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"To prepare you so that when they come at you, you'll know exactly what's going on."
"So you're planting seeds. Making sure I do things your way."
"Making sure you do things your way. Decide what you want, Cecily, but don't do it because you were blindsided, played on. Do it with your eyes wide open."
Cecily turned away from him. "Well, you've done what you came to do."
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"I'm sorry you're angry with me, Cecily."
"I'm not," said Cecily. "I'm just sad. I didn't think I could get any sadder than I already was, but I'm so sad I can't even cry. I lost my husband, I lost my beautiful boy, and now I find out that my husband's friends, these men who have been uncles to my children since Reuben died, I find out they're plotting to kill the President?"
"I don't know if they are," said Cole. "I just think they might."
"I'm going to go back to Virginia," said Cecily, "and I'm going to go into my home and I'm going to lock the doors and only come out to buy groceries."
"Won't work," said Cole.
"I know it won't work," said Cecily. "Any more than Torrent's quarantine of Africa. All I ask is to be safe for a while. That's all anybody ever gets, and I'm not greedy, I won't ask for more."
"God knows you deserve more," said Cole.
"I don't know what I deserve," said Cecily.
"I do," said Cole. "And I'm sorry you already can't have it."
"Oh? What is that?"
"Happiness," said Cole.
"And what is that?"
"A man and a woman together, watching their children grow up to have happy marriages and many children of their own."
"That's it? That's your whole definition of happiness?"
"It's the only one that nature gives us."
"No heaven? No eternal bliss?"
"I don't know about that," said Cole. "I believe in God and I believe that in the long run, good people will be happy with him. But here on Earth, where we have to make our life. That's the happiness that a person can find here, the only one that lasts. And I'm so, so sorry that yours has broken. What's left is still really, really good, Cecily. The other kids—they're great too. But it won't ever be complete again. Not in this life. That's what makes me sad."
"Well, Cole, by your standard, you're worse off than I am, since you don't have any part of that."
"I don't know about that," said Cole. "For a long time, I borrowed a little of yours. Being Uncle Cole to your kids—that was great. And all the cookies."
She laughed. She could do that? Laugh? Apparently so.
"And now I've got a son. Adopted. Not formally, yet. But he cared for me and my jeesh alongside Mark, when we were all sick at once. And then he stayed with me after the battle, watching out for me, keeping me hydrated and medicated. When everyone else thought I was probably going to die. He was there whenever I opened my eyes."
"Chinma," she said.
"I'm bringing him back with me. I cleared it with Torrent. Even though there's no reason for him to have asylum now, he's still an orphan and a hero in the service of America. The President made the State Department see it that way, and Chinma now is a legal immigrant, a permanent resident, whatever they call it. And I'm his legal guardian."
"I always thought he'd stay with us again."
"I hoped you'd feel that way. Because he'll be a lot better off living with you, with your kids. But that doesn't change the fact that he's mine. Your kids were not mine, I just borrowed them, had to give them back. But there's nobody left that I have to give him back to. I can put my hopes on him. You see? I'm part of it all, with him."
