make old men sweat through expensive suits.
Ever has rebuilt their entire communications network twice because he found flaws and took them personally.
Shiloh has become alarmingly good at getting dangerous women to tell him who needs protection, who needs money, and who needs to disappear.
Deacon says very little, which means half the city is nervous and the other half has poor survival instincts.
And me?
I stand beside my sister when she needs me. Then I go home to Blackwood House and my men.
This morning, though, I’m on the terrace of the house Isabel used to haunt, gripping the back of a wrought-iron chair while everyone pretends I’m handling Cal’s arrival with grace.
I am not.
Sonny sits at the table wearing sunglasses the size of dessert plates and holding Homer’s leash wrapped around one wrist. He has sprawled under her chair in a patch of sunlight, orange belly exposed, white cross on display, enjoying the sort of peace he has never personally earned.
“He looks dead,” Sonny says.
“He’s just being dramatic.”
“He gets that from you.”
“Do we have to rehash this every time? I told you, I’ve been through things.”
“So has he. I saw him lose a fight with a curtain tassel this morning.”
Delia looks up from the folder in front of her. “Do you always talk this much?”
“Yes,” Sonny and I answer together.
Homer meows without opening his eyes. Mari laughs softly from near the terrace doors.
She stands in the doorway with a pale blue cardigan over a white dress, her hair pinned back loosely, one hand curled around a coffee cup.
The morning light gentles her face. It doesn’t erase the lines grief carved there, and I’m glad.
I don’t think I could trust a mother who came back smooth and untouched.
She doesn’t try to take Cal’s place. She doesn’t ask me to call her Mom.
She doesn’t press kisses on me or tell me how much she suffered every time I admit I suffered too.
She answers questions when I ask them. She stops when I say stop.
She sends me pictures of old recipes and asks whether I remember them, and when I say no, she says, “Then we can make new ones.”
Sometimes I resent her for surviving. Sometimes I want to crawl into her lap like I’m four years old and the phone hasn’t rung yet.
Usually, I settle for coffee on the terrace and letting her touch my hair when she passes behind my chair.
Today, when her fingers brush the end of my braid, I don’t pull away. Her eyes shine, but she controls it.
The front drive crunches with tires. My hand locks around the chair.
Nash appears beside me. I have no idea where he came from, which is typical and annoying. He settles one hand at the back of my neck, thumb pressing into the tense place beneath my skull.
“He’s going to complain.”
“I know.”
“He’s gonna hate the wheelchair.”
“I know, Nash.”
“Good. Then breathe before you pass out and give him something else to complain about.”
A smile tugs at my mouth before I can stop it.
The doors open inside the house. Voices move through the hall.
Ever first, low and firm. Then Shiloh, sounding bright in the careful way he uses when a room needs warmth and he’s willing to bleed a little to provide it.
Deacon says something I can’t hear. A cane taps once against the floor, followed by Cal’s voice, rougher than I remember and exactly as irritated as promised.
“I can walk.”
“You can shuffle angrily,” Shiloh tells him. “Little different.”
“Move the chair.”
“No.”
“I raised that girl with fewer men than this telling me what to do.”
“You should’ve raised her to pick less bossy ones,” Ever says.
“I tried, God knows. No accounting for taste.”
My laugh breaks before I can stop it. Then Cal appears in the terrace doorway.
The first thing I see is how much thinner he is.
His face has gone sharper under the cheekbones.
His skin is still too pale. He holds a cane in one hand and has one arm looped through Deacon’s because apparently pride negotiates better with assassins than wheelchairs.
There’s a brace hidden badly beneath his shirt, and the careful way he breathes tells me every step costs him.
But he is standing. Alive and scowling.
Cal’s eyes find mine. His scowl breaks.
I cross the terrace too fast. Nash says my name, warning tucked inside it, but I slow only at the last second because Cal has staples and healing tissue and probably six medical instructions I’m already violating by existing near him with feelings.
