Epilogue
McKenna
Two years later
The woman on my examination table apologizes for bleeding on the paper.
Again.
At the fifth apology, I put down the gauze.
“You have a split lip, two bruised ribs, and a wrist I intend to X-ray. The paper remains the least injured patient in this room.”
Her mouth trembles.
“I made a mess.”
“This is a medical clinic. Mess is included in the operating budget.”
A tiny sound escapes her. It takes me a moment to recognize it as a laugh.
I finish cleaning the cut and cover it with a bandage.
“You don’t have to apologize here,” I tell her.
Her gaze drops to her hands.
Women arrive at the shelter frightened, exhausted, and convinced their pain is an inconvenience. I recognize the habit because I spent most of my life perfecting it.
The advocate waiting outside takes her upstairs to one of the family rooms. She glances over her shoulder before they reach the stairwell.
Nobody follows.
I close the examination-room door and find my husband leaning against the opposite wall. He carries a paper bag in one hand and an envelope in the other.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough.”
“That answer usually precedes interference.”
“You missed dinner.”
“It is six thirty.”
“Dinner was at six.”
“You run a motorcycle club. I treat injured people. Neither profession is known for respecting schedules.”
Grim holds out the paper bag.
The smell of chicken soup reaches me, and my stomach turns.
I take the bag without breathing through my nose.
His silver eyes narrow.
Danger has many forms. Some carry weapons. Some stand in clinic hallways and notice nausea.
I walk into my office before he can begin asking questions.
The original shelter was already overcrowded when I arrived in Roseburn Falls.
This second location opened last spring with twelve family rooms, childcare, a legal office, and the medical wing I supervise.
Razor covers Tuesdays and comes when a patient needs more than a nurse can provide.
He complains about my timing. I remind him that emergencies rarely consult his calendar.
Grim used part of the fortune his mother left him to pay for the new building through an independent trust. Her money once kept the St. Valecourt family from bankruptcy. Grim decided the part she left him should give women somewhere safe to begin again.
No family name appears on the walls.
The Damned Sinners built almost everything inside the new shelter.
Striker calls threatening suppliers project management. Nobody has been brave enough to correct him.
Grim follows me into the office and places the envelope on my desk.
Anthony’s attorney sends one every three months.
“Another report?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“You read it?”
“No.”
“You carried it through the rain.”
“I care where the money goes.”
The distinction matters to him.
Anthony’s cooperation reduced his sentence and led the task force to two other trafficking networks. Since his release, he has paid legal and relocation expenses for women identified through Rivers’s server.
He provides evidence of every payment and makes no request for contact.
Grim has never answered.
I put the envelope in my drawer.
“Lock called,” he says. “Alan’s appeal was denied.”
“Good.”
My phone vibrates.
The message comes from an unfamiliar number, but the first line identifies the sender.
Your father and I have lost everything because you refuse to help your own family.
My mother has discovered prepaid phones.
Persistence is her most developed maternal trait.
I delete the message and block the number.
Grim watches me. “Them?”
“New number. Same shit.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
He accepts the answer because I mean it.
Rivers will die in federal prison. Alan has twelve years to consider the disadvantages of selling his sister. My parents have a rental house and an endless supply of misplaced blame.
I have somewhere else to be.
Grim looks at the soup still folded inside the bag.
“You’re not eating.”
“I intend to.”
“You look sick.”
“I am aware that you consider observation a substitute for tact.”
“Angel.”
He always says it differently when he is worried. Rougher. As if the name itself can pull me close enough to protect.
His attention moves to the untouched coffee on my desk.
Then to my hand.
I have placed it over my stomach.
Again.
Grim comes around the desk.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve ignored coffee and soup.”
“I have excellent reasons.”
“Tell me.”
I planned to tell him at home. I had considered candles before deciding they created an unacceptable fire risk around a man who loses awareness of his surroundings when he kisses me.
There was going to be dessert.
I may have purchased a cake.
Now Grim stands in front of me looking prepared to carry me to the emergency room.
“We’re having a baby.”
He goes completely still.
I wait.
His chest fails to move.
“Breathing remains medically necessary,” I say.
His silver eyes drop to my stomach.
“You’re pregnant?”
“Three tests and bloodwork agree.”
“How long?”
“Eight weeks.”
“How long have you known?”
“The bloodwork came back this afternoon.”
“Who else knows?”
“The obstetrician, a laboratory technician, and three increasingly expensive pieces of plastic.”
“Razor?”
“No.”
“Striker?”
“Why would Striker know before you?”
“He knows everything.”
“He knows everything about you. Nobody can explain why.”
Grim lowers himself in front of me.
The last time I saw him on his knees, rain covered the windows of the Roseburn Falls bus station.
Three months after Rivers’s arrest, he took me back to the bench where I treated his shoulder. He placed the pistol I had used to shoot him beside me, unloaded this time, then held out a ring.
“The first choice I gave you here cost me blood,” he said. “I want all the ones that come next.”
I let him wait six seconds because a proposal that confident deserved consequences.
He still claims those seconds shortened his life.
Now his hands settle at my waist.
“A baby,” he says.
“That remains the diagnosis.”
He presses his mouth to my stomach through my sweater.
My humor deserts me.
I slide my fingers into his hair as he rests his forehead against me.
When he looks up, joy is there.
Fear sits beneath it.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he says.
“Yes, you do.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I have two years of evidence.”
His hands tighten slightly at my waist.
“What if there’s more of him in me than I think?”
Anthony.
I touch Grim’s face.
“Your father bought a woman to force his way into his son’s life. You handed a frightened woman a gun and stood still while she decided whether to trust you.”
“She shot me.”
“And look where you are now.”
His mouth moves, but the fear remains.
I hold his gaze.
“You built a second shelter when the first ran out of room, then refused to put your name on any part of it. You protect people without demanding that they belong to you afterward. You have spent every day of our marriage asking what I want, even when you dislike the answer.”
“That happens a lot.”
“You married an opinionated woman. The prognosis was clear.”
His forehead presses against my stomach again.
“You are nothing like him,” I say. “Our child will know that.”
Grim rises and pulls me against his chest.
His palm covers the small life hidden beneath my sweater.
“I’ll protect you both.”
“I know.”
“This baby will never have to earn our love.”
My throat closes.
“Agreed.”
“And nobody uses them to settle a debt.”
“That is generally considered poor parenting.”
“Angel.”
“I’m agreeing with you.”
His mouth touches mine.
The kiss carries joy, fear, and a promise fierce enough to make my knees unreliable. I grip his cut and let him hold me until the pressure inside my chest eases.
“If it’s a girl,” I say, “you are forbidden from interrogating her friends.”
“No.”
“That was not a question.”
“Still no.”
“What if it’s a boy?”
“Same rules.”
“Your parenting philosophy appears unusually hostile to social development.”
“Our kid will have friends.”
“Approved after a background investigation?”
“Now you understand.”
I laugh against his chest.
Grim wraps both arms around me.
My family taught me that love came with a bill. Every kindness created a debt. Every sacrifice purchased another piece of me.
Grim has never asked me to pay for his love.
He holds out his hand.
He waits.
I place mine in it.
“Take me home,” I say.
His fingers close around mine.
“Always, Angel.”
Freedom, I have learned, can feel exactly like choosing the same road home.
***
THE END