Between Here and the Horizon (37 page)

“Are you ready to go home?” he’d asked.

“God, yes.
So
ready.”

And so we’d gotten in a cab, and we’d driven through the traffic and the confusion of New York until we’d reached our new apartment building in Lower Manhattan. After he’d bundled me into the elevator, he proceeded to pinch and roll my nipples beneath my sweater and kiss my neck until I had to slap him and make him stop.
 

Our apartment was pure perfection: high ceilings, and beautiful architraving. Parquet flooring, and south-facing sunshine all afternoon long. We only had two bedrooms, but that was enough for us. More than enough. Unexpectedly, Rose had moved with us. She’d signed onto a night course at Colombia, and was finishing her bachelor’s in English literature, which meant during the day she got the children up and ran them both to school. Later on, I collected them and brought them back to our building, but instead of taking them to the apartment I shared with Sully, I took them up one extra floor to the much larger, more spacious place the Fletcher Corporation had bought for Connor and Amie: four bedrooms, and a view to die for.
 

Everyone was happy. Everyone loved the arrangement. We still felt like a family, all living together, sharing the responsibilities and day-to-day pleasures of growing together, but Sully and I got our privacy when we needed it, and so did Rose.
 

“Do you miss being on the island?” Fielding asked, taking down a book from the shelf.
 

“I do sometimes,” Connor said, which surprised me. He’d been perfectly happy to return to New York—it was all he’d ever known before Ronan had uprooted him and transplanted him to the tiny island off the coast of Maine. “Sometimes I miss the sound of the ocean,” he continued. “And the quiet, too. It can be pretty loud here.”

Fielding smiled. “It can, can’t it? I think you’ll get used to it again, though. Then it will feel like you never left in the first place.”

“Mmm. I suppose so.”

“And what about spending time with Ophelia? And Sully, and Rose? Do you like spending time with all of them at home?”

“Yes. I really like it. I really like them all. Amie does, too.” He spoke quickly, as if he were a little panicked. Child Protection Services had conducted a very thorough, terrifying interview with all of us when we explained what we were planning, and ever since then Connor had been worried he and Amie were going to have to go away. As the days passed, he was more and more confident, showing more personality and more attitude than ever before. Still, he knew Fielding had the power to drag CPS back into our lives, and he really didn’t want that.

Fielding nodded, smiling in a comforting way that seemed to settle Connor. “That’s really wonderful news. I’m so pleased to hear it. Is there anything you’d like to talk to me about today? Are you worried about anything? Is there something maybe you’d like to talk to me about alone?” Fielding shot me a perfunctory glance as he said this, barely acknowledging me, and I wanted to junk punch the man. I got it, though. I understood. Connor’s safety was his main priority. If Connor needed to talk with Fielding alone, then of course he could. The implication that I, or Sully, or Rose might have done something wrong was rather grating, though.
 

Connor declined his offer. “No, thanks. Tomorrow we’re going to the Natural History Museum to show Amie the dinosaur skeletons. Real ones! And then we’re going to get pancakes for lunch. It’s Amie’s birthday.”

“That sounds like it’s going to be a very special day, Connor. I hope you enjoy it.”

Later, with Connor holding one hand and Amie holding the other, I managed to flag down a cab and get us across to Tribeca, to Sully’s warehouse. He’d set up shop making unique, handcrafted items of furniture for New York’s elite. He could easily have retired on the money Ronan had set aside for him in order for him to take care of the children, but he refused to touch a cent of it. It was all for them, he said. He’d made his way in the world just fine despite his brother, and he didn’t plan on that changing any time soon.
 

We found Sully covered in sawdust and smelling like fresh cut pine at the back of his studio. Connor and Amie both whooped and hollered, racing to him and throwing their arms around his body. He held up his arms, looking down on the two little people clinging onto him, and he laughed.
 

“Wow. Anyone would think you were happy to see me,” he said, grinning.
 

