25. Chapter 25
Jade
Iris goes down for her nap at twelve-forty-five with both owls and a glass of water and the small amber nightlight she likes even though it is the middle of the day.
I sit on the edge of her bed for a few minutes after her breathing slows, watching the rise and fall of her ribs under the duvet. I have looked at her like this maybe a thousand times in the last three months. Today is the first day I am looking at her knowing that no one is coming to take her.
I press my palm against the mattress for a beat. Then I get up and walk down the hall to our bedroom, where I know, without looking, my husband is waiting.
He is sitting on the edge of the bed in his suit pants and a white undershirt, his jacket folded over the chair. His tie is gone. His hair is a mess from his hand. He looks up when I come in, his face the face of a man who has been holding his breath for ten minutes.
I close the door. I cross the room. I stop in front of him.
He stays sitting, his hands on his knees, his eyes on my face. I can see the pulse at the side of his throat moving.
Last night, I told him in the dark. The dark made it easier. The dark let me say I think I'm pregnant without watching his face do anything in particular. The dark gave both of us a place to put the words where neither of us had to be brave about them yet.
This is not the dark.
"Hi."
"Hi."
"Now."
"Now."
I take his hand. I press it flat against the curve of my abdomen, above the waistband of the navy skirt. His palm is broad enough to span the whole thing. He doesn't move. His eyes don't leave my face.
There is nothing for him to feel. There is no curve, no shift in geography. There is only my skin under the silk and his palm pressed to it and the fact that we both know what is under his hand even though neither of us can prove it from the outside.
"Last night, I told you in pieces in the dark. I want to tell you in full daylight. Four weeks. Maybe five. The doctor will date it at six when I go. My routine fell apart over those weeks, the chaos of the hearing, Iris's crises, the board prep, all of it, and it's what it is."
I stop. I take a breath.
"I haven't been to the clinic yet. I will go this week. I am telling you again, with my eyes open and yours open, because I want this to be a thing we said in the day, not just the dark."
He is quiet for a beat. His thumb moves once against the silk of my skirt.
"Are you happy."
"I am scared. I am also happy. Both things are true at the same time. They were last night. They are both still true today. I just wanted to say it where there's a window."
"Okay."
"What about you."
He closes his eyes. He keeps his hand where it is. He breathes in, slow, and out, slower.
"I am terrified. And yes. I am also happy. Both things are true at the same time. I have been terrified and happy in some combination for twenty-four hours straight, and I have a feeling that ratio is going to be the rest of my life."
I lower myself to sit beside him. He doesn't let go of me. He slides his hand around to the small of my back and pulls me against his side, and we sit there while the lake light comes through the window.
"Four of us."
"Four of us."
We sit in the quiet for a long time.
His thumb moves once on my hip. Then again. He is working up to something.
"Jade."
"Yeah."
"There's a thing Pierce told me. From the proffer room. I didn't tell you. I should have."
I wait.
"When the liaison asked Christopher what you were to him, in the plan. What you were for. He said a useful angle. He said it like that. The liaison wrote it down."
I take that in. I take it in slowly because it isn't a surprise, exactly. I knew the shape of it the night Tiffany drove hours to look at me. I just didn't have the word.
"Useful angle."
"Useful angle. I have been carrying that since Pierce told me. I didn't want it in any room you were in. But you should know, because it's in a federal record now and one day a reporter is going to find it, and I want you to hear it from me before you hear it from anyone else."
I turn my face up to his.
"I stayed anyway."
"I know."
"I stayed past the contract. Past the file. Past Tiffany on the sidewalk and a tabloid with my name and I stayed past a courtroom. I am still staying. He can call it whatever he wants in whatever room he wants. He does not get to name what this is."
Graham closes his eyes. He puts his forehead against mine.
"No, he does not."
The morning after, I make the call.
I call my mother from the kitchen with the sun coming in flat across the lake.
"Mija."
"It's over, Mama. We won. She's ours."
She is quiet for a long beat. I can hear her breathing on the other end. The small rattle that has been there for two years.
"Then I will say a prayer for that judge and one for the lawyer and one for you. In that order."
"Mama."
"What."
