Chapter 24 #4
“It’s just an informational interview,” I rush to clarify. “With a junior producer, not with her. And it might lead nowhere. It probably will. But…it’s a foot in the door, at least.”
I look down at our joined hands. “The money…it’s freedom.
It means I don’t have to work. But I want to.
I want to do something that matters. I want to have a purpose that’s mine.
Not my parents’. I want to be Annie, the person who asks questions and finds stories that matter.
Even if I have to start by fetching coffee and logging tapes. ”
Leo looks at me for a long beat, his eyes dark and full of something that feels a lot like pride.
He doesn’t say I don’t need to work, or that twelve million dollars means I can retire at twenty-five.
He just leans in and kisses the tip of my nose.
“I think you’d be scary good at it. You’re stubborn, you’re observant, and you have a way of getting people to talk to you.
It’s how you infiltrated this family, after all. ”
I laugh, shoving him lightly. “I did not infiltrate.”
“You absolutely did. It was a tactical takeover.” He sobers, his expression turning earnest. “I think it’s a perfect resolution. The house is for us. This is for you.”
I snuggle deeper into his side, looking at the quiet, sleeping shape of Emma, then at the fairy lights twinkling on our demolished paper chains, and finally at the man whose steady heartbeat I can feel against my ear.
A house. A career. A family.
“So,” Leo says, shifting against the couch. “House hunting and a career in journalism. Anything else?”
I look over at Emma, still fast asleep, her paper crown on the floor now.
“Just this,” I say quietly. “Just you and Emma and figuring out how to make it all work.”
Leo puts his chin on the top of my head. “I think we’re doing pretty well so far.”
“Yeah. I think we are.”
I think about how far I’ve come since August. From a girl running away from a wedding to a woman running toward something real.
From Annemarie Collier to just Annie.
From lost to found.
From alone to home.
Leo shifts slightly, the movement making the floorboards beneath us give their familiar, comforting groan. He lets out a quiet, low whistle, his eyes fixed on the television where the “1995” graphic is glowing in bright, optimistic colors.
“I can’t believe it’s ninety-five,” he says, his voice sounding a little thick, a little awed. “I feel like time is just…speeding up. Like I blinked and the nineties started, and now we’re halfway through.”
“It’s the champagne,” I tease, though I feel it too. The sense that the world is tilting forward into something faster. “Or maybe it’s just that you’re getting old, Professor.”
He huffs a laugh against my hair. “But seriously—what do you think the next big thing is? Since you’re going to be a hotshot reporter, give me the scoop on the future.”
“Oh, definitely robotic cars,” I say, gesturing vaguely at the screen. “They’ll drive themselves. No more maps, no more arguments about stopping for directions.”
He snorts. “If that ever happens, I’m never letting Emma in a car again. I can see it now—her, at six years old, telling a robot to take her to the zoo instead of school.”
The image is so clear and perfect I laugh into his sweater. “Your turn. What’s your prediction? What big thing will happen in the year 1995?”
He considers it. I can feel him thinking, the slight shift of his muscles. “Phones,” he says, with absolute conviction. “Tiny little phones you can fit in your pocket. But they’ll be different because they’ll have…I don’t know, games on them. Or address books. Something.”
“A phone in your pocket? What, like the size of a walkie-talkie?”
“No, smaller. But it’ll act more like a computer, maybe?”
I pull back just enough to give him a skeptical look. “In our pockets? Leo, a car phone is the size of a brick and half as heavy. You think they’re going to somehow shrink the world into a pocket-sized box? That’s definitely the champagne talking.”
“I’m serious,” he says, his eyes catching the faint light from the window.
They’re lit with a spark I’ve come to recognize—part logic, part wild-eyed dreamer.
He sits up a little, his hand leaving my shoulder to gesture vaguely in the space between us.
“Think about calculators. The one my dad had on his desk when I was a kid was a monster. Now you get one at the bank for free, thin as a cracker. They’re already figuring out how to put more power into less space. ”
I watch his face, the earnest lines around his mouth. He believes this. “But a phone is different,” I say, playing devil’s advocate, mostly because I love watching him think out loud. “It’s not just circuits. It’s a…a whole system.”
“Exactly!” He points at me, as if I’ve just proven his point.
“A system. And systems are all about integration. Putting functions together that used to be separate. So why not a phone? It doesn’t just have to make calls.
If you can put a processor and memory into something the size of a deck of cards, why not give it a little screen, a little keyboard?
Let it store your numbers. You could even play a game of solitaire while you’re waiting for the bus. ”
He says it with such simple, unshakable logic. To him, it’s not magic; it’s just the next, obvious step in a sequence he already understands. The champagne isn’t talking. This is pure Leo.
“A game of solitaire,” I repeat slowly, a smile tugging at my lips. “On a phone.”
“Sure. Or checkers. Or a calendar.” He shrugs, as if it’s the most mundane prediction in the world.
“The pieces are all there. They just need to…click together. And the way things are going?” He lets out another low breath, a mix of awe and professional respect.
“It’s not 1975 anymore. Things are gonna start moving. ”
He leans back against the cushions, pulling me with him, his momentary fervor cooling into contentment. “It might not happen this year. But it will soon. You watch.”
I rest my head back on his chest, listening to the sure, steady rhythm of his heart.
In his world of blueprints and microchips, the future is a puzzle he can already see the edges of.
In mine, it’s a warmer, softer mystery. But as I close my eyes, I can almost picture it—a slim, impossible little device, beeping in the pocket of his worn-out jeans.
A tiny piece of the future, dreamed up in our present, in this quiet, creaking house on a winter night.
He presses a kiss to the side of my head. “I don’t know what’s coming. I don’t know if we’ll be living in a world of pocket-computers or if we’ll all be driving robotic cars. But I know I’m glad I get to figure it out with you.”
“Me too,” I whisper.
Outside, a car rolls slowly down the salted street, its headlights painting a brief, sweeping arc across the ceiling before fading.
The apartment settles around us, this old, creaking vessel holding our new, quiet life.
Leo’s breathing evens out against my hair.
My own eyes grow heavy, not with exhaustion, but with a profound, settled fullness.
From the chaos of being a woman who ran away, and ran straight into her own life.
From a name that never fit to one called out in a kitchen, in a laugh, in the dark.
From being so desperately alone to building this, brick by unglamorous brick—a home made of laundry piles and inside jokes, and this, right here.
The future is a wide, unknown territory. There might be robotic cars or pocket phones or maybe just better popcorn. There will still be scraped knees and parent-teacher conferences and arguments over bills. There will be time, moving fast, always too fast.
But we’ll be facing it head on. Together.
I understand, then, that this is the thing no one tells you about finding your way home. It isn’t a place on a map. It isn’t a name you’re given or a name you choose. It isn’t even the man whose arms are around you, though he is the clearest signpost you’ll ever get.
Home is the moment you stop running. It’s the breath you take when you realize you don’t have to search any longer. It’s the quiet, the solid, the now. It’s the future, not as something to outrun, but as a promise you finally believe you’ll get to keep.
The century is turning soon. The world is speeding up. But here, in the quiet dark, time stretches out, slow and generous. It gives us this. It gives us more.
Leo’s heartbeat under my ear is the only clock I need. The rest of it—the years, the changes, the unknown world rushing in—we will meet together. We have time.
We have all the time in the world.