CHAPTER 100: The Conversation

POV: Avalon Pierce

She was already home when he got there.

Standing at the kitchen counter with her coat still on, holding her phone like she’d just finished a call.

He looked at her face.

“Tell me,” he said.

She told him about Dr. Ruth and the call from Dr. Okafor.

When she finished the kitchen was very quiet.

“She called a doctor for us,” he said.

“A week ago, without telling me.”

“Because you wouldn’t have let her.”

“That’s what Dr. Okafor said.”

He looked at the counter.

“Take your coat off,” he said.

She looked down at herself like she’d forgotten it was on and took it off.

He hung it by the door.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“I don’t know.” She looked at him. “Someone who held Elena for four minutes is now making sure I have the right support if I try again.” She paused. “I don’t know what to do with that.”

“You don’t have to do anything with it tonight,” he said.

“I know.”

“You just have to decide if you want to meet her.”

“Dr. Okafor.”

“Yes.”

Selene looked at the counter.

“I already said yes,” she said.

He looked at her.

“When?” he said.

“On the street, before called you.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

“Okay.” He went to the stove. Looked at what she’d left out. “You said you were going to cook.”

“I was.” She came and stood beside him. “I got the call and then I called you and then I came straight home.”

“So neither of us cooked.”

“Neither of us cooked.”

He looked at the ingredients on the counter.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

“You’re still in your jacket.”

He took off his jacket.

She took it from him and hung it beside hers.

They stood in the kitchen and he cooked and she sat on the counter and watched and the evening settled around them the way evenings did when nothing and everything was happening simultaneously.

Over dinner she said: “I keep thinking about what she said.”

“Dr. Ruth.”

“She said Elena was warm.” Selene looked at her plate. “And held and was not in pain.” She paused. “I think about that every day”

He said nothing.

“When I think about trying,” she said. “I think about warm.” She looked up at him. “Is that strange.”

“No,” he said.

“It feels like—” She stopped.

“Like what.”

“Like Elena is telling me something.” She said it quietly. “Like the four minutes are telling me to try.”

He looked at her across the table.

“Then we try,” he said.

“We meet Dr. Okafor first.”

She looked at him.

“Are you scared?” she said.

“Completely,” he said.

“Me too.”

“But?”

She picked up her fork.

“Elena was warm,” she said simply.

He looked at her for a long moment.

Then he picked up his fork too.

They ate.

Later she found the photograph in her bag.

The copy he’d left on the counter that morning.

She held it across the table.

He looked at it.

He’d have approved.

“Of what?” she said. “You didn’t write what he’d have approved of.”

“Of all of it.” He looked at the photograph. “The foundation. The meeting with Dr. Okafor.” He paused. “You specifically.”

She looked at Jonathan Pierce laughing outside a building nobody could place.

“He looks like someone who couldn’t look away from things that mattered,” she said.

“He was.”

“So do you.”

He said nothing.

She put the photograph on the table between them.

They both looked at it.

Father and son in a photograph, in a kitchen on a Tuesday evening deciding to try for something terrifying and worth it.

His phone rang at nine.

Margaret.

He answered.

His expression changed in the way that suggests something significant was arriving.

He hung up and looked at Selene.

“The federal prosecution,” he said. “Whitmore’s case.”

“What about it.”

“The sentencing hearing is next month.” He paused. “They’re asking if we want to submit a victim impact statement.”

Selene sat very still.

“Both of us?” she said.

“Both of us.”

“Yes,” she said.

He looked at her.

“Yes,” she said again. Certain. “We should submit one.”

He held her gaze.

“Together,” he said.

“Together,” she agreed.

Outside San Francisco moved through its Tuesday night completely unaware that in a kitchen above it two people had just decided three significant things.

To try for a child.

To face the man responsible for thirty years of loss.

And to do both of it together.

Which had always been the only way.