matching the inside. They are not the people they were before.
“Maggie called. He says Dubai is amazing.”
He and Paul had made up before Magnus was called to shoot his new film. It is a good thing Paul’s sense of humor returned with their son; Magnus signed him up for Omaha steak delivery every two weeks and a wine-of-the-month club. Paul honestly wouldn’t mind if his brother-in-law settled in Portland whenever he came back.
Paul lets Wyeth grab his finger and pull it toward his mouth, gumming on the knuckle. They have been saying over and over all week how he will be getting teeth soon. There is not much else safe to talk about.
“Look at that,” Eva remarks on cue. “Definitely teething.”
“Yep. Definitely.”
If anything good came out of Wyeth’s kidnapping, it was that he came back a new baby. The formula recovered at the apartment where he was being kept, soy-based, seemed to sit better with him—he was wide-eyed and quiet the first night home, so Eva went off dairy, and now Wyeth never cried with the tortured intensity he had before. A bonus, Paul thinks, when he is feeling generous and optimistic.
They walk on in silence, Paul careful to catch his wife’s arm and steer her around a slippery patch of moss. There is a conversation that has been brewing, rolling toward them like the thunderheads that rumbled across the hills of Magnus’s old Costa Rican hacienda. Eva had finally acknowledged it the night before, after they had made love for the first time in two months, her head on his chest, his hand cupping her shoulder, Wyeth asleep in his bassinet at the foot of the bed, facing away from them.
“One of these days we’re going to have to talk…,” she had said tentatively, and Paul had silenced her by tightening the grip on her shoulder. They would, he knew. It would be brief, he hoped, but it was inevitable and dreaded, like tax preparation. He would tell her he forgave her for leaving Wyeth in the car. Then he would apologize for the ways that he punished, that he continues to punish, her even now. She would forgive him that as well, acknowledging, shouldering her guilt like an X-ray blanket. And then, only then, will they be able to move on. Then he will be able to say, like a black-masked torturer with a soft streak, Enough. She has suffered enough.
Until this happens, they will never be able to move forward as anything but parents, Wyeth’s sentinels. This they are mastering; the hovering, the appreciating, the reveling in their good fortune.
“Look at this! He knows his name, watch, I’ll say it and he’ll smile,” and they lean in with animated, wide-eyed anticipation, marveling at these tiniest of accomplishments. One day soon, they might hear him crying and wish for a little peace and quiet, or they might look forward to him falling asleep so that they can wrap around each other on the couch and watch a movie, but not yet. In the future they might even consider taking Francie up on her offer to babysit while they go out for a meal, but nobody is pushing it.
It will come, this conversation, with all the intensity of that Costa Rica thunderstorm, and the sky will go dark, and it might seem that a perfectly good day is ruined, plans for a picnic, a hike down to the waterfall, stolen sex in a cove on the beach. And then, fifteen minutes after it starts, it will stop, leaving in its wake brilliant sunshine and tropical steam, the crystal raindrops dripping off succulents and cannas. They will realize that the day was not spoiled after all, only made more beautiful, more precious, by the storm.
Paul is thinking about this as he reaches over and takes her hand in his, brings it to his lips, and kisses the baby-fine golden hair on the back of her wrist. He keeps her hand, and she turns to him, eyes huge, eyebrows lifted.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.” He kisses Eva’s hand now. Wyeth’s head swivels to follow his mother’s face, leaning in to kiss his smooth forehead, his eyelids fluttering as she presses her lips to his skin.
Maybe today will be the day, Paul thinks, tucking Eva’s hand in the bare crook of his arm, and they turn off Vista toward home.
Epilogue
FOUR MONTHS LATER
The nurse from Penny’s adoption was right, Chloe realizes. She said Chloe wouldn’t be able to do her job, coordinate adoptions, once she