74. Elliott
SEVENTY-FOUR
Elliott
I follow the ping to what seems to be a school. Drive slowly around the winding road flanking an empty parking lot, but for one car. I see them. I park my rental on a spot near the chain-link fence and exit the car quietly, hesitating on intruding in their moment. Jamie is going down a slide, his arms open at his sides. His face tilted to the sky, and he’s speaking, but I can’t make out his words.
Jillian is on a swing, using her legs to make herself go higher and higher. Her face, too, is tilted to the sky.
I look up. Intense blue above and a few white clouds drifting in the wind. Birds chirping in the trees. The call of crows and a lonely bird flying in circles.
I take in this scene. I don’t call to them or make my presence known. I watch them both from afar. I don’t want to be an interloper to whatever it is they’re doing. They’re in their own world. I don’t know exactly what’s happening, but whatever it is, I know I’m not a part of it. It’ s not meant for me.
I lean my elbows on the chain-link fence bar and watch. Jillian calls out to Jamie, and he smiles. She jumps from the swing at its highest point.
My heart skips a beat and then somersaults. My hands tense on the bar and I’m ready to leap and run to her.
She lands on her feet like an Olympian dismounting from a balance bar. Then she kneels down with arms open wide and Jamie runs to her. She falls back, holding him still, and the faint sound of laughter carries to me in the breeze.
I leap over the fence then. Hands in my pockets, I walk to them. Still hesitant to interrupt them.
Jamie sits up and sees me. Then he’s running to me. And I lean down, arms open, to scoop him up. “Hey, buddy. Having fun?”
He signs yes, and then, as if remembering he can speak now, says it aloud. “Yes.”
“This is a cool place.”
“Mom’s school. When she was my age.”
I’m impressed by how clear his speech is and how good his vocabulary is. “Wow, that’s cool.”
Jillian sits up and smiles. I carry Jamie back to her and set him down. Jillian stretches both arms up, and Jamie and I pull her to her feet.
She brushes pieces of grass off herself, her gaze never straying from my face. “Thanks for coming.”
“I will always come for you.” I hope she believes me.
She nods, ruffles Jamie’s hair. “Thirty more minutes, kiddo. Then we gotta meet Grandma and Grandpa for lunch, okay?”
Jamie’s answer is to run back to the slide and climb the stairs. I watch him and this time I can hear him .
“Look at me, Daddy. No hands.”
A knot forms in my throat. I can’t remember the last time I cried, but I might today. I find Jillian watching me. Her expression serene, content. “This is the place. Where you met him.”
Jillian hugs herself. The movement pulls at her T-shirt and reveals part of her flower tattoo. “Yes. The very same slide.”
I nod. “I recognize it, from the book.”
Her lips part, and her eyes widen. “You’ve seen the book? CJ’s book?”
“Yes. Jamie asked me to read it for him once.”
“When?”
“Upstate. At my grandma’s house. When he fell asleep, and I brought him into the house. He asked me to read it for him.”
“The whole thing?” There’s surprise in her voice.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was—I didn’t know what it meant when I started reading. By the time it clicked, I was fully absorbed by it. And honestly, I don’t think I could have stopped. I wanted to know what happened. When I finished it, I looked back at the beginning and saw the author and dedication.”
Her gaze goes to her son. “Oh, Jamie. You are much smarter than I am.” Then back to me. “It’s CJ’s book. He wrote it for Jamie. A time capsule of our time together. For the last year, Jamie asked me to read it to him every night. But never the whole book. Just the first few pages. I was never allowed to move forward.”
I nod. “He was stuck. ”
“No. I was. And Jamie was trying to tell me the only way he knew how.”
My mouth opens, but I have no words. I look at the boy and back at her. “And now?”
She meets my gaze. “And now?”
“Are you stuck still?”
Tears rush to her eyes. Her lips tremble. “No. I’m not stuck anymore.”
I open my arms and she steps into them. I hold her, rubbing her shoulders, and she hugs me back. “I have so much to tell you.”
