CHAPTER 183: Two Weeks

POV: Selene Castellano

Two weeks in and she’d stopped counting the hours between feeds and started counting other things instead.

The number of times Avalon checked that Elena was breathing before he’d allow himself to sleep. Seven on average. She knew because she was awake for most of them, listening to him move quietly around the bassinet with careful footsteps.

“She’s breathing,” Selene said into the dark.

“I know,” he said.

“You just checked.”

“I know.”

“Avalon.”

“I’m coming back to bed.”

“You said that four minutes ago.”

“I mean it this time.”

He came back to bed. She heard him settle.

Thirty seconds.

He got up again.

“Avalon.”

“One more check,” he said.

“She’s fine,” Selene said.

“I know she’s fine,” he said. “I just need to confirm it.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“It’s not the same—”

“It’s exactly the same thing and you know it and I love you but please come back to bed.”

He came back to bed.

This time he stayed.

She reached over and found his hand in the dark.

He held on immediately.

“She’s going to be fine,” Selene said.

“I know,” he said.

“You don’t believe it yet,” she said.

“I believe it more every day,” he said. “Tonight I believe about seventy percent.”

“That’s up from sixty five,” she said.

“Progress,” he said.

She felt him smile in the dark.

“Go to sleep,” she said.

“You go to sleep,” he said.

“I will when you do,” she said.

“Then we’re at an impasse,” he said.

“Avalon.”

“Selene.”

Elena made a sound.

Both of them went completely still.

The sound stopped.

She was asleep.

They both exhaled simultaneously.

“Sixty eight percent,” he said.

“Go to sleep,” she said.

The mornings were hers in a way she hadn’t expected.

Not because Avalon wasn’t there — he was, always, working from home, simply because  decided that being forty five minutes away was forty five minutes too far. But Elena in the morning was a particular version of herself that Selene had started to feel was specifically for them.  She is alert and looking, probably taking inventory of the world with the seriousness of someone doing important work.

She’d sit in the nursery in the morning light  coming from  the window Avalon had chosen, the light is exactly as he’d described it, gold and generous from seven to nine and then she  feeds Elena and talks to her about everything. The foundation. Nene. The displacement bonds and what Edward Pierce had left and what they were going to do with it. The symposium and Grace Kim’s stability not services and Rosa Gutierrez and the peace lily Kofi had chosen specifically.

Elena looked at her throughout all of it with the expression of someone receiving information they intended to use later.

“You’re exactly like him,” Selene told her one morning. “The listening face. You got it from your father.”

Elena blinked.

“Don’t argue,” Selene said. “You did.”

Avalon appeared in the nursery doorway at eight with coffee.

He leaned against the frame and looked at them both with happiness and joy written all over his face.

“What are you telling her today?” he asked.

“About Nene,” she said.

“What in specific?” he asked.

“About the question,” she said. “About how it took fifteen years to find the right hands and how she knew before we did that we were the right hands.”

He came and sat on the edge of the chair beside her.

“Do you think she knew,” he said. “Or do we tell it that way because it’s a better story.”

Selene looked at Elena.

At the listening face.

“I think she knew enough,” she said. “She knew the question needed someone who couldn’t look away from things that were wrong. She knew that was Jonathan. She suspected it was you. She brought me back because she understood that you needed someone who had already survived losing something and chosen to hope anyway.” She paused. “Whether she knew exactly how it would unfold? No, butt she knew the shape of it.”

“She knew the load bearing elements,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “She knew the architecture.”

He looked at Elena.

“She has your mouth,” he said.

“She has your eyes,” Selene said.

“We’ve been through this,” he said.

“We’ll keep going through it,” she said. “Until one of us is right.”

“I’m right,” he said.

“You’re wrong,” she said pleasantly.

Elena looked between them with the expression of someone who had already assessed the situation and found them both mildly insufficient.

“See,” Avalon said. “Nene’s expression.”

“That one I’ll give you,” Selene said.

Maya came on Thursday with Kofi. 

She held Elena for an hour.

Kofi sat across from Avalon and they talked about the Oakland arts center and Marcus Webb and Daniel Reyes and the architecture of organizations that either held their values or lost them, which Kofi had opinions about that were precise and useful and came from a different angle than anything James or Amara would say.

