Page 80 of The Rook’s Obsession

I look at her, this woman who married a man who blackmailed her into it and somehow turned that into something real and full of love. If anyone understands the gap between what you expect from life and what you actually get, it’s her.

“I want in,” I decide. “I want to be part of it. Whatever it looks like, whatever it takes. I’m in.”

Liam’s face does that thing again where he’s feeling too much and trying to feel nothing. His jaw works and his eyes go bright for a second before he blinks it away. “Good.” He nods firmly and picks up his fork again. “That’s good.”

Nick’s hand finds mine under the table, and he gives it a squeeze.

We finish dinner with wine and conversation that feels for the first time like the kind of thing a family does. Not a perfect family by any stretch. Not a family that hasn’t been broken and scattered and reassembled from mismatched pieces. But a family, just the same, held together by something stronger than shared memory. It’s shared intention. The decision to be here. To try.

After dessert—store-bought tiramisu, which Aurora apologizes for profusely while Liam reminds her she’s very pregnant and doesn’t need to apologize for anything—Nick pushes back from the table and gives me a look. “I have something to show you.”

“The last time a person said that to me, I wound up in a storage room in a restaurant in Milan with an old friend of mine.” I wink at Aurora, who hides her grin behind her napkin.

Nick rolls his eyes. “This is better than that. Trust me.”

He won’t tell me where we’re going, which would normally make me tense. I’m learning slowly to let some things be uncertain without assuming the worst. The city gives way to suburbs—green, quiet. Streets lined with trees. Houses set back from the road with actual yards, the kind of neighborhood where children ride bikes and people know their neighbors’ names.

Seemingly out of nowhere, he turns into a driveway, then stops the car. The house in front of us is modest by any standard Liam would recognize, but it’s beautiful. Two stories, white clapboard, with a wide front porch and a swing. There are mature trees in the yard. An oak on one side, a Japanese maple on the other. The windows are dark. It doesn’t look like anybody lives here.

Nick cuts the engine and sits there for a moment, looking at the house through the windshield. “I bought this place years ago,” he murmurs. “Before we found out you were alive. Before any of this.”

I look at him in shock.

“When we were kids, Laura and I used to talk about what kind of house we’d live in someday. She wanted a porch with a swing. A big yard and tall trees and a kitchen with a window over the sink so she could look outside while she washed the dishes.”

He pauses. Something moves through his expression that’s older than the weeks we’ve spent together. It goes all the way back. “I bought it in her memory. I told myself someday, when things settled down, I would live here. When the work was done. When I’d earned it.”

He looks at me. “I never moved in. It never felt right without her.”

I don’t speak. I’m not sure I can.

“I’m not asking you to be her,” he carefully explains. “I told you that on the jet, and I meant it. But this house was built around the idea of a life I wanted to share with someone, and you’re that someone. Whatever name you go by.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a key, then holds it out to me in his open palm.

I look at it. A simple brass key, nothing special. The kind that opens a million doors in a million houses. But it isn’t a million doors. It’s this door. This porch and this swing, this yard with the trees that throw shade on the windows and would look so pretty with snow on the bare branches.

I take the key, wrap my fingers around it, and feel not just what it is but everything it stands for before we get out of the car.

We go inside together. He lets me lead, which I appreciate, because I need to move through the space the way I move through every new space—carefully, on my own terms. The front door opens into a hallway with hardwood floors that creak softly under our feet. A living room to the left has a fireplace and built-in bookshelves. The dining room on the right is empty, waiting for the sort of dinner we just shared at Liam’s.

The kitchen is at the back of the house. It has a window over the sink. I stand there for a long time, looking through that window at the dark yard. The oak tree is a shadow against the sky. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog barks once and goes quiet.

The house is empty. No furniture or curtains; no evidence of a life being lived here. There’s nothing but potential and possibility. Like a blank page waiting for someone to write on it. For the first time in my life, the person holding the pen is me.

Nick is leaning against the doorframe behind me. Watching, waiting. He’s always been willing to wait, which I’m sure can’t be easy for a man like him. I don’t know if I fully appreciated it until now.

“It’s perfect,” I decide, and I mean it in a way that goes beyond the house itself. It’s perfect because he kept it. He bought a house for a ghost and held onto it for years and never moved in because he was waiting for something he couldn’t name. He’s handing me a key now and asking me to fill these rooms with him, not as the girl he lost but as the woman he found.

“With one condition,” I add.

I turn to face him, leaning back against the counter with my arms folded. His eyebrow lifts. “A condition?”

“Non-negotiable.”

“All right. Let’s hear it.”

“We need to get a dog.”