Chapter 300 Sleep
ADRIANA
Elijah was in the corridor outside the courtroom when I came out, leaning against the wall with Lana in his arms because he had taken her from me while the final exchanges were happening and I had let him. He was looking down at her with the expression he wore in unguarded moments — not the King’s face, not the face he wore in rooms full of people, just Elijah, just a man looking at his daughter who had come back.
I stood beside him and we didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Elder Harry is still in the cells,” he said.
“Good.”
“He’s asking for mercy.”
“When did he learn to ask for it?” I looked at him sideways. “What exactly did he say?”
“Something about how my father would have handled this differently. That he was a real man.” He said it without particular heat, which told me he had already processed the anger. “He said it to the back of my head when I was walking out.”
“And you heard it.”
“I have very good hearing.”
I looked at Lana. She had reached up and was holding Elijah’s collar with one hand with the focused grip of someone who had decided this anchor was satisfactory. “What are you going to do about Lucien?” I said.
He was quiet for a moment. “I spoke to him this morning. Briefly. He doesn’t know how to talk to me yet.” He shifted Lana slightly. “He asked me if I was going to send him away.”
“I know. You told me.” I paused. “I think he should stay. Not the annex, but in the house properly, with a real room and people who treat him like he belongs somewhere, because he does belong somewhere even if this isn’t exactly the somewhere his mother had in mind.” I held Elijah’s gaze. “He’s not responsible for how he arrived. He’s just a young man who grew up without a father and came here because that’s what his mother told him to do.”
“You spoke to him in the courtroom,” Elijah said. “After the session.”
“I asked him what he actually wanted.” I paused. “He said he just wanted to know who his father was.”
Elijah was quiet.
“He has that now,” I said. “The rest is something we all figure out as we go.”
We walked back toward the main house, Elijah still carrying Lana, and the afternoon light was doing the particular thing it did at this hour, long and golden, falling across the garden in a way that made everything look, briefly, like it was in a different kind of story than the one we’d been living.
I looked at my husband carrying my daughter, and I thought about the last month — Lana taken twice, the letter, Simone’s arrival, the courtroom battles, Elijah waking up from seven months of unconsciousness and being immediately submerged in everything that had accumulated while he was under — and I thought that if someone had described this month to me in advance, I would have said it was too much. That no marriage held under this much weight. That something would break.
But here we were.
“I want to sleep for approximately four days,” I said.
“I know.” He looked at me. “So does she, apparently.” Lana had closed her eyes. “How do they do that?”
“They have no idea what’s happening. It’s very freeing.” I moved toward the door. “Simone. She needs to leave the house this week. I want her in appropriate accommodation by the end of the week.”
“Already in progress. I asked Hazel to arrange it this morning.”
“Good.” I held the door. “And Elijah. The guards in Lana's room. I want them doubled until Roy finishes the fingerprint analysis from the envelope. Whoever was behind this is still out there.”
“I know.” He came through the door and looked at me in the hallway. “We haven’t stopped looking.”
“I know we haven’t.” I started toward the stairs. “Come on. I need to put her down and then I need to sleep and so do you, your eyes look terrible.”
“Thank you.” he muttered with a small eye roll, but the sides of his lips curved slightly.
“I’m being honest, not unkind.” I looked back at him from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you okay? With all of it. Lucien, the test, today. Are you actually okay?”
He looked at Lana. Then at me. “I will be,” he said. “Ask me again in a week.”
“Fair enough.” I started up the stairs. “I’ll ask you again in a week.”
Upstairs, Lana was settled in her cot. The twins’ welcome home sign was propped against the wall where the twins had apparently installed it during the morning — large and colorful and spelling out LANA in letters that were each a different color, with illustrations around the border that included what appeared to be a dragon, a football, several incomprehensible but enthusiastic shapes, and in the corner, in much smaller and neater script, a drawing from Lorain of a flower.
I looked at it for a long moment.
“The dragon was Liam’s idea,” Elijah said behind me. “Elijah junior did the letters. Lorain did the flower.”
“I know.” I turned around. “It’s perfect.”
He was leaning in the doorway with his arms folded and the expression he wore when something had moved him and he was deciding whether to say so.
“Are you okay?” I said. His own question, returned.
“I’m glad she’s home,” he said. “I’m glad you’re both here. The rest—” He looked at the sign. “The rest we’ll deal with.”
“Yes,” I said. “We will.”
I went to stand beside him in the doorway and we both looked at our daughter sleeping under the sign her brothers had made for her, and the house was quiet in the specific way it was quiet when everyone in it was finally, for the first time in weeks, in the same place and safe, and I let that sit for a moment before either of us moved.
“Sleep,” I breathed out.
“Sleep,” he agreed.