“I love it here,” I say with a sigh. “It reminds me of Paris, when we used to sneak away to the park for lunch. I used to come here every Sunday with my coffee and my croissant. Because it reminded me of us. That’s why I wanted to come today. To show you.”
“I’ve been here before,” he says, his tone suddenly somber.
“To the Common?” It never occurred to me that his business might have brought him to Boston, though I suppose it should have. “When?”
His eyes cloud, and he looks away. “Sometimes,” he says heavily, “when I was home and missing you so much I was afraid I might drink, I’d get in the car and come here instead, walking for hours, thinking maybe I’d catch a glimpse of you.”
The confession stuns me. “Did you?”
“No.”
“And if you had?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I’d like to think we would have ended up on this bench, that somehow we were always going to end up here, but I don’t know, and it scares me a little to think about it.”
I weave my fingers through his, holding his gaze. “Rory asked me once if I believed that certain things were meant to happen. I wasn’t sure then, but I am now. Somehow, against all odds, we’ve found each other again, with the help of a granddaughter neither of us knew existed. I can’t explain it. I only know that we are here on this bench. The rest of it doesn’t matter.”
He answers me with a kiss, and I feel like a teenager again, with flushed cheeks and a belly full of butterfly wings.
He’s grinning one of his boyish American grins when we finally pull apart. “I must remember to thank our granddaughter,” he says huskily. The grin slips then, and he checks his watch. Suddenly he looks very somber. “Speaking of Rory, I never told you why I turned up at the gallery the other night. I came to see Rory, but then . . . there you were.” He pauses to touch my cheek, but his face has gone serious. “At the risk of ruining the moment, I need to get back to my hotel. I’m expecting a call, and then I’m going to have to talk to Rory. In person.”
FORTY-EIGHT
RORY
Rory sat down at her desk with a fresh mug of coffee and opened her planner. With the opening in her rearview mirror, she’d finally been able to settle into the day-to-day activities of running the gallery. Business was slow and would be for a while, but she planned to use the time to expand her stable of artists and get a jump on plans for several spring events she wanted to hold. And she could do with a little downtime after the excitement of the last few days.
She had just scribbled a reminder to buy thank-you notes when she heard the soft peal of the entry chime. She grabbed a sip of coffee before heading down. No need to pounce. Give them time to get inside, look around. But when she reached the landing, instead of customers, she found Soline—and Anson.
Her initial reaction was panic, but the longer she looked at them, the more she realized everything was fine. Quite fine, in fact. Anson had a hand at the small of Soline’s back, as if it belonged there, while Soline looked up at him with soft, wide eyes. Is she blushing?
Rory started down the stairs toward them, unable to suppress a grin. “Unless I miss my guess, something’s happened since I last saw the two of you.”
Soline reached for Anson’s hand. “Quite a lot, actually.”
It was impossible to miss the change that had come over Anson since their first meeting. He looked almost boyish standing there with Soline’s hand in his, as if forty years had suddenly lifted from his shoulders. She had no idea what had transpired between them. She only knew it felt right, like a circle finally closing.
“Should I call you Grandpa now? Or Gramps? Pops, maybe?”
Anson cleared his throat awkwardly. “We’ll talk about that later. Right now, we need to talk about other things.”
Soline’s eyes flicked to Anson, then back again. “There’s been some news, Rory. About Hux.”
“News . . .” The room seemed to wobble as she repeated the word. “What . . . kind of news?”
Anson let go of Soline’s hand and came to stand in front of Rory. “The night we met in San Francisco, you mentioned your fiancé had been missing for some time. I remembered his name, so the next day, I decided to make a few calls.”
Rory clutched at the stair railing, her palm suddenly sticky.
“After the war,” Anson continued, “when the doctors finally finished putting me back together, I went to work for the International Red Cross, as a prisoner advocate. They have people all over the world who specialize in negotiation and extraction. Some of them are friends. So I picked up the phone to see who might have a useful contact.”