Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Esme

I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

Frye and Sagan are shaking hands.

I pause in awe while hanging ornaments on the tree in the dining room to watch this exchange between Sagan and Frye.

Sagan is humbling himself before my longtime house manager. “I know you were just looking out for Esme and for this house. And I’m sorry for being suspicious of you. And, for being kind of a jerk.”

Frye raises an eyebrow. “Add lying to your list of infractions, and I’ll consider the issues between us settled.”

“Right. Sorry, I had to lie.”

Frye clucks. “Ms. Bryant is a grown woman. If you’d simply told me the truth about who you were, it would have been entirely up to her if she wanted to see you.”

Sagan gives Frye a disbelieving smirk. “Sure, sure.”

“I’m not an ogre, young man.”

“No, just a pretty good gatekeeper.”

The two men I love most in this world are smiling at each other. And laughing.

Am I hallucinating again?

I clear my throat. “Okay, boys. Can we eat now? I’m starving. And we have guests.”

Both Dr. White and Zane Cowen were arrested for fraud, theft, prescribing medications without a license, and elder abuse at my house on Christmas Eve.

I’ll be pressing charges for malpractice and calling for an investigation into my mother’s death as well.

Meanwhile, Sagan called in some friends from Fate he once worked for who are in the construction business. The entire Wood family — Buck and Grace, Wade and Presley, Harley and Charlotte — will be staying the night in the family bedroom wing, to see if they hear the voices. Sagan says they know a lot about historic rehabilitation, too. If I hire Buck, he’s promised never to overwhelm me with questions and to focus on one problem at a time, working slowly and methodically. All of that suits me perfectly.

My dining room table is full on Christmas Eve for the first time in a decade. Dr. Allen’s family, Frye, Sagan, the Woods and so many children are all seated around my dining table. The fireplace crackles merrily, the Christmas tree looks pretty despite the last-minute effort, and the roast is incredible.

The adults all pitch in to clean up after dinner while the children run wild through the hallways.

Grace Wood winces as she dries the cleaned roast platter and looks around for where to put it. “I’m going to go check on the kids and make sure they don’t break something valuable,” she says.

I take the platter from her and shrug. “I’m just happy to hear happy voices on Christmas Eve.”

Grace smiles warmly, though there’s a bit of confusion behind her eyes. And that’s okay. She doesn’t need to know every little thing about me.

She doesn’t need to know how damn lonely I’ve felt for so many years. Or how my mind cycles between depression and anxiety, both making me feel unfit to be around other people.

Maybe we’ll be good friends someday, and then I’ll tell her.

For now, I just need to embrace this one good day, and the knowledge that there will be more good days.

I remember the moment I broke down in front of Sagan when I blurted out that I had no family. Today, with a house filled with love and a dozen voices drowning out the ghosts, I have the beginnings of another kind of family.

It’s late, and Frye has gone home for the night. Dr. Allen and her family are housed in the guest quarters.

Sagan and I have decided to stay in the TV room and sleep on the sofa close to the tree, in front of an actual working fireplace.

“I’m sorry I doubted you,” I say when we’re all seated under the tree.

“Don’t ever apologize to me again,” Sagan says.

“What a ridiculous thing to say,” I say. “If we’re a couple now, I’m bound to commit a myriad of sins for which I’ll need your forgiveness. I’m told that I’m quite a handful.”

“Be quiet and open your present,” he says, pushing a box with a red satin ribbon into my lap.

“You didn’t have to.”

“Shush.”

“Okay, okay.”

I unwrap the box, and inside is an application for a membership to Costco. I let out a squeal. “Oh my god! I love you!”

“I love you too, baby.”

It’s been a whirlwind of a week, and that word still turns my insides into liquid.

“How do you feel now?”

I kiss him like my life depends on it. “Like I want to live every moment I’ve been missing.”

I kiss him to wash away everything that’s been done to me, what’s been done to my family.

His kisses erase the tiny irrational bit of guilt I feel at having an old man arrested.

I kiss to forget the look on Frye’s face when the truth came out. I had a part in that, and I know that he felt terrible that he continued to let Dr. White have access to me, and he’ll have to process that on his own.

“And what have you been missing?” Sagan asks, the glint returning to his eye.

I want everything I never wanted while I was feeling like shit. That’s what I want. I want the thing that everyone had told me I could not have.

“I want you to fuck the daylights out of me, Sagan.”

He blows out a slow, even breath.

“Baby girl, we gotta build up to that.”

“No, we don’t. Believe me.”

He eyes me darkly. “I’m going to do something else first, okay? I’m gonna make you ready to take me.”

“But…”

“Do you trust me?”

Do I trust him? I trust him with my life.