EPILOGUE — FULL CIRCLE
EVIE
One Year Later
The daycare smells like finger paint and graham crackers.
I stand in the doorway of my classroom—my classroom, still strange after eight months—and watch the controlled chaos unfold.
Tiny humans swarm around activity stations, their voices a constant hum of excitement and occasional conflict.
In the corner, two four-year-olds are negotiating the terms of a crayon-sharing agreement.
Near the window, a five-year-old is explaining to his captive audience why dinosaurs are better than dragons.
At the art table, a little girl with pigtails is painting something that might be a horse or might be a spaceship.
With preschoolers, you never really know.
In the teachers' lounge across the hall, the small wall-mounted TV hums with the midday news, the volume low but the headlines unmistakable: FORMER SENATOR HARMON SENTENCED TO LIFE.
I catch a glimpse of the former Senator being led away in shackles, his "marble smile" finally shattered.
The broadcast scrolls through the highlights of the "Bureau Cleanup"—the systemic purging of the Sacramento field office and the federal indictments of the agents who sold their souls to the Consortium.
It took a year of depositions and a trial that gripped the state, but the cage has been dismantled from the top down. I don't linger on the screen. The monsters are behind bars, and for the first time in my life, I don't need to watch the news to feel safe.
"Miss Evie!" A small body crashes into my legs. Marcus, age four, perpetually sticky, possessor of the world's most infectious giggle. "Rosie's mom is here!"
"I see that." I ruffle his hair and look up to find Sera in the doorway, looking harried but happy. "Hey, you. Early pickup?"
"Birthday party prep." Sera rolls her eyes. "Rosie has very specific opinions about the placement of streamers. I've been informed that last year's configuration was 'not optimal.'"
"She's six—seven. Where does she learn words like 'optimal'?"
"She's been spending too much time with Mitzy."
That tracks. Rosie has adopted Guardian HRS headquarters as her second home, and the operatives have adopted her right back.
CJ taught her chess last month. Angel let her sit in the helicopter cockpit.
And Mitzy has been teaching her words that a seven-year-old definitely doesn't need to know, despite Sera's protests.
"AUNT EVIE!"
The blur that launches itself at me is significantly taller than a year ago, but the enthusiasm is unchanged. Rosie wraps her arms around my waist and squeezes with the ferocious strength of a child who loves without reservation.
"Hey, birthday girl." I hug her back just as fiercely. "Ready for the big day?"
"I'm going to be SEVEN." She says it like seven is a mythical achievement, a summit most mortals never reach. "That's almost double digits."
"Math checks out."
"Jon said he's bringing a surprise." Her eyes go wide. "Do you know what it is? Is it a puppy? I asked for a puppy. Mom said no, but Jon doesn't always listen to Mom."
"Jon definitely listens to your mom." I crouch down to her level. "And I don't know what the surprise is. He wouldn't tell me."
This is a lie. I know exactly what the surprise is. But some secrets are worth keeping.
"Okay, munchkin." Sera swoops in, scoops Rosie up. "Say goodbye to Miss Evie. We'll see her at the party."
"Bye, Miss Evie!" Rosie waves over her mother's shoulder as Sera carries her toward the door. "Don't be late. The cake is chocolate.”
"I wouldn't miss it."
They disappear down the hallway, Rosie's chatter fading into the general hum of the building. I turn back to my classroom, where Marcus is now explaining to another child that sharing crayons is "actually really important, okay?"
The Guardian HRS daycare center opened six months ago.
Skye's idea—she saw how many operatives had kids, how hard it was to balance missions with childcare, and she made it happen.
When they offered me the director position, I laughed.
When they showed me the facility—purpose-built, fully funded, staffed by people who understood that the parents dropping off these children might not come home—I cried.
It's not a kindergarten classroom. It's something better. Something that matters in a different way.
My phone buzzes. A text from Jon: Leaving now. Don't let them start without me.
I smile and type back: Wouldn't dream of it.
The party is in full swing by the time I arrive.
Sera's backyard has been transformed into a butterfly-themed wonderland—Rosie's choice, a callback to the backpack that saw her through the worst day of her life.
Paper butterflies hang from the trees. The tablecloths are purple and pink.
Even the cake is shaped like a butterfly, its wings spread wide, frosted in colors that probably don't exist in nature.
"Aunt Evie.” Rosie spots me from across the yard and comes running, party dress streaming behind her. "You came.”
"Of course I came." I catch her, swing her around. "I told you I wouldn't miss it."
"Jon's not here yet." Her lower lip threatens a pout. "He promised he'd be here."
"He'll be here. He's never broken a promise to you, has he?"
She considers this with the gravity of a Supreme Court justice. "No. He hasn't."
"Then trust him."
"Okay." The pout disappears, replaced by a megawatt smile. "Come see my presents.”
She drags me toward a table piled with wrapped boxes, chattering about which ones she thinks are books and which ones might be toys.
I'm only half-listening, because a familiar truck has just pulled into the driveway, and the man stepping out of it makes my heart do the same stupid flip it's been doing for a year.
