CHAPTER TWENTY
NORA
The anniversary.
She’d thought, for two years, that this date would always be a wound. The specific marker on the calendar that divided things into before and after. She’d approached it every year as a day to get through.
This year it was different.
They were in the Tribeca apartment — Roman’s place, which was slowly becoming a shared place in the specific way of things that happen gradually and then suddenly.
Her drawing table was in the second bedroom.
Felix’s things were accumulating in the corner by the bookshelf.
She’d been finding her objects in his cabinets for three months and not moving them.
He’d bought the wooden train a dedicated shelf.
The Harrington Gala was tonight.
She hadn’t known that when he’d asked if she wanted to do something for New Year’s. She’d said yes without checking the calendar.
When she’d realized, she’d stood in the kitchen for a long moment.
She’d said: “The Harrington Gala is tonight.”
Roman had stilled.
“I know,” he said.
She looked at him.
“Did you know when you asked me?” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
She looked at him.
“Tell me why,” she said.
He met her gaze.
“Because I need to walk into that building with you,” he said.
“Not to fix what happened. It can’t be fixed.
But because — I’ve been walking past that night every day for two years and I need to walk through it once, with you, on the other side of everything.
” He paused. “And I need to do it at midnight.”
She looked at him.
She thought about the midnight-blue dress, which she’d never worn again. She thought about the glass door. She thought about the New Year she’d walked into alone.
She said: “Okay.”
He looked at her.
“Okay?” he said.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll go.”
Felix was with Bea.
They arrived at the Harrington Gala at eleven.
The gala was exactly as she remembered — the specific scale of it, the crowd, the quality of light that said this event is aware of itself. She’d always found it somewhat oppressive. Tonight she let herself feel that and found it didn’t reach her the way it used to.
She was holding Roman’s hand.
He’d taken her hand at the door, not with ceremony — just taken it, the way he took her hand now, with the straightforward possession of someone who’d made a decision about what they were holding onto.
They moved through the room.
She thought about the last time she’d been in this room. The searching. The glass door.
She thought: same building. Different everything.
At eleven-fifty-five he said: “Come with me.”
He took her through the ballroom.
She understood where they were going.
The anteroom. Off the main ballroom. The glass-paneled door.
He stopped outside it.
He looked at her.
“You don’t have to,” he said.
She looked at the door.
She thought about standing outside it. The light inside. The pen in his hand.
She pushed the door open.
The anteroom was empty — just a small room, chairs and a table, the ordinary service corridor it had always been when it wasn’t staging something important.
They stood inside it.
It was just a room.
She breathed.
She thought: it’s just a room.
From the ballroom, she heard the countdown beginning.
Ten. Nine. Eight.
Roman turned to face her.
Seven. Six. Five.
He put his hand on her face.
Four. Three.
He looked at her.
Two. One.
Happy New Year from the ballroom.
He kissed her.
She held onto him.
The New Year arrived around them — the specific quality of midnight, the sound of a room celebrating the turning of the year.
She pressed her forehead to his.
She thought: last time I was here I walked out.
She thought: this time I’m staying.
She said, very quietly: “Next year.”
He understood.
“Next year,” he said.
She pulled back.
She looked at him in the anteroom that had once been the end of something and was now the middle of something else.
She took his hand.
She said: “Let’s go home.”
They left the building.
The New Year was outside — cold and clear, the city doing its midnight thing around them.
She thought about the graphic novel. About the woman in the midnight-blue dress walking out into this air two years ago.
She thought about The Morning Hours — the kitchen table, the morning light, the space between two people that wasn’t empty.
She thought: morning.
She thought: yes.
Roman’s hand was in hers.
Felix was at Bea’s with his wooden trains and his rubber ducks and his two-year-old certainty that the world was organized around his needs, which was correct.
She was exactly where she was supposed to be.
She squeezed his hand.
He squeezed back.
They walked into the New Year together.
—THE END—
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