“We are, we are!” Amie told him, giggling. “It’s time to go home for dinner!”

“I see.” Sully looked up at me, and his smile transformed into something softer. His face was filled with light, where there was once such darkness and anger. It was as though he was a different man entirely. He was still as playfully arrogant as ever, and his comebacks were just as sharp and caustic as they had been when I’d first met him. But now there was a quiet calm to him that had made me fall even more impossibly in love with him.
 

We traveled home, Sully in the front seat with the cab driver and me in the back with the children. The entire six miles from the warehouse back to the apartment, Sully had his hand wedged behind him through the gap between his seat and the door, gently stroking my leg, his fingers curled around my ankle, touching me in one way or another.
 

We ate dinner with Rose and the children, and then stayed to bathe the kids and put them to bed.
 

“Will you tell us a story, Uncle Sully?” Amie pleaded. “A story about when you and Daddy were little, like me and Connor?” Sully looked uncomfortable for a second, and then he sat down on the end of Amie’s bed, folding his arms across his chest.
 

“All right. But your dad and I used to get into all sorts of trouble together, so you have to promise you won’t follow our lead, okay?”

Both Amie and Connor nodded solemnly.
 

“Right. Well. There was this one time, when Ronan and I were maybe a little bit older than you are now, maybe ten years old, and he and I did something very bad. We burned down the McInnes feed store…”

I backed out of the room, cringing. Trust Sully to tell them something completely inappropriate like that. He’d taken to the children so well, though. He loved being their uncle. Would he have ever gotten to know them if Ronan and Magda were still alive? It was doubtful. Most likely, they would have grown into adulthood and never met him once. Now, despite the fact that their parents were both gone, Connor and Amie had a loving uncle and a loving aunt taking care of them, as well as me. I may not have had a familial title for them to call me, but the way they said my name—with love and buckets of affection—was enough.

An hour later, Sully came down into our apartment, red cheeked and looking very sheepish. “Rose says she needs to vet my bedtime stories from here on out,” he told me, huffing as he sank himself down onto the sofa beside me.
 

“I’m not surprised.”

Sully stuck his tongue out at me, reaching up to stroke his index finger down my temple, cheek and underneath my chin. “You look very beautiful right now, Miss Ophelia Lang from California. Did you know that?”

I bit back a smile. It would be no good if he knew how happy his compliments made me; he’d tease me over them without mercy. “Sure I do,” I said airily. “You don’t look so bad yourself, I suppose.”

Sully laughed, rolling his eyes. “Come on. We both know I’m the most attractive man on the planet. Heavy lies the crown and all that.” He was joking, but he was also telling the truth—he really was the hottest guy on the planet to me. I leaned over him and planted a kiss square between his eyebrows, and Sully moaned softly under his breath.
 

“A letter came for you,” I whispered to him, face still hovering only an inch above his. “It’s from The Causeway.”

“Probably from Medical Center Gale, wondering when I’m leaving you and going back to her,” he told me, winking. He got up and collected his mail from the table, then opened it, scanning the letter he unfolded in his hands. There were two pieces of paper in the envelope. Sully read one and then the other in silence, then he just stood there staring at them both.
 

“What is it, Sully?”

He didn’t move.
 

“Sully?”

He folded the papers together and walked slowly back to the sofa, where he handed me both pieces of paper. “A voice from the grave,” he said quietly.
 

The first letter was from Linneman. It was brief and to the point:

Dear Sully,
 

Before your brother died, he came to see me and he made significant changes to his last will and testament. As you know, he provided a significant sum of money to you, along with your childhood home to do with as you pleased. He also made sure the children were financially secure for the rest of their lives, thanks to their majority share holding in the Fletcher Corporation. Additionally, Ronan also left me in possession of a letter addressed to you, to be mailed to you wherever you were living as of today’s date, being October 19
th
. As such, please find enclosed his correspondence as per his instructions.
 