Jon crosses the yard in easy strides. He's carrying something behind his back—poorly hidden, too big for his hands—and his grin is the one I've come to know as his "I have a secret" grin.
"Sorry I'm late, birthday girl." He crouches down to Rosie's level. "Traffic was terrible."
"You're always late." But she's beaming at him, all forgiveness. "What's behind your back?"
"Who says anything's behind my back?"
"Jon." She puts her hands on her hips, a perfect miniature of her mother. "I can SEE it."
"Oh, this?" He pulls out the bouquet—sunflowers, bright and cheerful, wrapped in purple ribbon to match the party theme. "These are for you. Because your Aunt Evie told me that's what friends who are boys are supposed to bring girls for their birthday.”
Rosie's eyes go wide. "For ME?"
"For you. Happy birthday, sweetheart."
She takes the flowers with the reverence usually reserved for holy relics. For a moment, I think she might actually cry. Then she throws her arms around Jon's neck, bouquet and all, and squeezes.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
Over her shoulder, Jon catches my eye. The grin softens into something private. Something that's just for us.
You remembered, I mouth.
I always remember, he mouths back.
Later, after cake and presents and an elaborate game of freeze dance, I find myself on Sera's back porch, watching the chaos wind down. The sun is setting, painting the sky in shades of gold that remind me of a different sunset, a different deck, a moment that changed everything.
Jon drops into the chair beside me, two beers in hand. He passes one over without asking.
"Good party."
"The best." I take a sip, let the cold settle. "She loved the flowers."
"I had good advice." His hand finds mine on the armrest, fingers interlacing. "A very wise six-year-old once told me that's what boyfriends do."
"She's seven now."
"So she is." He's quiet for a moment, watching Rosie chase fireflies across the lawn. "Hard to believe it's been a year."
"I know." I lean into him, let his warmth seep through me. "A year ago, I was in a cabin in the mountains, counting ceiling knots and trying to figure out if the men guarding me were going to kill me."
"And now?"
"Now I run a daycare for the children of special operations personnel, I'm dating a man who carries a gun and makes terrible jokes, and I just watched my goddaughter open presents at a birthday party that didn't end in anyone's death." I smile. "Life is weird."
"Life is good." He presses a kiss to my temple. "At least, mine is."
I turn to look at him. A year of mornings waking up beside him. A year of dinners and arguments and makeup sex and quiet moments exactly like this one. A year of learning each other's wounds and loving each other anyway.
"Jon."
"Yeah?"
“I’ll never forget you saved me.”
He pulls back slightly, brow furrowing. "I think you've got that backward. You're the one who climbed a cliff and pulled my ass up behind you."
"That's not what I mean." I set down my beer and take his face in my hands. "You saved me. Not from the cartel—from the cage I'd built for myself. You looked at all the parts of me I thought were too much, and you didn't run. You stayed."
His eyes are soft in the fading light. "Evie—"
"I spent years thinking I had to hide. That the real me was too wild, too intense, too much for anyone to love. And then you showed up in a cabin at dawn and told me to trust my gut." My thumb traces his cheekbone. "You gave me permission to be myself. All of myself. That's not nothing."
He's quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is rough.
"You saved me too, you know."
"Did I?"
"I was drowning. Had been for years. Going through the motions, cracking jokes, pretending the weight wasn't crushing me.
" His hand covers mine on his face. "Then I met a woman who threw a rock at an armed soldier and asked me to trust her on a cliff face.
And somewhere between the rock and the climb and the crevice—" He stops.
Swallows. "You gave me something to live for. Something beyond the mission."
I kiss him. Soft and slow and full of everything I can't put into words.
When we break apart, Rosie is standing at the edge of the porch, watching us with the knowing expression of a child who's seen too much and understood more than she should.
"Are you guys going to get married?"
Jon chokes on air. I laugh.
"Maybe someday," I tell her. "Would that be okay with you?"
She considers this with exaggerated seriousness. "Only if I get to be the flower girl."
"Deal."
"And I want to wear a purple dress."
"Absolutely."
"And Jon has to bring flowers. Because that's what—"
"What boyfriends do." Jon pulls her into his lap and tickles her until she shrieks. "Yeah, yeah. I know the rules."
Sera appears in the doorway, shaking her head but smiling. "Rosie, it's time to say goodbye to the guests."
"But Mom…”
"No buts. Go."
Rosie goes, but not before planting a sticky kiss on Jon's cheek and extracting a promise from me that I'll come back tomorrow.
Then it's just the two of us again, the sunset fading into twilight, fireflies blinking in the growing dark.
"So," Jon says. "Marriage, huh?"
"Apparently, we need a purple dress and flowers."
"I can work with that." He pulls me closer, tucks me against his side. "Someday?"
I think about a year ago. A cabin. A cliff. A crevice where everything changed. I think about all the somedays that seemed impossible then and turned out to be real.
"Yeah," I say. "Someday."
His smile is the real one. The one underneath all the jokes and armor. The one that's just for me.
"Good."
"Good."
The fireflies dance. The stars come out. And in the backyard where everything once went wrong, everything finally feels right.
Home. Found and forged and chosen.
Home.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Thank you for reading RIOT!