Epilogue
Harry
I’m home before six.
The table is set and the candles are lit, and dinner is in the oven. I actually learned to cook this year, and it’s more than edible, though Jules still gives me grief about the pasta incident.
My phone is off. It isn’t on silent. It’s off, completely powered down and shoved in a drawer where I can’t even see it. My number two knows not to call, and so does my assistant. The entire company knows that on our anniversary, I don’t exist to anyone but my wife.
I check the oven, and the time, and the oven again.
Then I stand by the door and wait.
A year ago tomorrow, I stood outside a burning building while the only person I’ve ever loved was trapped inside.
A year ago today, my wife waited ninety minutes for me at our restaurant, wondering why I wasn’t there. I was in a parking garage waiting on a tow truck that was never coming.
Tonight, I’m early.
The rebuilt tenth floor has no deadbolts on the outside of any door. That was the first change I made when construction was finished. Every bathroom, every office and every closet was checked, and there is no lock in that building that can trap a person inside.
Avery is someone else’s problem now, somewhere else. I don’t know where and I don’t care. She’s not my responsibility, and she never was.
Jules comes home at 6:15.
She walks through the door with her hair windswept from the drive and her work bag over her shoulder. The foundation keeps her busier than ever these days. The literacy program is on track to hit fifty schools by the end of next year, and she’s been in meetings all week.
She stops when she sees the table and the candles, and me standing by the door as if I’ve been counting the seconds.
“You cooked,” she says.
“I did.”
“And it’s not on fire.”
“Progress.”
She laughs and sets down her bag, and crosses the room to kiss me.
“Happy anniversary,” she says against my mouth.
“Happy anniversary.”
She pulls back, and she looks nervous, which doesn’t fit.
“What?” I ask.
“I have a present for you.”
“Okay.”
She reaches into her bag and pulls out a small box in silver wrapping, with a bow on top.
I take it from her. “Should I be concerned?”
“Just open it.”
I tear off the paper and open the box.
Inside is a pregnancy test, with two lines.
I stare at the box, and the test, and the two lines, and what they mean.
“Jules.”
“Surprise.” Her voice is shaking. “I found out this morning. I was going to wait and find a better way to tell you, but I couldn’t wait.”
I drop the box.
I pick her up and spin her around, and I’m laughing, really laughing, a sound I don’t recognize coming out of my own throat. She’s laughing too, with her arms around my neck and her face buried in my shoulder.
“We’re having a baby,” she says.
“We’re having a baby.”
I set her down and cup her face in my hands.
“You’re happy?” she asks.
“Happy doesn’t begin to cover it.”
I can’t stop touching her. I touch her face and her shoulders, and her stomach, where there’s nothing to see yet, but there will be.
“No more locked doors?” she says.
“No more locked doors.”
I kiss her, long and slow and full of everything I don’t have words for.
Then I scoop her up and carry her to the kitchen counter.
“Harry.” She’s giggling. “The dinner.”
“It can wait.”
“But you cooked.”
“It can wait.”
I set her on the counter and step between her thighs. It’s the same counter where we’ve done this before, and the same counter where I stopped myself on a night when everything was still uncertain.
Nothing is uncertain now.
I slide my hands up her thighs and under her skirt. She’s already shifting forward, trying to pull me closer, and I’m being too careful, with my palm resting over the flat of her stomach without pressing.
“I’m not going to break,” she says.
“I know.”
“Then stop treating me like glass.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Try.”
I go down on my knees right there between her legs.
She laughs, soft and happy, as I push her skirt up around her waist and hook her heels over my shoulders.
I drag her panties down and off, and then I lean in and put my mouth on her pussy the way I did the night it rained, except that tonight nobody is stopping.
She’s warm and already slick. I lick her in long strokes and close my lips around her clit, and her hand finds my hair fast. She giggles at first when I suck, and then the giggle breaks into a gasp.
I keep going, using my tongue exactly the way she likes, until her thighs tighten around my head and she comes with her fist clenched in my hair.
I stand up before she’s finished shaking. She goes for my belt herself, quick and impatient, and I help her get it open and shove my pants down just far enough. I line myself up and push into her slow and deep, with one hand flat on her stomach the whole time.
“You’re going to be insufferable for nine months,” she says, breathless, wrapping her legs around me.
“I’m going to be insufferable for the rest of your life.”
I fuck her in steady, deep strokes, watching her face the entire time.
She pulls me down for a kiss and then tells me harder, and I give it to her.
She comes first, with her pussy gripping me tight and her body pulling me in deeper, and I follow right after, buried all the way inside her with my hand still spread over the place where our baby is growing.
The dinner gets cold, and neither of us notices.
Afterward, we sit on the kitchen floor with our backs against the cabinets, exactly the way we did that night in the rain, when I stopped because I needed her to be sure.
“Three years,” she says.
“Three years.”
“Think we’ll make it to four?”
“I think we’ll make it to fifty.”
She leans her head on my shoulder, and I wrap my arm around her.
We’ve been married three years, and there’s a baby on the way, and I have a future I never let myself imagine when I was a kid sitting on those concrete steps at the children’s home, dreaming of escape.
This is better than escape. This is home.
THE END