Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
She shook her head. “It feels rewarding to have helped, but in truth, I did very little. Pilar is the one who kept the novel safe this entire time, who risked so much. She’s an incredible woman.
Pilar and Evita both are. Eva was, too. Bennett is incredibly proud of his grandmother as he should be.
They’re all still in there talking. They sort of hit it off.
Pilar and Evita are telling him all about Cuba, about Eva. ”
“What are they going to do with the book?” Luke asked.
“They talked about the future Eva would have wanted for it. Bennett is going to find someone to publish it. He wants his grandmother’s words to be read and for the story to be heard.
Pilar is going to write an introduction to the new edition.
Both Bennett and Evita thought she was the right person to do it, to tell the rest of the story and the extraordinary part she played in it as well. ”
“Bennett’s not worried about the publicity anymore?”
“He’s decided this is the best way to honor his grandmother. He suggested donating a portion of the proceeds from the book’s sales to a literacy foundation in honor of Mr. Thornton’s memory.” Margo smiled sadly. “I think he would have liked that.”
“I think so, too.” Luke cast a sidelong look her way. “Are you going to read it? I must admit, considering how much we’ve heard about it, I’m eager to check it out myself.”
“Right? I figured I’ll get a copy as soon as it’s published. It’s with Bennett and his family now. Where it belongs.” She studied him for a moment. “You could have come with me. You were with me every step of the way.”
Luke shook his head. “You know me—I’ve never been one to get as close to the clients as you have. I’m just glad that some semblance of justice was served.”
Margo wrapped her arms around her body, trying to stave off some of the cold. What happened now?
“Mr. Thornton’s memorial service is in a few days,” she said. “Will you come with me?”
“Of course.” He hesitated. “What’s your week like with work?”
She’d taken a couple days off after the attack, but she was already antsy to get back to it, her email piling up with clients she needed to respond to.
“I have a painting I need to track down, a family heirloom that went missing sometime in the early twentieth century. Oh, and Bennett has talked about some other projects for me. Something about Louis XIV chairs.”
“You’re going to keep working with him?”
“I am.”
“You like him.”
Margo smiled. “I think I do. I certainly wouldn’t have predicted that at the start, but he’s grown on me. He seems to care about his family a great deal, seems proud of his legacy—well, besides James Webber. No one seems to think anything of him, rightfully so.
“Oh! I forgot to tell you. I emailed Oliver Reston and called him off the search. He was thoroughly delighted to hear that his family’s publishing house played a role in all of this.
While we were emailing back and forth, he mentioned that there’s a locket that was his mother’s that she had to sell when the family was in dire straits—”
“You’re going to be busy with all these upcoming projects,” Luke mused, a smile playing at his lips.
“It looks like it. Maybe I’ll finally pay off my student loans,” she joked.
“It’s good, though. The work is good.” She turned back, glancing at the restaurant.
“When I saw Pilar hand the book to Bennett, when I saw how much it meant to him, how much history was contained there, I remembered why I got into this job in the first place. It felt like what I do matters in whatever small way.”
“You’re amazing,” Luke said.
Margo flushed.
“No, really. You are. I know you’re going to be busy with all these items you’re hunting down, but do you think you’d have a free night to go to dinner with me?” Luke asked.
Something fluttered in the vicinity of her chest. “Are you asking me on a date?”
Luke laughed, the sound rich and full, wafting over her. “Yes—I’m asking you out on a date. I thought I’d take you to dinner—you pick, whatever you like. And then, in the interest of full transparency, I must admit that I’ll probably try to convince you to come back to my place.”
“It won’t take much convincing,” she admitted.
“No?”
Margo shook her head.
“Good.”
“Are we really doing this again?” she asked. “After everything? We’re divorced.”
“We are. Although I doubt we’re the only divorced couple to give it a go again.”
“How can we expect different results this time? We’ve been through this before, and we know where it ends up.”
“Maybe,” Luke replied. “Maybe we’ll find ourselves running into the same problems we faced the first time. But we’re older now. Wiser, I hope. More experienced, certainly.”
“I don’t know that I’ll ever be the kind of wife who cooks dinners and does laundry. I’m a domestic disaster.”
He laughed. “I can do my own laundry. And I don’t mind doing the cooking sometimes. There’s always delivery and takeout.”
“I don’t know that I ever want to be a mother. And my job—my job matters to me. I’m proud of the company I’ve built.”
“I know that, too,” Luke replied. “And I understand now. When we first got married, I thought there was some sort of blueprint we needed to follow, a series of steps that we would climb through life. And I didn’t consider the fact that those steps might not be right for us .
We don’t need to worry about being someone else’s image of what marriage should look like.
We’ll just agree to do what works for us. ”
“This time I know what’s on the other side if this doesn’t work, know what it feels like to lose you,” Margo said, her heart thundering wildly.
“Can I survive it? Yes. But I don’t want to.
I don’t want to spend another day of my life without you in it, and I don’t think you do, either.
So, I’d like to try. To work on the parts of our relationship that didn’t work before, to find a middle ground between us.
To fit our lives together. I love you. I’ve always loved you.
I never stopped, not even for a moment.”
Those words still terrified her. Maybe they always would. But given the examples of bravery she’d just seen in these extraordinary women, it didn’t seem like a time for fear.
“I love you, too.” Luke grabbed her hand. “Can I walk you home?”
She nodded. He started walking, and then he stopped, placing his arms around her.
Something wet landed on her head.
Margo glanced up, just as the first few flurries of snow began to fall from the sky.
She laughed, pressing her lips to Luke’s, kissing him on the busy London sidewalk, and this time she didn’t mind the snow at all.
They walked on, past the shops decorated for Christmas, through the throngs of tourists and Londoners alike all trying to make their way in the city.
They turned the corner, a bookshop up ahead on the right.
Margo stopped, struck by the memory of Mr. Thornton handing her the mystery set in Barcelona, remembering how good it had felt that night to curl up in bed and read, to sink into a book that carried her away for a few hours.
The way Pilar had spoken about A Time for Forgetting …
Margo had never found a book like that, one that meant so much to her, the kind of read that she knew would stay with her for the rest of her life, but she wanted to.
She always did like a challenge.
“I want to stop in here for a moment,” she said to Luke.
He nodded, following her inside the shop.
Margo must have walked by this bookshop ten, twenty times, but she’d never come inside before. It was a cozy space, filled with customers perusing the books on tables, others reading in chairs positioned at various intervals in the shop.
A bookseller walked over to them, a wide, welcoming smile on her face.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” Margo replied. “I’m looking for a book.”