I look at Graham across the kitchen. He is at the island with his coffee, watching me. He nods once.
"Graham wants to talk to you."
A pause. The kind my mother does when she is rearranging her face before she speaks. "Put him on."
I hand Graham the phone. He sets his coffee down. He doesn't pace. He stands still in the middle of the kitchen, a man about to ask for something that matters.
"Maria. It's Graham." A beat. "I am calling because the hearing is over and the house is safe and your daughter is going to need you for the next few months in a way she is not going to ask for.
I would like you to come stay with us. As long as you want.
The guest room is ready. We have a doctor in town.
Voss will drive in tomorrow and bring you. "
He listens. His jaw moves once.
"I understand. Yes, ma'am." A pause. "Wednesday is fine. Voss will be at your door at three."
He hands the phone back. I take it.
"Mija."
"Yes, Mama."
"I will come. For now. We will see."
"For now."
"I am bringing one bag. Do not have him send a moving truck. I am not yet that woman."
"Yes, Mama."
She hangs up first.
Graham picks up his coffee. He looks at me over the rim of the mug.
"She'll be here Wednesday."
"She'll be here Wednesday."
Two days later, on a Friday, his phone vibrates on the kitchen counter while we are both making lunch.
Graham glances at the screen, then at me. I nod. He answers and puts it on speaker.
"Pierce."
"Unanimous. February."
Graham sets the knife down. He looks at the lake through the window.
"Six thousand jobs."
"Six thousand jobs, Graham. The board cleared it this morning. The Ainsworth people called twenty minutes ago. They want the ceremonial signing in the city in early February. I told them you'd be there or I'd be there. They didn't care which."
"Tell them I'll be there."
"Good." A pause on the line. "Two other things while I have you.
The Whitlock civil matter is moving. They're settling.
Beatrice resigned from her boards last week.
Three of them. The fourth one accepted her resignation before she sent it.
Their attorney called me Tuesday and asked, off the record, whether you'd consider a non-disclosure on the settlement amount.
I told him you wouldn't. He didn't argue. "
Graham doesn't say anything.
"And Halloway. She's taking early retirement. Effective the end of the month. The bridge club business made it untenable. The appellate panel was going to call her in the spring regardless, and she knows it. She'll keep her pension. That's the only thing she's keeping."
"Good."
"That's the whole report, Graham. Eat lunch. Call me Monday."
The call ends.
Graham sets the phone face-down on the counter. He picks up the knife and finishes slicing the bread. He doesn't look at me right away. He doesn't have to.
The Whitlocks are settling. Beatrice has resigned from her boards. Halloway is gone by the end of the month. The merger closes in February. Six thousand jobs.
That is the end of the war, said out loud in a kitchen on a Friday afternoon.
I cross the kitchen and stand behind him with my arms around his waist. I press my face between his shoulder blades. He covers my hands with his against his stomach and we stand there. The bread half-sliced on the cutting board.
"It's done."
"It's done."
"Eat lunch first."
"Eat lunch first."
That afternoon, after Iris is back in school and the lunch dishes are done, he takes me down to the dock.
The sun is setting earlier now. Late November in Linden Lake means the light goes gold against the water by four, and the cold off the lake has bite. I have a wool coat over my sweater. He has no coat. He doesn't seem to feel it.
We stop at the end of the dock and stand side by side, watching the light move across the water.
He turns to me. He doesn't say anything. He just brings his hand around and presses it flat against my stomach, over the wool, over the place where his palm has been pressed once before today.
He keeps it there.
I cover his hand with mine.
The light goes from gold to copper. A duck, not Greg, paddles past the pylon and disregards us entirely.
Tomorrow my mother will be here. Tomorrow we will have dinner at our table with her at one end, and I will have to introduce her to a granddaughter who is six and a half years old and has been waiting for an Abuela without knowing it.
Tomorrow.
Today is just this.
"Sterling."
"Mm."
"Your hand is cold."
"Yes."
"You don't have a coat."
"I noticed."
"Come inside."
"In a minute."
We stand there one more minute. His hand on me. Mine on his. The lake going to dark blue at the edges. The end of the war and the beginning of whatever this is.
Then we go in.