“He thought I’d try to kill myself again.” Marin braces herself for the next question. The hardest question. “Sal, where is my son?”
“I want you to know that I love you,” he says, his voice cracking. “I’ve loved you from the minute we met—”
“Sal, please. Where is my son?”
“He’s in the wine cellar.”
She takes a quick breath. “Is he alive or dead?”
A pause. Five seconds, ten seconds, she doesn’t know, but it feels like an eternity. Then finally, two words, so quiet she almost doesn’t catch them.
“He’s okay.”
Marin opens the police car door and shouts, “Wine cellar!” at the top of her lungs, but they already know, because they already heard, and they’re already moving.
“What’s sad, Sal, is I would have given you the money,” she says into the phone. “If you were in trouble, I would have helped you. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. You’re my best friend. All you had to do was ask.”
She looks up to the window, where Sal’s hand is raised once again, and it occurs to her then that goodbye waves look the same as hellos.
“I love you, Marin,” he says, and the phone disconnects.
She hears the pop and sees the spark from the muzzle, but can only imagine the sound of Sal’s body when it drops to the floor.
* * *
They’re not allowed to go down into the wine cellar or even into the tasting room, so Marin and Derek wait outside. Seconds pass like minutes. Minutes pass like hours.
The double doors are finally wrenched open, and McKenzie comes out first, led by a police officer. She’s not in handcuffs. Her face lights up when she sees Derek, just for a second, but then she seems to remember that they’re not together, and never really were, and never will be again. She doesn’t look at Marin at all. She passes them both without a word.
A moment passes, and then the doors open again. And there, holding the hand of one of the FBI agents, is her son.
They take their time walking out. He’s frightened by the lights and the commotion, and he’s clutching a giant teddy bear in his free arm, his eyes wide and scanning all the faces, stopping only once as his gaze fixes on Marin. She tentatively raises a hand, terrified she’ll scare him, even more terrified that this isn’t real and that if she tries to move toward him he’ll disappear like vapor, like he always does in her dreams. His face—his perfect, beautiful, round, sweet face with eyes that mirror her own—is exactly as she remembers, though the length of him has changed, because he’s grown. From somewhere near her, Derek lets out a sob.
Her little boy holds her gaze for a few seconds, uncertain, and then his face brightens as he understands who she is. She’s too far away to hear him say it, but she sees his mouth form the word. Mommy.
Sebastian.
She sprints to him as he drops the teddy bear and runs to her, his small arms outstretched, and it really is just like in her dreams, only this time they make contact, because he’s here, he’s real, he’s alive, he’s safe.
And Marin’s heart—which was led away from her four hundred ninety-four days ago—comes back to her.
PART FOUR
one month later
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end
—SEMISONIC
Chapter 33
The line at the Green Bean is long when Marin enters, but she’s not here for the coffee. She readjusts the black duffel bag on her shoulder and looks around. The bag is Derek’s; she pulled it out of the trunk of his car, but he doesn’t need what’s in it. Neither does Marin.
It takes a moment to spot her. She’s not working behind the counter; she’s wiping down a table toward the back of the coffee shop, and she looks up when Marin approaches. The pink in her hair has faded to a brassy blond that makes her complexion look sallow. Funny how the first time Marin ever saw her, she’d seemed so vibrant, so beautiful, so intimidatingly young and full of life. Now she looks like any other overworked grad student—exhausted, stressed, and nothing special.
McKenzie’s face pales and she backs up a step. Marin raises a hand.
“I’m not here to make a scene,” she says, and the younger woman visibly exhales. “Can we talk?”
The table in the back corner is empty, and Marin remembers it as the table she sat in the day she came in to spy on McKenzie.