CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN **SOPHIA**

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

**SOPHIA**

We flew back to Seattle on separate flights.

My idea still, but this time it felt different. Not protection. Just logistics. The distinction mattered.

He texted me from his gate. *Next time we're on the same flight.*

I looked at that for a moment. The casual assumption of next time, of shared plans, of a future that included both of us in the same direction.

*Yes,* I wrote back. Just that.

Yuna had held everything together in my absence with the quiet competence I'd come to rely on. I spent Monday back in the gallery going through what I'd missed, the Paris negotiations with the Fontaine space, three new artist submissions, a funding proposal for the foundation that needed my signature before Friday.

Normal work. Solid ground.

Alexander called that evening. Not a text. An actual call, which he'd started doing more since London.

"My mother called again," he said.

"I know. She called me directly this time."

A pause. "She called you?"

"She got my number from James apparently. James is a liability." I sat on my sofa, feet up. "She was warm. Nervous underneath it but warm. She wants to have lunch."

"Do you want to?"

"Yes." I'd surprised myself deciding that. "She's not Eleanor. She made different failures and I'm not carrying Eleanor's debts on her behalf."

"When?"

"I told her to suggest a date. We'll see." I paused. "She apologized, Alexander. Unprompted. For things she witnessed and didn't stop."

He was quiet for a moment. "She told me she was going to."

"It was genuine. I'd know the difference." I looked at the ceiling. "She seemed like a woman who'd spent a long time in a house that didn't belong to her and was figuring out how to exist outside it."

"That's accurate."

"I understand that feeling."

We stayed on the call for another hour, easy and unhurried. He told me about the Tokyo expansion hitting a planning complication. I told him about Nina Volkov's Paris proposal, which I'd decided to accept after reviewing her terms.

Before he hung up he said, "I miss you."

Simple. Undefended.

"It's been two days," I said.

"I know how long it's been."

I smiled at my ceiling. "Goodnight, Alexander."

"Goodnight."

********

**ALEXANDER**

Tuesday I bought a sketchbook.

Nothing significant about it. Small one, decent paper, from a art supply store near my apartment. I sat with it for twenty minutes before I opened it and then felt immediately self-conscious, which was ridiculous for a man alone in his own apartment.

I drew the outline of a building. Simple, rough, nothing architectural about it beyond basic proportion. Then I sat looking at it.

Twelve years old again. Notebooks full of impossible structures that no one would ever build.

I drew another one. Better.

I didn't tell anyone. Just put the sketchbook on the coffee table and went to make dinner.

Wednesday I met Julian for coffee. He'd moved back to Seattle from New York, quietly, without the family announcement it would have warranted before. He was figuring out his own post-Sterling-collapse life with more seriousness than I'd expected from him.

"I've been talking to a nonprofit," he said. "Arts funding. Community level, not institutional." He looked at his cup. "Turns out I'm good at raising money for things that actually matter. Who knew."

"Sophia's foundation," I said. "Have you looked at it?"

"She'd never"

"She might. She's pragmatic about useful people." I paused. "Talk to her."

He looked uncertain. "She doesn't owe me anything."

"She knows that. That's why it would be her choice." I looked at him. "You testified at her hearing. You showed up when it mattered. That counts."

He nodded slowly. "I'll reach out."

After coffee I went to a site visit for the Tokyo project, a rare in-person meeting with the architectural team via video link. Two hours of detail work that reminded me why I'd been good at building things even when I was building the wrong ones.

That evening I drew for an hour. Buildings, mostly. One or two that were actually interesting.

Sophia called at nine. "The Fontaine confirmed Paris. Third week of May."

"That's fast."

"Nina moves fast when she wants something. It works in my favor here." I could hear her moving around her apartment. "Are you free May fifteenth through twenty-second?"

"I'll make myself free."

"I want you there. Not just for hospitality this time." A pause. "With me."

"Yes." No hesitation.

"We'll be visible. Paris has a different press environment than London."

"I know."

"You're not bothered by that."

"No. Are you?"

A moment. "No. I think I'm done being private about it." She said it like she'd been considering it for a while and had arrived at the conclusion cleanly. "Isabelle is already telling everyone anyway."

"Of course she is."

"I've stopped trying to contain Isabelle. It's more efficient."

I laughed. She did too, briefly. The easy kind.

"What are you doing right now?" she asked.

"Drawing."

"The sketchbook."

"Yes."

A pause with something warm in it. "Can I see?"

"They're rough."

"I don't care."

I took a photo of the page I'd been working on. Sent it. Waited.

"Alexander." Her voice had shifted.

"They're just rough sketches."

"The one in the lower right corner. That's a real building."

I looked at it. A narrow structure, lots of glass, something reaching. "It's nothing."

"It's not nothing. It has intention." She was quiet for a moment. "Keep going."

"Sophia"

"I mean it. Keep going with them." Firm, direct, the voice she used when she knew something clearly. "Promise me."

"Alright. I promise."

Another pause. Then: "Come over."

"Now?"

"Yes, now. Bring the sketchbook."

I was there in twenty minutes. She opened the door and immediately took the sketchbook before I was fully inside, turning through the pages with focused attention. I watched her face do what it did with art she was actually looking at.

"This one," she said, stopping on a page. "And this one." She looked up. "You've been doing this for three days."

"Since you told me to start."

"They're already better than most people manage after three years." She handed the book back. "You know that."

"I don't know that."

"Trust me." She stepped closer and took my face in both hands and kissed me, slow and certain, the way she'd been kissing me since London with the full weight of what she'd said behind it.

I pulled her in and she came willingly, both arms around my neck, and we stood in her doorway for a long warm moment that erased the two days of distance cleanly.

When she pulled back she looked at me with clear open eyes.

"I missed you too," she said. "For what it's worth."

"It's worth a great deal."

She took my hand and pulled me inside. "Feed me something and show me more sketches."

"I didn't bring food."

"There's food here. Cook something." She dropped onto the sofa with the sketchbook again. "I want to look at these properly."

I went to her kitchen and opened her refrigerator and started cooking in her space like I belonged there, because increasingly I did, and the sound of her turning pages behind me was the best sound I'd heard in either of the timelines she'd described to me.

I cooked. She looked at my drawings with her full attention.