She steps back. “Before you do, I want to tell you what I’ve decided first.”
I take her hand and we walk to a bench under the shade of a tree, my heart drumming with apprehension.
We face each other and I watch her every expression, trying to guess at what’s coming.
“The rental agency found a place for me and Jamie not far from the store. I signed a one-year contract.”
My heart squeezes, not sure if this is good or bad, but at least she’s in the city and I can work with that.
She reaches for my hand and that tight grip in my heart eases. “I got a job offer to take over the Tulips store.”
My eyes widen. “That huge flower shop near the 34 th precinct?”
“Yes. I’m good friends with Diana, the manager there. I always send her jobs that are too big for me. Diana heard about what happened and called me.”
I watch her, looking for clues of where I fit in all of this. “And they offered you a job?”
“That’s the crazy part. Diana told me she’s pregnant with triplets and her doctor wants her on bed rest starting at twenty weeks, and she’s eighteen weeks now.”
“Triplets?”
She smiles. “Yes, she went through IVF, and she and her husband are ecstatic. Anyway, Diana called me and asked if I can take over until she returns from maternity leave, which with the bed rest, birth, and all that will be at least a year. And the best part is that I can bring some of my crew with me.”
“That’s fantastic news, Jillian.”
“Yes, I’m happy things are falling into place.” She lets go of my hand and cups my face. “Which brings me to you.”
“Me?” I stop breathing. My voice no more than a whisper. This is it.
“Yes, you—us. I’ve done a lot of thinking the last few days, and as much as I didn’t want to come back here, the distance helped me see things more clearly.”
I cover her hand with mine and drag in a slow breath, attempting to keep my galloping heart steady.
She smiles. “I don’t want to break up. I’m happy when I’m with you. Jamie is happier when you’re around. I’m a different person—not only from who I was when I lost CJ. But different from who I was before, too. I’ve grown a lot in the last few months. Found my footing for real this time. I spent the last two years in survival mode. And it took meeting you and losing my home and my store to snap me out of it. I love that place and all the memories CJ and I created there. But what used to be a safe port became an anchor dragging me down, holding me in place. I don’t know what the future holds beyond having a new place to live and a new job, but I want you to be in it. With me and Jamie. ”
“And Daisy.” I smile. And then I kiss her because kissing her is vital for my survival. I kiss her because I have to. I kiss her because with her words, she erased every fear, every worry, every sleepless night since the day of the fire. I kiss her because I love her with everything I am and everything I have.
And she kisses me back with just as much need and want.
Until Jamie’s giggles break us apart like a bucket of icy water.
We both look at him and he’s hugging himself and making kissing faces. Then he goes up the ladder to the slide again, and we’re both giggling, too.
I take her hand. “My turn for confessions.”
She nods, waiting for me to speak.
“Let me fill you in on what’s been happening at the firm and the reason Leonora sold the building. And why I was stuck working with my father and couldn’t leave.” I feared mentioning the building would make her close up, but all I see in her eyes is curiosity.
Pulling her legs up on the bench, she turns—her full attention on me. And I tell her everything. Starting with my call to Grace to ask her for help in buying the building from under my father’s nose. “I would have bought it myself to keep the firm and my father from it if I had the means to.”
Jillian puts a hand up. “Wait, Grace bought the building?”
“No. I did. Grace lent me the money to buy it.”
Her mouth falls open with a gasp. “You own the building? My building?”
“Yes, and I’ll pay her back once my trust kicks in in two years. ”
She blinks. “Trust?”
“Yes. That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about, the reason I can’t leave the firm. My grandfather set up a trust for each of his grandkids at birth. And mine is contingent on me working for the firm until I’m thirty-five. After that, I receive the money and I’m free to do whatever I want.”
She shakes her head. “I think I’m having information overload. Let me get this straight. Grace loaned you money to buy the building, and Leonora is in on it. That’s the reason she sold it, because she knew it was for you personally and not your father or your firm.”
“Correct.”
“And when you turn thirty-five, you’ll inherit some money and will pay your grandmother back.”
I nod. “Yes.”
