Page 28 of The Lion in the Library

“With you,” I said, “and with Luz and Pedro and your impossible agent and your very firm opinions about La Lotería strategy and your mother, who is clearly right about everything. I knew what it was. I chose it anyway. I am still choosing it.” I paused. “Did I not mention that I love you?”

She looked at me. Her eyes were bright with tears that she was refusing, out of sheer will, to let fall.

“No,” she said, very quietly. “You had not mentioned that.”

“Well.” I felt the smile before I could stop it. “I do. Messy life, beautiful children, stubbornness and all.”

She made a sound that was something between a laugh and a breath of relief — the sound, I thought, of a person who has been braced for impact finally understanding that the ground is solid.

“I love you too,” she said. “You impossible, patient, honest man.”

We sat there for a moment in the particular quiet of an evening that has been survived. Outside, the city kept going. Inside, the children had their dinner. And it seemed to me — not for the first time, but more clearly than before — that this was exactly where I was meant to be.

Later, after the children were asleep and we had spread every piece of relevant information across the kitchen table — the tabloid photograph, the notes about Roberto’s call from that morning, what Jorge had said tonight — I told her about the Aztecs offer.

Not for the first time. She knew it was on the table. But I had been circling it for weeks, unwilling to commit to the thing that would make this choice irrevocable, as if I needed to leave open the possibility of running.

“I’m going to accept it,” I said.

She looked at me carefully. “Because of tonight?”

“Tonight didn’t hurt,” I said honestly. “But it was already decided. I think I decided it on the bench at the park, when Luz told me that León had been promoted to park warden. I just hadn’t said it out loud yet.”

She was quiet for a moment. “And Real León?”

“Will find another midfielder. They’re good at that.” I turned her hand over in mine. “But I am not easy to replace here.”

That earned me a smile — small, but real. “No,” she agreed. “You are not.”

I called Hunter on my way home and told him to start the paperwork. He made a sound that might have been surprise and might have been relief and was almost certainly both. Then he said, “Get some sleep, Leo. Tomorrow’s a complicated day.”

He was not wrong.

But first, in the morning, there was a moment I had not anticipated.

Estrella had an early shoot — one of the new scenes Miguel had been so pleased about, a full day’s work — so I collected Luz and Pedro from school myself. Mrs. Martinez waved from her window as we came up the walk. León, tucked under Luz’s arm, had been outfitted for the occasion in what appeared to be a paper badge that said WARDEN in large letters, decorated with what I hoped were stars rather than small explosions.

They had something to show me. This was communicated with great ceremony on the walk home and with tremendous secrecy, which was somewhat undermined by Pedro whispering the word sign loudly enough to be heard from some distance.

In the apartment, they marched me to the kitchen and pointed at the refrigerator.

It was a large piece of paper, held up with purple tape — Luz had mentioned to me, at some point, that they did not currently have tape in any other color. The paper read BIENVENIDO LEO in careful letters decorated with what I recognized as Pedro’s contribution: enthusiastic marker additions in approximately six colors, bearing no clear relationship to any conventional system of decoration but radiating confidence.

Below the letters were four stick figures. The tallest one wore glasses. The one with long dark hair stood very straight. The small one held a stuffed lion. The smallest of all held something that was either a toy car or a very simplified bus — I chose car. Above the tall figure, in neat parentheses, Luz had written: our Leo.

I stood in front of it for quite a long time.

“Do you like it?” Pedro asked, in the direct way of a four-year-old who has invested significant creative effort and needs an honest assessment.

“Very much,” I said. My voice came out approximately right. “It’s the best thing that has ever been put on a refrigerator.”

Luz considered this. “We didn’t have matching tape,” she said, indicating the purple. “Was that okay?”

“It’s perfect,” I said. “Everything about this is perfect.”

Pedro leaned against my leg with the total unselfconsciousness of a child who has decided, without particular ceremony, that you are his. Luz went to the table to do her homework, León installed on the chair beside her to supervise. I stayed where I was.

Our Leo.