Chapter 29 #2
The silhouette booth was tucked under a tent at the far end of the strip.
A small woman in a wool cape sat behind a stool with scissors and black paper.
She did the three of us in profile in the order Rhea picked, Chloe first because Chloe was prettiest, me second because I was tallest, Rhea third because she would not sit still.
Then Rhea pushed Beom-Beom up onto the stool and announced, with no room for argument, that he also needed one.
The woman looked at the bear. She looked at Rhea. She smiled and cut a fourth.
Somewhere between the caramel apple and the silhouettes, Chloe's hand slid into my coat pocket and found mine.
The ring box was in the other pocket. Her fingers wound through my fingers and my thumb passed over the back of her knuckles where the band would go in twenty minutes, twelve minutes, eight.
She did not know what my thumb was measuring.
I kept my other hand on the box like a small warm engine I needed to keep running.
We drifted south. I did not steer her. I let her drift. She drifted because Rhea had spotted the apple-bobbing booth and was already telling Beom-Beom not to fall in.
They were there. All of them. Lily on Alek's arm in a coat with a fur collar, Mikhail with Sienna tucked into his side, Ivan and Jade standing a step apart from the rest the way Ivan always stood, present and separate at once.
They were arranged like a loose half-circle of people who had simply happened to be in this part of the fairground at the same moment.
Chloe's grandmother stood at the front of them in a coat too big for her shoulders, her small hands tucked into the sleeves, her mouth already trying not to smile.
Jacob stood next to her with his hands in his pockets, his hair cut shorter than the last time I had seen him.
He met my eye over the heads of the rest. He nodded once.
I nodded back. The thing that had stood between us in another year on another lawn was a thing both of us had carried into adulthood and set down.
He had set it down first. I had set it down second. We were even.
I stopped Chloe under the oak. The white lights were strung through the bare branches above our heads. Her face was flushed pink at the cheekbones. The caramel was still at the corner of her mouth.
She looked up at me. She was still laughing about something Rhea had said two minutes ago.
"What are you doing?" she said.
"Something I should have done sooner," I said.
I went down on one knee. The grass was cold through the fabric of my trousers.
The carnival noise dropped away in stages, the band first, then the rustle of people, then the wind in the dry leaves above our heads, until what was left was the small hot space between her hand and mine and the breath she was forgetting to take.
My heart was at the back of my throat. I had not felt it climbing.
I took her hand. The small white scar at my left index knuckle caught the string lights. I had earned that scar in a way I did not regret, because the day I earned it was the day she decided I was hers.
"Chloe Kim," I said. Low. Slow. Real. "I came back to a life I did not remember, and the first thing I knew without anyone telling me was that I belonged to you.
I have loved you with two memories and one heart.
I would like to spend the rest of my life loving you with all three. Will you marry me?"
She was crying. She was laughing. She was shaking her head as if she could not believe what was happening, even though every single person she loved was standing in a half-circle behind her in coats and gloves and tears.
"Yes," she said. Small. Real. Soaked. "Yes, Daniil. Yes."
I slid the ring onto her finger. It fit.
Of course it fit. I kissed the back of her hand.
I kissed her ring finger right over the band.
Behind her, the half-circle of family let out the breath they had been holding all at once, like one body.
The brothers clapped. Mikhail made a noise that was loud and undignified and I would not let him forget it later.
Grandma pressed both hands over her mouth.
I stood. I kissed her. Not for show. For her.
I held her face. I held her there. I let myself have that one. Then I let her go.
I turned. I looked at Rhea.
She was holding Beom-Beom against her chest with both hands. She was smiling so wide it had gone out the top of her face into her eyes. She had not noticed yet that I was about to do it again.
"Rhea," I said. "Come here, please."
She came. Beom-Beom under her arm. The new stuffed fox tucked in her other elbow. She stopped in front of me with grass on the toes of her boots. I went back down. Same knee. Same grass.
"I have asked Chloe to be my wife," I said.
Low. Slow. "There is one more person in my house I want to ask one more thing.
" I let the breath sit. "Rhea. If you say yes, Chloe and I would like to be your parents.
Not on top of what you already have. With what you already have.
I will sign the papers tomorrow. You will be a Sorokin on paper the way you have always been one in my house. "
She stared at me. The smile froze. Her chin trembled. She did not say a thing for one second. For two.
"Like Chloe would be my mom?" she said. Very small.
Chloe was beside me before I felt her move. She was in the grass on her knees. Her hand went onto Rhea's back, gentle.
"If you want me, sweet girl," Chloe said. "Only if you want me."
"I want you," Rhea whispered.
She launched. She hit both of us at the same time and at full speed. Beom-Beom ended up squashed between three chests. The fox went somewhere into the grass. My arm went around her, then around Chloe, and the three of us were one shape on the cold ground under white lights.
"Yes," Rhea said into someone's shoulder, muffled, wet. "Yes."
The half-circle broke. They came forward in the loose, slow way people come forward when they have been waiting for permission to.
Grandma reached us first, her small hands out of her sleeves now, her eyes very bright and very dry in the way of a woman who had used up her crying years on harder things.
She kissed Chloe on the forehead. She kissed Rhea on the forehead.
She turned to me and laid her hand on my cheek for a beat.
Her palm was warm through the cold of the air.
"Bring them all home safe," she said, low, only to me. "Always."
"Always, Halmoni," I said. Just as low.
She patted my cheek once. She moved on.
Mikhail was openly crying and pretending he was not, a thing he was very bad at given the size of his face.
Alek's working blue eye was wet. He did not bother to hide it.
He clapped my shoulder once with the weight of a hand that had hit me a thousand times for a thousand reasons.
Lily kissed Chloe on both cheeks. Jade hugged Rhea without a word.
Ivan looked at his shoes. His shoulders shook once.
He looked up. He nodded at me. That was Ivan's whole sentence and I heard every word of it.
Jacob came up last. He waited until the others had moved off. He held out his hand. I took it. We shook. His grip was solid. Not a test. Just a hand.
"Take care of her," he said. Low. Dry. Real. "She picks her people for life."
"I know," I said.
He nodded. He let go. He stepped back to stand beside the grandmother, laid a hand on her shoulder, and that was the end of a fight that had started a year ago on a lawn in a different town. It had never really been about either of us in the first place.
I had spent years building a fortress and learning to count the people inside it.
Tonight, in the cold grass under a string of small white lights in a town I had never bothered to name, I stood in the middle of my fortress with all of my people around me at once.
I was not counting anymore. I was just holding them.