Chapter 209: ORDINARY TUESDAY

Epilogue

SERAPHINAS POV

Six months later, on a Tuesday that had no significance to anyone except me, I finished a painting.

Not the one I’d begun the night before the baby shower, that one I had finished a week or so after the wedding, in the early afternoon as Marcus slept, and Damon worked in the study of the house.

That other picture hung in the hall, on the far side of the door.I look at it as I go into the morning and still feel the thing it made me feel, the relief of some prolonged feeling come to the light and out of the skin, once and for all.

This particular one had taken six months. Not because of technical problems but because of the gradual learning process of discovering exactly what I was working at whilst I was working at it.

Marcus was in his bassinet beside the easel, which was becoming an increasingly inadequate description of where he was.

Over time, he has developed increasingly strong opinions about flat surfaces, which he would announce at full volume until someone paid him attention.

Lyanna claims it’s my fault for raising someone so opinionated and would mention this during her two visits within the past six months of her absence. Damon blamed it on my unique reason for another different thing that he refused to share, but despite me, it made me laugh.

He’s looking at the painting as if trying to establish facts and as the subject of his focused observation often caused me a vertiginous sense of love for watching the one who was created by me appreciate the work you've created in layers upon layers of complexity.

There were days when I had to stop painting and just absorb the moment and just then be in the midst of it.

The painting was in essence, the house. Though not in any literal sense-you cannot portray a building, from the inside-what my paint conveyed was the intrinsic essence of a residence after it's journey, after this past year, still persevering and sound, still carrying out its music, embracing those who had elected to be within its walls.

Centered within the space was a dining table. The view framed by its adjacent window captured the expansive outdoors; the subtle verdant hum of a computer screen in the periphery; and an empty bassinet-all of them contributing to a sense of contained familiarity. Nearby was the bright illumination peeking from beyond the threshold of an open door-and in its periphery rested Lyanna's iconic outerwear flung across the back of a chair.

I hadn't planned to includeCatherine. But she often occupied my mind; her loss presented itself as a form of multifaceted bereavement rather than a simplistic form of absence. It was complex-due to the multitude of facets the lost one held, compounded by the emerging essence she had become prior to her departure. These myriad facets of her being intertwined within her sorrow, each resonating and clamoring for attention from it when least expected.

Sometimes, I replayed the image of that moment-of the corridor leading to the obstetrics unit, of Lyanna’s whisper and pause, the pivot. Other times, it was her voice within the cavernous stone room, uttered in a pair of carefully chosen words. And then there were moments that focused solely on her touch on Marcus’s face-the delicate tremor that betrayed not frailty, but strength.I’ve kept the letter.

The three-day correspondence from before my wedding-found under the coffeemaker one morning by Damon and I as Marcus expressed his morning observations in voice; the envelope bearing her careful script with my name.I read it then, stashed it away, yet to unravel it again.

For now, the weight of certain messages needs time to fully absorb, and knowing it's waiting for me when I'm ready is sufficient.

Damon joined me upstairs around four o’clock. “Finished,” I announced. He advanced towards me; his touch met my shoulders, and the familiar warmth emanated from him, the grounding significance of a presence so wholly comprehended.

He observed the canvas for an extended duration, his gaze steady and discerning.

“The light-in the corner,” he mused. “I understand,” I replied. “That’s what it is.

It’s perfect.”

I leaned into his embrace.A stir emanated from Marcus-the precursor to his determination that confinement within the bassinet was entirely inadequate and he urgently craved human contact.I went to him, lifting him into my arms. He grasped the material of my shirt with an investigative gaze – a keen evaluation, as though I,too, were a specimen of the evolving world he was piecing together.

"Hello," I whispered."

He hadn't yet learned anything new to discuss, but he offered a flat, innocent-S-and-S application of his hand to my face.

I turned slightly, pressed my lips to his tiny palm, and he received my affection with magnanimous acceptance, almost enjoying the interaction privately.

Damon leaned on the doorframe as he watched us. Outside, the afternoon unfurled its magic, casting shadows and elongating objects-imbuing the mundane with a subtle allure that, by choice, I now embraced as the sincere honesty of illumination. The subject matter: Marcus.

The house.

The masterpiece with the corner’s special luminance. Damon in the doorway, a sentinel to the chosen, hard-won ordinariness that had weathered all adversity and emerged whole. Tuesday. The completed artwork.

The reassuring presence of his son's touch on my face.

My husband’s contemplative stance, observing from the entryway of a home intimately familiar with all of our stories. I briefly pressed my palm against the painting, against the canvas, feeling the undeniable truth I had created. Suddenly, Marcus yanked on my hair-his current way of redirecting attention-and I let out a laugh.

From the doorway, Damon joined in, and the house held us all within its enduring embrace, the indifferent afternoon continuing its unhurried passage into time.