Extended Epilogue
Lizanne
Three Years Later
The room held a quiet Lizanne had not encountered before — not silence, but a suspension, the whole world pausing to take stock of itself.
Outside the window the city went on. Inside the room there was only this: eight pounds, four ounces, and the sound of someone brand new deciding the world was acceptable.
Maxwell had been in it for fifty-three minutes.
Lizanne sat against the raised bed with him against her chest and tried to locate words for what she was feeling. She could not. She had spent her career finding words for things and this had none.
Rose sat beside the bed with her hand over Lizanne’s on the blanket. She had been there through all of it, steady and warm and occasionally very funny at moments when funny was exactly what was needed.
The door opened four inches.
Daisy’s face appeared in the gap.
“Is it time?” she said.
“Come in,” Rose said.
Daisy came in with the gravity of a nine-year-old who had decided this moment deserved her full seriousness. She approached the bed and looked at Maxwell.
“He’s very small,” she said.
“He is,” Lizanne said.
Daisy considered this. “Can I hold him?”
“When he’s settled.”
She accepted the terms without negotiation, pulled the corner chair to the bedside, and sat down. She looked at Maxwell with genuine interest.
“What do you think of your sibling? Other than that he’s small?”
“He’s smaller than the other two,” she said, as a statement of fact requiring no response.
She meant Sophia and Benny, Jeremy’s children with his wife. Sophia was five. Benny, eighteen months. Daisy filed reports on both at the Friday calls with the thoroughness of a correspondent filing from the field.
They had made peace, Rose and Jeremy. And Lizanne could not be happier. They’d never be friends, but they agreed on how to raise Daisy, and that was something.
Reality television was long behind them. Gilden Duchess in the New World was in its third season, and Lizanne had found that the work still mattered. Quinn was somewhere in Vancouver filming the second season of a procedural in which he played a forensic accountant.
He and Kayla had married in October in a small ceremony in Ojai. Rose had been her matron of honor while Daisy had served as flower girl again – this time without spilling any. Lizanne had attended as a guest and hadn’t cried.
Regardless of what photographic evidence might suggest.
Rose Delaney Events had not merely survived but expanded. Rose and Kayla, who was a full partner now that Reality TV was behind her, had three associates, a waiting list, a reputation that had long since grown louder than any hint of a long-ago scandal.
Right now, none of that was in the room.
The room held only the four of them.
Lizanne looked at their boy and then at Daisy. Her children. She had children now. Who could have ever imagined such a thing? A few years ago, she’d settled with a woman who had turned out to be a manipulator in every regard.
She hadn’t actually thought about Trina in a long time. The last she’d heard of her was that she’d lost her label after yet another scandal involving … she didn’t even know. Or care.
Pat kept track of such things for her, as Pat always did.
“Hey,” Rose said softly. “Where did you go?”
“Nowhere,” Lizanne said. “I’m right here.”
Rose turned her hand over and laced her fingers through Lizanne’s. Between them Maxwell held his fistful of hospital gown and smiled up at them.
“He’s smiling,” she reported and Daisy looked up.
“He’s too young to smile,” she announced, as though she were an expert on the matter.
“He looks like he’s smiling,” Lizanne insisted.
“He does,” Rose declared. Daisy narrowed her eyes and got up.
Then, she too smiled. “I think he actually is.”
“See?” Lizanne said.
“Think he’ll like the stars as much as we do?” Daisy asked.
“I think so. When he’s old enough, we’ll take him to the planetarium.”
She glanced up at Rose who kissed her cheek.
“I love you,” Rose whispered.
“And I love you,” Lizanne replied.
She sat in the pale light with her family around her — Rose’s hand in hers, Daisy filing her notes, Max warm against her chest — and understood, finally, that she’d finally achieved the one thing she’d always dreamed of. Happiness.
THE END
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