Page 111 of The Hitman’s Final Job

I worried it would feel like nothing after everything.

He told me, one evening on the porch, some of what the job had actually involved. Not in detail—for which I was grateful—but enough for me to understand the scope of it. The targets. The years. The cost of being very good at something that required him to be less than fully human.

I still can’t entirely reconcile it.

The man who has crouched in my vegetable patch talking to kale is not a man I can map onto the job he’s described, and I’ve decided that’s okay. That both things are true. That the person he was and the person he is exist in the same body, and I love the body and the person, and I’m not going to spend my life trying to make them fit together neatly because they don’t need to.

He’s happy.

That’s the thing I keep coming back to. Whatever it cost him to get here, he is happy and settled. I know it because he tells me all the time.

Pine Ridge has done what Pine Ridge does best.

It kept him.

“Stop ogling my best friend.”

I turn.

Rowan is in the kitchen doorway, leaning his good shoulder against the door frame.

“I’m just looking out the window at my vegetable patch,” I say with all the innocence I can muster.

“You’re ogling.” Rowan comes to stand beside me, and we watch Silas in his favorite place on the farm. “I’m really happy for you both, Dad.”

“You’re not just saying that?” I haven’t gotten any unhappy vibes from Rowan, but it doesn’t hurt to check.

“I mean it,” he says. “You both deserve to be happy. You’ve both been alone for too long.” He leans into me, a gentle tap. “And yes, it’s still a little weird that my best friend is my⁠—”

“Don’t say stepdad.”

“I wasn’t going to say stepdad,” he says, like someone who was absolutely going to say stepdad. “I was going to say that the two people I love most in the world are happy, and that’s what matters. Even if one of them is out there talking to your vegetables.”

Silas has moved to a different bed and appears to be having a separate conversation with the winter spinach.

“It’s adorable and weird in equal measure.” Rowan shakes his head. “I always knew Silas had an old soul. I just didn’t realize it was a farming soul. Thank goodness I’m going back to work before this happiness disease takes hold of me.”

“You’ve been cleared?”

“Got the results from the physical yesterday,” he says. “Passed everything. The assistant special agent in charge called—they want me back in a couple days, so I have to go back tomorrow.”

My son is strong and stubborn, so I’m not surprised he’s ready to go back to work, but maybe I’m the one who isn’t ready for him to go.

“Rowan.”

“Dad,” he says in a pre-emptive tone.

“I’m proud of you,” I say. “I’m always proud of you. I’m never going to stop worrying about your safety, which is my right as your father, but I’m going to miss having you here.”

“I promise to visit more,” he says. “Now that Silas is here, I’ve got a buddy for river adventures. Hux has been asking when we’re coming back.” He grins. “And Chris is already planning a rematch for next year’s phallic gourd competition.”

“God help us,” I say.

“Between me and Silas,” Rowan says, “you’re going to have a very full life.”

“Between you and Silas,” I say, “I’m going to go to an early grave.”

Rowan laughs just as the back door opens and Silas comes in, still in his garden clothes, with soil worked into the cracks in his hands. The way he smiles when he looks at me will never cease to bring me to my knees.