I stop in front of him with both hands hovering uselessly.
He looks down at them. “You planning to land one of those somewhere, kiddo?”
That does it. I put my arms around him as carefully as I can and start crying so hard he curses under his breath.
“Aw, hell.” His free hand comes up to the back of my head. Weak. Shaking. Still Cal. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re soaking my shirt.”
“You were shot.”
“Okay, she’s not blind.”
“You almost died!”
“I got better.”
I laugh and cry harder, which embarrasses both of us enough that Sonny turns toward the garden and pretends to be fascinated by a shrub.
Shiloh makes a soft sound behind me. Ever says nothing.
Nash’s hand settles on my back for one brief second, then leaves again.
Delia’s chair scrapes the tile, but she stays where she is.
Cal presses his cheek to my hair.
“I’m here,” he says, voice rough. “I’m right here.”
I hold him until his breathing changes.
Then I let go fast, guilt slicing through the relief. “Did I hurt you?”
“Yes.”
My face crumples.
He flicks my forehead with one finger. “Emotionally. You look like hell.”
A wet, stupid laugh comes out of me.
Shiloh exhales behind me. “Welcome back, Cal.”
Cal points the cane at him. “You. I remember you being annoying while I was unconscious.”
“Memory issues are common after trauma.”
“I remember enough.”
Shiloh smiles, delighted and devastated at once. “Welcome back, old man.”
“I’m fifty-fucking-three, and when I can put this cane down—”
“Ancient.”
“Pretty boy, I will still put you on the floor.”
Ever steps closer. “After physical therapy clears aggressive flirting, not before.”
Cal looks at him for a long moment. Then at Nash. Then Deacon. His gaze returns to me with tired resignation.
“All four of them, still?”
My cheeks heat.
Delia says, “I asked the same thing.”
“Shut up,” I tell her.
Cal’s eyes move to Delia. The terrace stills in a quieter way.
He has seen her since waking. Briefly, carefully, with too many machines between them and too much history for a hospital room.
But this is different. This is sunlight.
This is the house that kept her. The house he couldn’t save her from.
The house she now has to remake one brutal decision at a time.
Delia stands. For once, she looks unsure.
Cal studies her face, and whatever he sees there makes his own soften. “You look like your mother.”
He shifts, then winces and presses a hand to his side. Every person on the terrace moves.
He glares at all of us. “I swear to God.”
“Chair,” Mari says.
His whole body goes still. Slowly, he turns toward her. The atmosphere on the terrace shifts again.
I’ve spent weeks watching dangerous men look at me like I’m the only fixed point in a room. I’ve seen possessiveness, obsession, fear, love wearing too many weapons.
This is quieter. Older. Harder won.
Cal looks at Mari like she’s a place he almost reached and kept walking toward anyway. Like fifteen years did damage and distance and strange, impossible tenderness. Like he’s furious to have survived and grateful in the same breath because surviving brought him here, to her, to us.
Mari sets down her coffee cup.
“Sit down, Cal.”
His jaw works, and I wait for the argument. None comes. He sits.
Carefully, badly, pretending the help Deacon gives him is unnecessary while absolutely using it. Mari crosses to him with the blanket from the back of the chair and lays it over his knees. He catches her wrist before she can step away.
Her breath catches. He strokes his thumb once over the inside of her wrist.
“I came back.”
Mari’s face crumples, and for once, she doesn’t hide it from me or Delia or anyone else.
“Yes,” she whispers. “You did.”
I look away because some things are too private even when they happen in the middle of a terrace full of criminals, lovers, sisters, and one cat currently attempting to chew through Sonny’s sandal strap.
Sonny sniffs. “I’m fine. Nobody look at me.”
Delia sits back down, wiping her cheek with the heel of her hand. “We weren’t looking at you, Jesus. Not everything is about you.”
“You were looking at me spiritually.”