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“This is us,” I whisper and feel all of the emotion he has just poured into me well up in my throat.
I feel Dean’s breathing even out before I let myself relax and start to drift off. I can’t stop the tears as they roll down my cheek. I remember the last time I lay in this bed and cried myself to sleep. This time, the tears flow from a wellspring of joy.
17
* * *
It’s Friday morning and I’m getting ready to go back to New York for a day of meetings and one last week before I permanently move to DC. I’m not looking forward to it. It’s incredible how I’ve lived without her for thirteen years, but now the prospect of a weekend away makes me feel a longing I'm sure I won’t survive.
I’m afraid to step out of the cocoon we’ve created at her house. But work calls for both of us and her mother is going to be back tonight.
I'm drinking coffee and checking my schedule for this afternoon’s meetings while Milly is dropping Anthony off at school. It’s her first day taking him since she got sick, and I’m glad she's feeling well enough to do it. Yesterday, she slept a lot during the day and I worried that I had pushed her too hard when we’d had sex.
But, when I was showering last night, she slipped in the shower with me and we put that built in bench to work.
I’m smiling to myself when I hear the door that leads from the garage to the kitchen open.
I look up to see Milly, looking not a day over eighteen, walking through the door. It’s still cold in March, and she's pulling off her jacket and kicking off her boots before she walks back in.
I just take her in. She has worn her hair in that single, fat braid since she was fifteen. Her hair is longer now than it was then and the braid’s tail wraps around the tip of her breast. And I feel envious of the braid. I get up and walk toward her.
She looks up as I approach and her beautiful mouth tips up into a smile that lets me know she's happy to see me.
“Hey, D.” I smile back at her. She hasn’t called me this since we were in high school and it feels so good and familiar to hear it on her lips.
“Hey, Red.” I wink at her and then lean forward a little to kiss her. I taste the minty sweetness of her toothpaste as her arms come around my neck.
Our kiss goes from a greeting to a prelude and before I know it, she’s on the counter, her top up around her neck and her hard pebble sized nipple in my mouth. She is starting to unbutton my jeans when her landline starts to ring.
Her hands still, and I release her nipple with a pop to look up at her. She is staring at the phone with trepidation.
“You okay? You need to get that?” I ask her. She just nods and hops down, pulling her shirt down as she walks to the other side of the kitchen island where the phone is cradled.
“Only my mother, sisters, and the FBI call this phone,” she says without turning around.
She looks at the caller ID before she picks up the phone and a frown settles between her eyes. She clears her throat before answering it.
“Hi, Agent Walker.” Her voice is civil, but devoid of all warmth. She listens for a second and then reaches into the drawer below the counter, pulls out a pen and notepad and begins to write. She bites her lip as she writes, her brows drawn together in concentration.
After a few minutes, she finally speaks, “Yes. I understand. My mother will be back today, and I’ll contact my sisters and talk to them.”
She listens for a few more minutes. “I understand.” And then she hangs up. She returns the phone to its cradle slowly and then turns around to face me. She jumps slightly when she sees me, as if she forgot I was here. The look on her face is haunted.
She turns back around hiding her expression.
I walk over to her and put my hands on her shoulders, she relaxes and leans back into me, her head lolling on my chest.
“Red, don’t hide from me. What’s going on?” I speak gently, knowing that whatever conversation she just had unsettled her.
She lets out a long exhalation of air and turns around in my arms.
“That was the FBI. We have been in constant contact since my dad’s disappearance. They check in on us, we have to report to them every time we leave the country. They monitor our contact with each other. They are so overbearing. But recently, they got a credible break in their efforts to locate my dad.” She sighs and pulls out of my arms.
She looks annoyed and sad. She told me last night about her list, the one she made after her husband left, and that exonerating her father is one of the things on it. And while I don’t think he had anything to do with what went on at Enron, he did disappear with a lot of money. I have no clue how he can come back and be redeemed.
“And?” I prompt when she doesn’t start talking again.
“They say they know he's in Syria, they have been trying to get an extradition order to bring him back here, but that option is dead now. No way, no how.” She bangs her head lightly on my chest but doesn’t speak.
