Chapter 177 What Remains
Chapter 177 What Remains
Gen's POV
The photograph was small enough to fit in the palm of one hand — a snapshot taken outside the OIT library sometime in autumn, the leaves behind my mother blazing orange and gold, her smile unguarded in the way of someone who does not know she is being watched.
I had found it in a shoebox at the back of a closet two weeks ago, tucked between a folded utility bill and a birthday card I didn't remember saving. It was the only photograph I had of her.
I stood at the window with it now, the morning light coming in flat and gray across the city.
Behind me, Sebastian's voice rose with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old who has discovered that a grown man will sit on the floor for as long as the situation requires. "This is you," he announced, with the gravity of an artist presenting finished work, "and this is Mommy, and this is me, and we're all holding hands. And this is our house. Do you like it?"
"I like it very much," Ryker said. "What's the big circle in the sky?"
"The moon." A pause of great seriousness. "It's always full in my pictures because full moons are the best ones."
I looked down at the photograph. The past two weeks had arranged themselves in my memory as a series of images — Hawkins filing the paperwork, Dominic sitting across from a Council investigator with nothing left to protect, Sebastian's small suitcase in my entryway, his sneakers placed very precisely side by side.
Ryker on the floor with a jigsaw puzzle at ten o'clock on a Tuesday, neither of us speaking, Sebastian between us with his tongue pressed to his lower lip in concentration. Eight days. That was all that remained before the rest of my life began.
"Mommy?" Sebastian appeared at my elbow. I tucked the photograph into my jacket pocket. "Are you ready to go?"
He studied me with the attentiveness he wore when he suspected a conversation had a different layer. "Go where?"
I met Ryker's eyes across the room. He rose and gave me a small nod. "To see someone," I said. "Come put your shoes on."
---
The cemetery was quiet, the paths empty, the headstones casting long shadows across the frost-stiffened grass.
Margot Marlowe. Loving Mother.
The lilies from last week had gone papery at the edges. I crouched and pressed my fingers flat against the carved letters, feeling the cold of the granite travel into my hand. Beside me, Ryker rested his hand on my shoulder — not moving, not speaking, only present.
Sebastian crouched down beside me, mimicking my posture. He tilted his head at the headstone. "Mommy, is this my grandma?"
"Yes, baby."
"How come I never met her? How come Daddy never talked about her?"
"She passed away when you were very little. You were only two." My voice stayed steady. "She loved you very much, even though you didn't get to know each other."
Sebastian was quiet for a moment. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and produced, with great ceremony, a pale grey stone shot through with a vein of white quartz. He set it carefully at the base of the headstone.
"That's for you," he told the stone plainly. "I found it in the park. It's a really good one."
My throat closed. The tears came before I understood they were coming — not the sharp, wrenching kind from two weeks ago, but something quieter, like water finding level. I pressed the back of my hand briefly to my mouth.
Ryker offered his handkerchief. Sebastian, noticing, straightened with the businesslike concern of a child identifying a problem. "Mommy's crying," he told Ryker.
"Happy crying," Ryker said, crouching to his level. "Your grandma would have loved that stone."
Sebastian considered this and appeared satisfied.
---
Half a mile from the gate, Sebastian's voice dropped to the register he used when approaching something he wasn't sure was permitted to want. "Mommy. I miss Daddy."
"Isla's gone," he said, working through it. "And Grandma Constance went away. It's just Daddy now. He's by himself. I think he's probably lonely."
I looked at Ryker. The nod he gave was small and unambiguous.
"Then let's bring you home," I said. "Right now."
Whitmore Estate appeared at the end of its driveway looking the way places look when the attention holding them together has been directed elsewhere — the hedgerow unshaved, a light fixture dark, the gravel faintly rutted.
Dominic opened the door before the car stopped. The evidence was written plainly across him: the unshaved jaw, the shirt slept in, the eyes carrying two weeks' worth of nights.
Sebastian was already unbuckling.
"Gen." Dominic's voice came out rough. "Could you stay? Even just for dinner."
I stepped out onto the gravel. "I came to bring Sebastian home."
He moved forward, a hand beginning to rise — and then Ryker crouched down beside Sebastian, unhurried, easy, as though the thought had just occurred to him.
"Hey, buddy. I heard there are a lot of cool things to see in there. Any chance you could show me around?"
Sebastian's face lit up immediately. He grabbed Ryker's hand with both of his. "Ryker, I'll show you my room! And the dinosaur you gave me!"
Dominic watched them go. Then he turned back to me.
"You knew I'd still be paying for her defense," he said.
"I knew. She's your mother." I kept my voice level. "But Dominic — what we have now is Sebastian. That's all."
The look that crossed his face did not resolve into a single name. Then he nodded, slowly. "Okay. I understand."
---
We found Ryker and Sebastian in the courtyard, mid-tour. I crouched when Sebastian reached me, smoothing his hair back — this boy with my mother's brow and Dominic's stubborn chin, entirely and completely himself.
"Baby. Ryker and I are getting married soon. That means you'll have two homes. I want to know what feels right to you."
Sebastian's expression settled into its most serious configuration. He glanced at Dominic, then Ryker, then back at me. "Could I do half? Half with Daddy and half with you and Ryker?"
He looked at Dominic with the frank concern of a child who has included this in his reasoning. "Because Daddy would be lonely by himself."
Dominic turned away slightly. His hand went to the back of his neck.
"Half and half," Ryker said to Sebastian, with appropriate gravity. "That's a fair deal."
"Then that's what we'll do," I said.
I held Sebastian for a moment, his arms tight around my neck, then stood and took Ryker's hand. Through the rear window, the two figures stood at the end of the drive — Sebastian's hand raised in a wave, Dominic's arm across his son's shoulders — and then the car turned, and they were gone.
---
The evening had turned amber by the time we reached the highway. Ryker drove with one hand on the wheel, the other holding mine.
"Eight days," I said.
"Eight days. Are you ready?"
I turned and looked at him — the steadiness of him, the man who had spent thirteen years waiting without asking anything of me for a single one of them — and felt something settle all the way down into its foundation.
"Yes," I said. "I've been ready."
His hand tightened around mine, and the city poured past the windows, gold and unhurried, carrying us forward.