Epilogue
LEAH
I was in the bathroom, in a navy dress, when Julian came out of the closet, half-buttoned.
The dress was one I had bought myself. Simple. Knee-length. Sleeveless. My hair was down. I wore it down now. The watch was on the inside of my left wrist.
I moved in two months ago.
Half my boxes were still unpacked because Julian kept getting distracted by what was inside them.
He had found my behavioral psychology textbooks the second weekend and had spent an entire Saturday afternoon reading passages aloud in the voice of a Shakespearean actor until I had thrown a pillow at his head from across the room.
"We're going to be late."
He was behind me in the bathroom mirror with his arms wrapping around my waist and his chin coming to rest on my shoulder. The white shirt was open at the collar. His sandy hair was damp from the shower. He had not put his jacket on yet.
"We are always late, Julian. That is your fault."
"You say that like it is a bad thing."
He kissed the side of my neck.
"Get dressed. I am going to start the car."
"You can't start the car. You don't have the keys."
"Don't make me start without you."
I pushed him toward the closet. He went, smiling.
I walked through the living room while he changed.
The sketches were on the wall. Framed. Every one of them.
The twelve-story building with too many windows.
The bridge over the river he had never been to.
The doorway that led nowhere. I had made him do it.
He had argued they were not finished. I had told him, “Nothing ever is.” He had taken three of them down to the framer the next morning and brought back twelve.
My plant was on the windowsill next to his vinyl shelf. The new leaf at the top of the stem was the size of my thumbnail now. My nonfiction books were stacked at the end of his Coltrane row. Two lives that should not have fit in the same apartment, fitted.
My badge was in the drawer by the front door.
I still carried it. The conduct review had cleared me — Julian's cooperation had produced more evidence than any subpoena would have, and the case against Conrad had been airtight, and Harlow had written the cover memo herself.
The violation had stood. I had lost undercover certification. I would never be someone else again.
I stayed at the Bureau. Analyst track. Case strategy. Eventually, the handler asked if I wanted it. Harlow told me at the review that I would be good at it. I told her I would think about it. I was still thinking.
I thought I would miss the covers.
I did not miss the covers.
He drove. His right hand was on my knee on the FDR, and his left hand was on the wheel. The late June light was coming in through the windshield in long slanted bars across both of us.
"Declan texted me three times about the wine."
"I have it."
"Where."
"In the back."
I twisted to look in the back seat. There was no wine in the back seat. There was a Vanguard tote bag, a stack of architectural reference books I had not seen him open, and a box of crackers that I had been telling him to throw away.
"Julian."
"I have it. I will get it on the way."
"You forgot."
"I did not forget. I have a stop to make."
"Mhm."
He squeezed my knee. I put my hand on top of his. He laced his fingers through mine and lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles without taking his eyes off the road.
"How was your day?"
I told him. The new case on my desk was a financial-fraud ring operating through a chain of pharmaceutical companies across three states. The architecture was layered. The shells were patterned.
"You sound excited, Cal."
"I sound interested. There is a difference."
"There is no difference. Not with you."
I looked out the window so he would not see me smile.
He stopped at the wine shop on Tenth. He left the engine running. I waited in the car with my phone in my lap.
A text from Mrs. Alvarez. A photograph of a casserole dish under foil with the caption: For your skinny boyfriend, tell him to eat.
I told Mrs. Alvarez about Julian a month after I moved out of the apartment above hers. I brought him over for Sunday dinner. She fed him three plates of rice and beans, told me he was too skinny but his eyes were kind, and made him promise to come back. He had charmed her in eleven minutes.
The same eleven minutes it had taken him to hire Claire Kent.
He came out of the wine shop with two bottles in a paper bag. He set them on the back seat and got in.
"Two."
"One for tonight. One for next time. Declan likes a backup."
I looked at him.
"You did plan it."
"I plan everything."
"You plan nothing."
"I plan this."
He pulled out into traffic.
Declan opened the door of the brownstone with Lena on his hip.
She had grown. She was a year and eight months old, and her dark hair was down to her shoulders now. She was wearing a yellow dress with a juice stain on the front. She looked at me with grave brown eyes, and then she lifted both her arms toward Julian.
"Up."
Julian handed me the wine bag and lifted her off Declan's hip.
"Lena. We talked about this. You are supposed to greet me with extreme enthusiasm."
She put her hand flat on his cheek.
"Up."
"You are up."
"Up."
Declan grinned. He pulled me into a hug. He smelled like aftershave and the rosemary dish Thea was cooking from the kitchen down the hall.
"Leah."
"Declan."
"You look beautiful. Get inside."
Nolan was in the living room in a charcoal sweater with the sleeves pushed up.
Soleil was beside him on the couch, dark curls down her back, in a pale yellow dress I had seen once at the gallery opening she had brought me to in March.
They both stood up when we came in. Soleil came across and hugged me. Nolan kissed me on both cheeks.
"Leah."
"Reeves."
"You are here on time for once."
