CHAPTER 80: What Stays

POV: Avalon Pierce

He found the photograph on a Wednesday, inside one of the boxes of Nene’s personal effects that Margaret had kept in storage and sent over when the foundation work began. Tax documents or old correspondence was what his thoughts were.

Instead at the bottom of the third box, wrapped in tissue paper was a photograph.

His father.

He looked young, maybe twenty five. He was standing outside a building Avalon didn’t recognize in a city he couldn’t place. He was laughing at something outside the frame. It was an unaware photograph.

He sat down on the study floor.

Held it close to him because he already had three photographs of his father. This made it four.

In the other three his father was posed and was aware of the camera. 

This one he was just himself.

Laughing.

Not knowing he was being kept.

He sat on the floor for a long time, his eyes blistering from tears he refuses to shed.

He thought about a man building a case against someone powerful because it was the right thing and he couldn’t look away, also about a woman burying the evidence of what happened next because she had an eight year old grandson and the math of impossible choices produced that answer.

He thought about thirty years of building something strong enough that the man responsible could never touch it.

He thought about the deposition room, when Sullivan asked what he actually wanted. The answer arriving before he was ready for it.

I want Selene. I want us to work.

He thought about  what you built when you’d lost something and how you decide whether to build toward it or away from it.

His father had built toward it.

Nene had built toward it differently.

He was trying to learn the language of building toward.

Selene found him on the floor at noon.

She didn’t ask what he was doing there, she just sat down beside him.

He showed her the photograph.

“He’s laughing,” she said.

“Yes.”

“He looks like you.”

“People say that.”

“No.” She looked at it again. “You look like him when you forget to manage your expression. When something genuinely gets through.” She handed it back. “I’ve seen that laugh.”

He looked at the photograph.

Then at her.

She was sitting cross legged on the study floor in the clothes she’d come home in, hair coming loose from where she’d had it up, no performance of any kind anywhere in her.

He thought about the contract marriage. 

“I want to tell you something,” he said.

“Okay.”

“I spent ten years being good at being alone,” he said. “Very good. I’d optimized for it, removed the variables and kept things simple, contained and managed.” He looked at the photograph. “And then Nene died and you came back and I spent a long time being angry at the disruption.”

“I know,” she said.

“I’m not anymore.”

“I know that too.”

“What I am—” He stopped. “Grateful isn’t the right word. It’s too small.” He looked at her. “What I am is altered fundamentally by knowing you and by being known by you.” He paused. “My father built a case because he couldn’t look away from something wrong. Nene built a company because she couldn’t look away from what needed protecting.” He looked at the photograph. “I spent ten years looking away from everything that mattered.” He looked at Selene. “I’m done looking away.”

Then she said: “I know.”

Two words that carries everything.

“I know,” she said again. Softer. “I’ve been watching you stop.”

He looked at her.

“Looking away,” she said. “I’ve been watching you stop.”

He reached over and covered her hand with his.

He hung the photograph in the hallway that evening. Where he’d see it every day, it would also be the first thing visible coming in through the front door.

His father laughing.

Selene stood beside him while he hung it.

When he stepped back she took his hand.

They stood in the hallway looking at it.

“He would  have liked you,” Avalon said.

“You think?”

“He built a case because he couldn’t look away from something wrong.” He looked at her. “You’re exactly the kind of thing he couldn’t look away from.”

She was quiet for a moment.

Then: “That might be the strangest compliment anyone has ever given me.”

“It’s accurate.”

“It is,” she agreed. “Thank you.”

He squeezed her hand.