It’s beautiful. Respectful. Exactly what Georgia always envisioned.
“Dada!”
I look down to find our son, Henry, tugging on my pants. He’s eighteen months old, with Georgia’s brown eyes and my blond hair, and he’s inherited his mother’s stubborn determination.
“Yes, buddy?”
“Up!” He raises his arms imperiously.
I scoop him up, settling him on my hip. He immediately points at the nearest display case. “What dat?”
“That’s pottery. Very old pottery.”
“Old,” he repeats seriously, as if he understands the concept.
Across the room, I spot Georgia talking with the museum director. She’s holding Ella’s hand. Now nearly four years old, Ella is chattering away about something with the intensity only a preschooler can muster. I swear, she’s the most talkative kid I’ve ever known, and her vocabulary is amazing for her age.
If I, who taught her many of those words, do say so myself.
Georgia catches my eye and smiles, and my chest does that thing it’s been doing for nearly three years now. That warm, expanding feeling that I’ve learned means true happiness.
We came back to Jumayah as soon as we could after that day on the beach. Georgia was five months pregnant by then, determined to finish what we started despite my protests that she should rest.
“I’m pregnant, not dying,” she’d said, already directing the team on proper excavation protocols. “And this tomb isn’t going to excavate itself.”
We’d worked carefully, methodically, exactly as she’d wanted from the beginning. When she got too big to crouch in the excavation pit, she supervised from a chair under a canopy, directing operations with the precision of a general commanding troops.
The tomb revealed its secrets slowly. Two bodies, buried together with care and ceremony. The personal items there pointed to high status. There was jewelry, carved figurines, a set of matching bronze mirrors. And inscriptions. Beautiful, poeticinscriptions about eternal love, devotion that transcends death, two souls bound together for all time.
Georgia cried when we translated the texts. I held her in our tent that night, her pregnant belly pressed between us, and felt something profound settle in my chest. These people, dead for thousands of years, had loved each other the way I loved Georgia. Completely. Eternally.
“It’s incredible,” the museum director is saying to Georgia now, his voice carrying across the hall. “The care you took with the documentation. The respect you showed the remains. This is how all archaeology should be done.”
Georgia beams, and I feel a surge of pride. She did this. Her theories, her expertise, her unwavering commitment to doing it right.
Henry was born two months after we completed the excavation, a healthy baby boy we named after Georgia’s mentor. He came into the world screaming his indignation, and, like his sister, hasn’t stopped making his opinions known since.
We spend most of our time in Maine now. The cottage by the sea has become our home base. I work remotely when I need to, fly to New York for crucial meetings, but mostly I’m just… there. Working from our home. Building sandcastles with Ella. Teaching Henry his first words. Watching Georgia work at the kitchen table, simultaneously analyzing pottery shards and making lunch.
It’s nothing like the life I imagined for myself. It’s better.
“Mr. Aarons?” A reporter approaches with a camera crew. “Could we get a few words for the evening news?”
“Of course, but you should really speak with Dr. Halford. She’s the lead archaeologist.”
“We’ve already spoken with her. Now we’d like your perspective as the one who financed the project.”
I give them what they want: sound bites about the importance of preserving cultural heritage, the significance of the discovery, how proud I am of the team. It’s easy now, talking about the project without needing it to validate me. The tomb’s significance speaks for itself. I don’t need it to prove anything to my father, to the world, or to myself.
Though my father did fly all this way and come to the opening. He’s somewhere in the crowd, probably rubbing shoulders and telling people how proud he is of me. I know the truth—that he’s only proud because I succeeded.
But I also don’t care. He can think what he wants, be proud or not. At the end of the day, his opinion is something I can’t control, and so it’s something I don’t concern myself with.
The reporter thanks me and moves on. Henry has gotten heavy in my arms, so I set him down. He immediately toddles toward his mother, and I follow.
“Mama! Mama!”
Georgia scoops him up, kissing his cheek. “Hi, baby boy. Are you being good for Dada?”