"That is your brother's fault, not mine."
He almost smiled.
Thea came out of the kitchen in an apron with flour on the hem, her red hair half up, and the wooden spoon in her hand. She kissed Julian on the cheek. She kissed me. She put one hand on the side of my face.
"You look good, Leah."
"So do you."
"Sit. Drink. Declan made me put the cheese plate out, and he has been eating it the entire time."
"I have been managing the cheese plate."
"He has been eating it."
We sat. The table was big enough for all of us. Julian was beside me. Soleil was across from me with Nolan beside her and Lena in a high chair at the corner, picking apart a roll. Declan was at the head with Thea on his right.
I had been here three times now. The first time was a brunch a month after the arrest, when Julian brought me, with the careful posture of a man unsure how the room would receive me. The room had received me. Soleil had hugged me at the door. Thea had asked me about my plant.
Nolan had nodded once and said, "You saved his life, Leah. You are family”. I did not know what to do with the word.
I knew what to do with it now.
Julian's hand found my thigh under the table.
Soleil leaned forward across the cheese plate.
"Tell me about the new case."
"You know I cannot share details."
"Tell me the shape. I love the shapes."
I told her the shape. Pharmaceutical chain. Shell companies layered through three states. Patterns I was untangling from a desk for the first time in three years and had forgotten how much I liked. Soleil listened.
Across the table, Thea was asking Julian about the firm.
"Smaller. Leaner. Still rebuilding." His thumb moved on my thigh. "We finished the personnel audit last month. Ten people had to go. Two of them were Conrad's. The other eight had been compromised in ways they did not even know."
"And the SEC?"
"They wrote the consent decree. Penalties were real. The voluntary disclosure made the difference. We are clean on the books for the first time in twelve years."
He said it without the grin.
Declan stood up. He had a champagne flute in his hand and one fork tap on the side of it, and the whole table went quiet. Thea was looking at him with a small smile. She already knew what he was about to say.
"Alright. Two minutes. I promise."
"He is lying," Julian said into my ear.
I almost laughed.
"Invitations are going out next week."
The table erupted.
Soleil clapped. Lena clapped because Soleil was clapping. Nolan said "finally" into his glass.
Julian put his free hand on his chest in mock outrage and said, "I am the best man, or I am burning this building down."
Declan said, "Obviously, Jules."
Thea kissed him on the cheek, and Lena kicked her high chair against the leg of the table.
I sat with Julian's hand still on my thigh, and I watched it.
Declan with his hand on the back of Thea's chair. Soleil reaching up to fix the fold of Nolan's collar. Lena dropping a piece of bread on the floor. Julian beside me, laughing at something Nolan had just said, his sandy hair pushed back from his face.
These were people who knew my name.
Not one of them had met Claire Kent.
They had all met Leah Calder.
They had kept her.
He drove us home.
The night was warm through the open windows. The avenue was quiet. He was driving with one hand on the wheel and the other on my thigh, and he was quiet.
I reached for the radio. He swatted my hand. He plugged his phone in instead.
"Absolutely not, Julian."
"My car."
"My ears."
He turned it up. I turned it down. He looked at me at the red light at Twenty-Third with his hand still on my thigh and the ridiculous jazz coming through the speakers and his hair a little messy.
"I love you."
I looked at him.
He said it so plainly and normally that it didn’t sound like a confession at all. We were driving home from dinner, and I was fighting him over music. The light was about to turn green, and his thumb was on the inside of my knee, and the jazz was coming through the speakers.
"I love you too."
It was not easy.
It was easier.
A muscle I had been training.
He pulled into the garage.
The apartment was warm when we came in. He locked the door. He put the second bottle of wine in the rack by the kitchen. He crossed to the turntable and dropped the needle on something soft — not the jazz, the Bill Evans we had decided was the apartment record.
I crossed to the kitchen counter. I looked at the wall behind the couch.
The bullet hole was gone.
It had been patched and painted by a man Declan had sent over with a small toolbox. You could no longer see it unless you knew where to look. I knew where to look. I always knew where to look.
He came up behind me with two glasses of wine. He handed me one.
The right bottle. The one Declan had wanted.
"You planned that."
"I plan everything, Leah."
"You plan nothing. That is why you hired me."
"Best eleven minutes of my life."
I took the wine.
I looked around the apartment.
The sketches on the wall. The plant on the windowsill.
His records. My books on the shelf beside them.
The framed photograph of Lena that Thea had given us was on the desk where the loose sketches had been.
The life we were building in this space that had once held one person who had kept everything in drawers.
He came up behind me. His arms wrapped around my waist. He set his chin on my shoulder.
I leaned back into him.
"What are you thinking?"
I turned my head a quarter-inch toward him.
"Julian."
I said his name.
Simply that. Not like an assistant murmuring to her boss in the morning corridor. Not like a case file naming a mark across a desk. But like a woman claiming the man she'd chosen to hold onto.
I thought about doors.
Three of them. All different.
All unlocked.