Page 127 of Main Event

Brandon is seeing someone new. He’s approaching this relationship with the carefulness of a man who understands its importance. Her name is Claire, a federal prosecutor. She holds strong views on primary sources and gets along very well with Kelly, which Brandon considers a more reliable indicator than anything else.

The beach happened. We spent two weeks there last November, just us, somewhere with no governance councils for a hundred miles. I slept for four days straight, then spent the rest of the trip being myself in a way that only happens when nothing is pressing. Andi wrote six thousand words, swam every morning, ate things we can’t name, and didn’t check her phone until noon. We also enjoyed unlimited umbrella drinks daily.

We’d do it again.

We’re going to do it again.

And some weekends we drive up to Chatuge. There’s a lot on the north shore we keep circling back to—trees, a slope of clear water, an old oak that would have to stay. I told her once I could do a lake. I’m keeping that one too.

Mr. Hanley still won’t let me pick the peaches.

ANDI

This morning I took Mackenna to the center.

She’s three weeks old. She slept through the entire visit in the carrier on my chest, one small fist pressed against her cheek, entirely unconcerned with the building, the mural, the homework tables, and the door facing the street.

Mrs. Alvarez held her for twenty minutes and didn’t say a word the entire time. She just held her and looked at her with the expression she wears when something is exactly right and doesn’t require comment.

Deja sat across from me at the homework table. She looked at the baby sleeping on Mrs. Alvarez’s shoulder. She looked at me.

“What’s her name again?” she said.

“Mackenna Grace,” I said.

She nodded slowly. Working something out.

“For Mack,” she said.

“For Mack,” I said.

She nodded again.

“That’s good,” she said. “He deserves that.”

Then she went back to her college essay, which she’s been revising for two weeks and which is—I’ve read four drafts—exactly as good as it needs to be. Better, actually. The kind of writing that comes from someone who has lived the thing they’re describing, hasn’t softened it, and has realized that the not-softening is the point.

I sat at the homework table and looked at the center doing what it does. Mrs. Alvarez with the baby, Deja with her essay, two kids working at the far table, the afternoon light coming through the windows at the angle it does in August. I thought about what it means to build something in the middle of everything trying to destroy it and have it still be standing.

The door is still there.

Still facing the street.

I think sometimes about what winning cost overall.

Jean, who called too late and died before she could finish her sentence. The colleague at the bottom of the stairwell. The man at Grady with no name. The four others whose deaths the federal investigation confirmed, and the ones that may never be confirmed at all. Maria, who was nine. The girl who disappeared from a family reunification that had no family, whose name is in Daniel’s file but whose face I have never seen. The girls still inside the system right now who don’t know what I know, who don’t yet have a door to find.

Winning didn’t give any of that back. I knew it wouldn’t. I just think it’s important to say it out loud, even here, even in this chapter where Mackenna is three weeks old, and the pool is lit at night, and the door is still open. The accounting matters. The names matter. You don’t get to call it a victory without also sitting with what victory didn’t include.

I let it all sink in, every last horrible detail we’ve survived, and every beautiful moment we’ve experienced. It all counts. It all matters.

And then I go back inside to my daughter, my husband, and the work that isn’t finished.

The door is still open.

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