CHAPTER 150: What’s Coming

POV: Avalon Pierce

March arrived and the city remembered it was allowed to be warm again.

San Francisco never committed to warmth consistently. But occasionally, between the grey days, an afternoon that felt like a promise.

He noticed because Selene started opening the windows again.

Small significant things.

The foundation’s second year began quietly.

 Amara sent an internal memo on the first that said simply: Year two starts today. We know more than we did. Let’s use it.

Kevin Walsh’s land trust application was the first formally processed under year two operations.

It was approved in four days.

Kevin called.

“The new process,” Selene said. She was on speaker, both of them at the kitchen table, Sunday morning. “Grace Kim’s framework. Less bureaucracy, more accountability.”

“Stability not services,” Kevin said.

“Stability not services,” Selene agreed.

A pause.

“My grandfather would have—” Kevin started.

Stopped.

“I know,” Selene said.

Kevin cleared his throat.

“Thank you,” he said. “Both of you.”

He hung up.

Avalon looked at Selene across the table.

She looked back.

Neither of them said anything.

Didn’t need to.

He had lunch with James on the eighth.

“How’s she doing?” James asked.

“Good,” Avalon said. “She’s back full days.”

“The baby?”

“Sixteen weeks,” Avalon said. “Better than good.”

James smiled.

“My daughter called me from London last week,” he said. “That’s the first time in three months.” He picked up his fork. “She’s doing well, has a job she likes and a person she likes.” He paused. “I didn’t know any of it because I’d been so deep in the companies, the failures, the rebuilding, that I’d lost the thread.”

“And now,” Avalon said.

“Now I call,” James said. “Every week, whether she answers or not.” He looked at his food. “The foundation gave me that back. The understanding that building something doesn’t require losing everything else.”

Avalon looked at him.

“You gave yourself that back,” he said. “The foundation just gave you the context.”

James considered that.

“Maybe,” he said. “Either way.”

Selene’s appointment on the fifteenth was the anatomy scan.

The one that showed everything.

They sat in the waiting room together.

“Are we finding out?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“You’re sure?”

“I want to know,” she said. “I want to call them by name. Not it. Not the baby.” She looked at him. “I want to know who’s coming.”

“Okay,” he said.

“You wanted to wait,” she said. “I know you did.”

“I wanted to want to wait,” he said. “Actually I just want to know too.”

She looked at him.

“You could have said that.”

“I’m saying it now.”

The scan took forty minutes.

The technician moved methodically, checking everything, measuring everything.

Selene held his hand the entire time.

At the end the technician said: “Do you want to know the sex?”

“Yes,” they said. 

The technician smiled and told them.

Walking out, Selene said: “Say something.”

“I’m processing,” he said.

“Process out loud.”

He thought about the names on the print in the study.

Robert. Elena. Lorraine.

He thought about which name they’d use.

Which ones they’d save.

“We need to update the print,” he said.

Selene looked at him.

“That’s what you’re thinking about,” she said.

“I’m thinking about a lot of things,” he said. “That’s the one I can say out loud right now.”

She stopped walking.

He stopped beside her.

She looked at him, this man who had spent a year learning to say things out loud, who was still learning, who would probably always be learning.

“She’s coming,” Selene said quietly.

He looked at her.

“She’s coming,” he said.

A girl.

Elena.

He felt something break open in his chest.