“The problem with most organizations,” Kofi said, “is that they build for the ideal version of the people inside them. When the actual people show up  with their compromises and their self interest and their Daniel Reyeses, then, the structure can’t hold it.”

“You build for the actual people,” Avalon said.

“I try to,” Kofi said. “You design for how people actually move, not how you wish they would.”

“James would say that’s the load path problem,” Avalon said.

“James is right,” Kofi said. “Different language, same thing.”

Avalon looked at his brother-in-law.

At the man who had sat down at Maya’s table without asking and forgotten what he was supposed to be doing and built something real from that forgetting.

“I want you to look at the Nexus office,” Avalon said. “The physical space, I’ve been thinking about what it communicates to the people who work in it.”

Kofi looked at him.

“You want me to redesign Nexus?” he asked.

“I want you to tell me what it would look like if it was built for the actual people rather than the ideal ones,” Avalon said.

Kofi was quiet for a moment.

“I can do that,” he said.

“Good,” Avalon said.

After they left Selene stood at the kitchen window with Elena against her shoulder.

The apartment was quiet in the way it got after people had been in it and left warmth behind.

Avalon came and stood beside her.

“Kofi and Nexus,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“That’s good,” she said.

“I thought so,” he said.

“He’ll change everything about the space,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “That’s the point.”

She looked at the city.

At the lights coming on as the afternoon moved toward evening.

“I want to go back,” she said. “To the foundation, not full time. But, I want to be in the room.”

“Okay,” he said.

“You’re not going to argue,” she said.

“Why would I argue,” he said. “You built it. You should be in it.”

“Dr Okafor said—”

“Dr Okafor said reduced activity,” he said. “She didn’t say no foundation. Just two hours or three maximum and Elena comes with you.”

Selene looked at him.

“You’ve thought about this,” she said.

“I’ve thought about everything,” he said. “You know this about me.”

“The routing,” she said. “The swaddle. The snacks.”

“I didn’t pack enough snacks,” he said. “I acknowledge that.”

“Maya is still talking about it,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “She texted me about it yesterday.”

Selene laughed.

Then Elena made a sound against her shoulder and they both turned their attention to her immediately with the reflexive priority of two people who had been completely rearranged by someone who weighed seven pounds two ounces.

Elena looked at them both.

Made another sound.

“What,” Selene said to her. “What do you need?”

Elena looked at the window.

“She wants to see it,” Avalon said.

“She’s two weeks old,” Selene said.

“She’s a Castellano Pierce,” he said. “She wants to see everything.”

Selene turned so Elena could see the window.

The city, the lights. San Francisco doing what it always did, indifferent and reliable, entirely unaware that it was being assessed for the first time by someone who had Nene’s expression and Avalon’s eyes and Selene’s mouth and all of their stubbornness combined.

Elena looked at it for a long moment.

Then she closed her eyes.

Satisfied apparently.

Assessment complete.

“Well,” Avalon said.

That night after Elena’s last feed Selene lay in the dark and Avalon was beside her actually sleeping for once, his breathing slow and even, and she lay there and thought about two weeks ago when they’d driven to the hospital at 4 AM and she’d held his hand at the red light he ran and the city had been the quietest version of itself and everything had been about to change.

It had changed.

Everything had changed.

And she was in the same bed in the same apartment in the same city and her daughter was breathing in the bassinet two feet away and her husband was finally sleeping and the foundation had eleven million dollars from an eighty one year old man who had run out of reasons to stay silent and Nexus was staying exactly what it was supposed to be and Maya was healing and Kofi had chosen the peace lily specifically.

She put her hand on her chest.

Felt her own heartbeat and thought about Elena’s on the monitor months ago. 

Her phone lit the nightstand.

A text from Amara.

Sent at 11PM which meant Amara had been working at 11PM which meant something significant had happened or was about to.

The National Community Leadership Award ceremony is next month. They want you to speak to the full audience about what the foundation is actually building toward. I told them I’d ask. I’m asking.

Selene read it.

Then typed back.

Yes.

She put the phone down.

Closed her eyes.