“Yeah, Leo,” I told him, my voice breaking softly into a laugh that felt like the first breath I had drawn in three years.
“The job is completely done.”
Clara leaned over the edge of the mattress, holding up a soggy piece of toast.
“Daddy!
Look!
A bird!”
She pointed her tiny finger out the window, where a lone herring gull was soaring against the brilliant blue sky above the lake, its white wings catching the winter sun.
*Daddy.*
The word didn’t hurt anymore.
It didn’t feel like a mistake, nor a stolen title, nor an impossible debt owed to a dead brother who had died in the cold dark of an Alpine lake.
It was just my name.
The only name that mattered.
I stood up, holding Leo’s hand, and walked to the side of the bed.
Maya looked at me over the rim of her plastic juice cup.
She had my father’s cleft in her chin, Julian’s dark, arched eyebrows, and Grace’s gentle, luminous mouth.
She reached out with her free hand, her tiny fingers touching the bandage on my knuckle.
“You have a boo-boo,” she murmured, her voice soft and sweet as warm honey.
“I do, baby,” I smiled, leaning down until my forehead touched her small, warm cheek, breathing in the scent of baby shampoo, clean sheets, and life.
“But it’s all better now.”
Grace reached out her hand and rested it on top of mine, her fingers interlacing with mine over the edge of the blanket.
She didn’t ask about Evelyn.
She didn’t ask about Harold Brooks.
She didn’t ask about the Drake, the merger, or the billions of dollars that were now sitting in her name in the bank downtown.
She looked at the three children, then looked into my eyes, her thumb gently stroking the back of my hand.
“Where do we go from here, Ryan?” she asked softly.
I looked out the window at the vast, shining expanse of Lake Michigan, stretching out toward the horizon where the blue water met the pale sky without a single fence, without a single wall, without a single deed of trust to block the view.
“We go to breakfast, Grace,” I said, leaning down and kissing her gently on the forehead, right between her eyes.
“And then… we go home.”
