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Would he push it?
He’d lost so much already.
But they were obviously doing pretty damn great on their own. Callie was a happy, well-adjusted kid who clearly loved her home. Who wouldn’t love it here?
He sighed as they turned away from the water. He had no answers. “I guess we follow the others, huh?” he said. The moon had slipped behind a cloud and dimmed the night. He could barely see where he was stepping.
Callie took his hand in hers. It felt so small. So delicate. And he had this sudden urge to grasp it tightly, to refuse to let go. He took a deep breath and blew it out as they began to walk. “I used to get scared of the dark when I was littler,” Callie told him, as though now she was fully grown and scared of nothing. He smiled down at her. He loved her voice and her chatty personality. “I wanted to sleep with the lights on all night. But my mommy reminded me of the turtles. She said that sometimes the dark is beautiful, and without it, we wouldn’t see the moon.”
“She put up a valiant fight,” he said, exiting Callie’s room and placing the book he’d read to her three times on the counter. “But in the end, she lost.”
Noelle smiled, handing him a bottle of Corona with a sliver of lime stuck in the top. “I hope this is okay. If you don’t drink, I have water, or juice. I don’t keep soda in the house.”
“This is great.” He took a long sip of the cold beer.
“Do you want to sit on the patio? We’ll feel the breeze off the ocean from out there.”
“Sure.”
He followed her to the sliding glass door next to the kitchen area and out onto a small garden patio featuring a round table with a green umbrella covering it and a few potted plants. It was surrounded by vegetation, but she was right, he could feel the breeze coming from the ocean, and the leaves rustled softly. They both took a seat at the table. “Your place is nice,” he said, nodding his head back toward the cottage so she knew he meant the entirety of their home, not just the patio. He meant it. It was small but cozy. Noelle had decorated it mostly in shades of white and various blues.
What’s your favorite color?
The color of that Easter egg dye that comes in those little kits from the grocery store.
“Thanks. It’s messy,” she said on a laugh. “But it’s home.”
He smiled. She’d made a good one for their daughter. Everywhere he’d looked, there was evidence that Callie was central in Noelle’s life. A scooter leaning against the house next to the door, drawings covering the refrigerator, an organizer of children’s craft supplies on the kitchen table, a wall full of photos of Noelle and Callie and some other people he didn’t know. All this time, she’d existed and he’d never even known. That seemed so odd to him, like he should have been able to sense hersomehow from across the country, a little girl standing by the ocean, a smile the same as his.
“Thank you,” he said.
She tilted her head, giving him a confused look. “For what?”
“For keeping her. You must have thought about ... other options.”
She blinked at him, turning her head and looking out to the swaying leaves. He could see that she understood exactly what he meant. “I did. For at least a moment,” she finally said. “But not much longer than that.” She turned her gaze back to him, her brow dipping as though she was measuring her words. “When we were locked in those cages, I fought so hard to get free. Tolive. That instinct ... to clutch at life, to hold on, is so strong, in all of us.” She brought her hand to her stomach, as though remembering the tiny life that had once fluttered there, delicate, vulnerable. “That instinct must be there from the very beginning, I imagine.” She smiled softly. “Like the turtles. An inborn instinct to survive, to head toward the light. Not everyone knows that, I guess. But we do.” Her gaze washed over his face. He felt caught, unable to move until she looked away, back out into the night. “And so for me, just considering ending a life when I’d battled so hard for my own ... I couldn’t, Evan. To do so seemed to me like the most terrible of hypocrisies.”
His heart jolted. He hadn’t expected that. He’d thought that, now, he had more control over himself when it came to her. He’d thought he was angry. And he was. Sort of. “That makes sense,” he said. “To me it makes perfect sense.” Their eyes met, and she gave the smallest of nods, the confirmation that, yes, they both understood things that no one else might. At least not in such a personal way. Their decisions, all of them, were based on things other people couldn’t possibly imagine.
Evan watched her as she again gazed out to the night, realizing that she was just as incredible as he’d remembered her to be. It was an epiphany, because for so long, he’d connected that feeling to the trauma bond Professor Vitucci had put into words for him. He’d doubted his own emotions surrounding Noelle. He’d believed them to be overblown anduntrustworthy. And perhaps in some way or another that was true. But his opinion of her hadn’t been basedsolelyon what they’d experienced together, because that no longer controlled him and he still felt the same.
“And now, of course,” she went on, her lips curving tenderly, “I couldn’t imagine the world without her. What a terrible tragedy that would be.”
“She’s wonderful,” he agreed.
“She is.”
“Beautiful.”
“That too.”
They were both silent for a moment before Noelle spoke. “Evan, I know you might want to discuss ... making plans ... regarding Callie. Maybe visiting her or ... well.” She sighed. She was as lost as him. They’d been lost together before, and they’d helped each other through it. Maybe they could again, now that they both had clearer sight. The vestiges of his anger drained away. She hadn’t been right to keep Callie from him, but he also understood why she had. Maybe if he’d been in her shoes, he’d have done the same.
At first, after they’d parted, he remembered wondering if she would call him or email him. He wanted it, God, he did, and yet ... at the same time, whenever he opened his inbox and realized she hadn’t, he breathed a small breath of relief. It’d been confusing as hell. She was so woven into his pain.
“I was thinking about staying for the next three or four days,” he told her. “I hope you’ll let me hang out with Callie a little bit. As much as you’re comfortable with. And then we can talk about that before I go.”
“That sounds good. Of course you can see Callie this week. And we’ll figure something out.”
