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“Not for me. Not for Nathaniel. It doesn’t feel like a cage, it feels like a cocoon.”
Kenan smiled. “Good. I won’t be staying much longer. Just wrapping some things up and then I’m needed elsewhere. I’ll get you up to speed and connect you with others who keep this place running smooth. And there is one more thing.”
“What’s that?” Rose’s chest was tight with anticipation. A few minutes ago she thought maybe she was being kicked out of here. Albeit it nicely. Now she was being invited to stay. To work. To build something. It couldn’t get better than that, so she had to expect it was going to get worse with whatever he had to say.
“We’re changing out some of the guards. Again, it’s important to keep things evolving, but also rooted in safety and trust.”
“Ok,” she nodded, trying to look like she already understood his point.
“I’ve started with just one,” Kenan said through a smile as he gestured across the open lush field of grass. She squinted, then blinked hard. It was Nathaniel who noticed first.
“Harry,” he shouted, abandoning the game he was playing charging toward him.
“He’s back?” she asked, covering her heart with her hand. “What about Topeka.”
“Harry did what he needed to. Transporting Topeka to somewhere safe where we could get her some one to take on her security needs. Now he’s looking for a job. I thought, maybe hanging around here wouldn’t be so bad.”
“And he wants to?” she gasped, tears trickling down her face.
“All he asked was where you would be.” Kenan winked and turned to walk away as Harry approached with Nathaniel up on his shoulders.
To her surprise she didn’t jump into his arms or cry out with joy. She just looked at him as if he might evaporate any second.
“Did you say yes?” Harry asked, a shocking amount of hopefulness in his eyes. “Are you staying?”
“Yes,” she whispered, her words punctuated with squeals of joy from Nathaniel. “You are too?”
“I need a job,” Harry chuckled. “And apparently we need to learn Italian.”
“I’ll teach you,” Nathaniel said very seriously. “We’re all staying here?”
Rose nodded, the tears devouring any words she would love to say. Harry spoke for her.
“That’s right kid. This is home base for a little while. You go back and play, I’ll be over in a little while.” He lowered the boy down and Nathaniel scurried off.
“I told them I’d only stay on one condition.” He looked down intensely at her.
“What condition?” she asked, thinking she already knew the answer.
“If my fiancée was going to stay.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring. It glistened under the mid-day sun. The stone was an emerald, not a diamond, and she liked that so much better.
“This was all I could find on my way back here. The jet doesn’t make a lot of stops just because I ask. And I didn’t want to be back in Verde Lago without a ring. I wanted you to know that coming back here, was me coming back for you. Something I’ll always do. For the rest of my life. I’ll come back for you.”
Wiping at the tears on her cheek, she nodded, still at a loss for words.
“If you don’t like the ring?—”
“I hate diamonds,” she admitted through a choppy laugh. “If you’d have bought me one I’d have said yes and I’d have told you it was beautiful, but I never liked them. They’re so plain and uninteresting. And I mean, and emerald, how much more perfect could it be for this place we’re going to call home.”
He twisted up his face in confusion.
“We really do need to learn Italian.” She leaned up and kissed his lips. “Verde,” she explained, “means green. Verde Lago, green lake. The emerald is perfect.”
“Oh I thought it meant vegetables.”
“Vegetable lake?” She asked. “That’s verdure. Verde is green.”
“They do have great vegetables,” Harry shrugged, pulling her tightly against him.