I wish you all the very best in your new life with Ophelia and the children in New York, Sully. I can’t say that I will ever forget the drama and the chaos that came with knowing the Fletcher family, but then again I can’t say I would
want
to forget, either.
 

We may not have been able to save my dear brother-in-law that night we climbed into that boat together and rode into the unknown, my dear friend, but I consider myself lucky to have had the opportunity to weather the storm beside such a man as yourself.
 

My best regards,
 

Robert Clyde Linneman.
 

I unfolded the other piece of paper, holding my breath, not sure if I should even look at Sully to make sure he was okay.
 

Brother,

It’s been my greatest honor to call you this for the past thirty-one years, even if it has been your greatest shame to acknowledge me with the same title.
 

I can’t say I’m sorry anymore. I can’t ever mean it enough, and so the word has lost its meaning to me. Instead, I write this letter to you now, knowing the circumstances under which you will receive it, with the greatest of thanks in my heart.
 

You always were and always will be the better man. I’m so grateful that you will be a father figure to my children. I’m so grateful that you have found happiness, too. The moment I laid eyes on Ophelia, I saw a great and beautiful love story laid out before you. I know this because I know I would have fallen in love with her, too, of course. Wasn’t that always the problem? We were doomed to love the same women throughout our lives? Not this time, though. This time the happily ever after belongs to you, dear brother. At least I hope it does, anyway. Good luck to you, and to Ophelia.
 

Enough time has passed now that I also hope the hurt and suffering I caused you has dulled a little, and that as the coming years pass you by, you may even learn to forgive my weaknesses and my betrayal. Because my love for you is second only to the woman who died in my arms last year, Sully. Please know I would never have risked the precious bond I shared with you for anything less.
 

Thank you for doing what I could not, Sully.
 

Thank you for doing the right thing.

Your brother always,
 

Ronan.

I folded the paper again, taking a long moment to consider Ronan’s words. He orchestrated this from the beginning? He knew Sully and I would fall in love? How could he possibly have known such a thing? But then again, perhaps he
could
see it. They had both loved Magda, after all. Perhaps Ronan knew when he met me what would transpire between his brother and I.
 

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked quietly.
 

Sully held out his hand and took Ronan’s letter from me. It was already cold in the city—a fire burned and crackled happily in the grate—and I thought for a moment that he was going to cast Ronan’s letter into the fire. He didn’t, though. He placed it down on the arm of the sofa and looked at it for a very long time, shadows playing and flickering across his face as he thought.

“No. No, I don’t want to talk about it,” he said all of a sudden, smiling at me. “I just want to feel you in my arms, Lang. That okay?”

I moved over, lying my head on his chest, listening to his heart beat slow and steady beneath my ear for a long time. Sully absentmindedly stroked his hand up and down my arm for a while, before he leaned down and kissed me.
 

“Are you happy?” he asked me quietly.
 

“Yes.”

“Do you love me?” he asked.
 

“More than I ever thought possible.”

He went quiet for a moment, then he curled his index finger underneath my chin and lifted it, so that I was looking up at him. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life me with, Lang?” His eyes searched mine, looking for something that might or might not be there. My heart slowed, barely beating at all. Was he asking me…was he asking me to
marry
him?

Carefully he reached into his pocket, hunting for something. When he removed his hand from the pocket, he had made a fist, clutching hold of something tightly in the palm of his hand.
 

“I was going to do this tomorrow,” he said. “When we were standing underneath a giant Velociraptor skeleton with both the children watching so you couldn’t say no. But I see now how that might be unkind. I don’t want you to be swayed by Amie or Connor. Or an eight-billion-year-old dinosaur. I want you to make up your mind on your own, okay? So tell me, Ophelia. I need to know. Would you like to be my wife?”
 

I couldn’t look away from him. So much had happened in the last year. It was crazy to think that Sully was this sure of us this quickly. But then again, was it really?
I
was this sure of
him
. He was all I wanted. All I was ever going to want. I placed my hand on top of his, smiling.