“But what about your father? Isn’t he mad as hell? How will you work with him for the next two years? He’ll make your life miserable.”
“My father is no longer with the firm. Nor are Josh and his father. They quit.”
“What?”
I laugh at her expression. “Grace called a company meeting and brought in her lawyers. With the evidence I gathered?—”
“What evidence?”
I wince. “Yes, something else I didn’t have a chance to tell you.” I explain how I broke into my father’s office and what I found and everything that transpired since I found the notebooks and how Grace took over and gave the reins to me, my cousins, and their father .
“Holy shit.” She glances at Jamie to make sure he didn’t hear her. “That’s a lot to process.”
“And I couldn’t say anything until it was all set. I didn’t want to get your hopes up in case we didn’t succeed. Plus, the NDA.”
“You signed an NDA? Why are you telling me all of this?”
“Because it includes you. All of this includes you. If you had read those papers you signed, you would have seen that half of the building is yours. Leonora sold it to me with the contingency that you would be co-owner.”
She blanches. “You’re messing with me.”
I laugh. “I would never joke about something like this. The building is yours—ours. And I’m really glad you still want me because it would have been a very awkward conversation otherwise.”
Jillian shakes her head. “Elliott, I can’t pay you for my half...I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t want you to pay me. And you already said it. You want us to be together and that’s all that matters to me.”
Tears flood her eyes, and she brings her palms together in front of her face. “Thank you.” She’s in shock, I know. I’ve dumped a lot on her, but I can’t stop now.
“There’s one more thing.”
“I don’t think I can handle any more things.”
I pull out my phone and show her the designs I created. “This is an architectural rendering I created for the building. We can rebuild it. Make it safe. Build your store again and the apartment above, better, bigger. Make it our own space.”
Her lips tremble. “Our own space...it’s beautiful, Elliott. Better than anything I could have ever imagined. But how? I don’t think the insurance money will cover something like that. I have some savings, but that remodel will cost hundreds of thousands, more even.”
I grin. “Remember that trust I told you about? Grace loaned me more than enough to buy the building and remodel it.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “How much money is in that trust exactly?” Then she puts her hand up. “Don’t tell me. None of my business.”
Laughing, I take her hand and kiss the back of it. “I can tell you.”
She shakes her head. “No, don’t.” Then she looks at me. “More than a million?”
I nod.
“Two million?”
I nod again.
“Three?”
I grin and nod again.
Her eyes grow bigger with each nod, and I put her out of her misery. “It’s well over ten million by now. It’s a compounding trust. The money grows and reinvests itself. By the time I turn thirty-five, it should be closer to twelve or more.”
She puts both hands on her head. “I don’t think I have the brainpower to process everything you’re telling me right now.”
I smile. “There’s plenty of time ahead for us to talk about this and anything else you want.”
Jamie’s squeal at the top of the slide gets our attention. He looks at us and then up. He waves at the sky as if saying goodbye to someone only he can see and slides down. Runs to us. Jillian stands up and scoops him up. I follow close behind and hug them. The two most important people in my life.
“I love you both. So much.”
The air is charged, like the world itself is holding its breath. Jillian lifts her head, her eyes bright, her lips parted as if she might say something. She doesn’t—not right away. Instead, her gaze locks on mine, and for a moment, it’s the two of us alone in the universe.
Then she smiles—a smile so full of love, so raw, that it makes my breath catch. A tear slips down her cheek, and she mouths the words back to me, her lips forming each one slowly, deliberately, as if they’re the most precious words she’s ever given away.
I love you, too.
Jamie, still tucked between us, giggles, breaking the intensity of the moment. He looks up at me, his eyes bright and confident. “I know. I love you too.”
His innocence, his certainty, knocks the air out of me. I laugh, a shaky, half-broken sound that spills over with relief and something bigger than any of us could have imagined just a few months ago. I rest my forehead against Jillian’s for a moment, letting the weight of everything settle.
This is it. This is home. This is the family I’ve wished for. The answer to my loneliness. What I’ve longed for and could never name.