Page 110 of His Wall

She opened her eyes. "I have loved you since the park, Julian. Since you told me about your mother and the buildings you never built. I loved you when I thought you were guilty, and I loved you when I knew you weren't. I'm sorry it took a bullet hole in your wall for me to say it."

I pulled her in.

My arms went around her back. Her face pressed into the side of my neck. Her arms came up around my ribs. Her hands fisted in the back of the white shirt I had been wearing, and I felt her shoulders go loose against me.

We stood in the middle of the apartment.

The plaster dust settled. The last of the sirens faded into Sixth Avenue. Somewhere on the street below us, a delivery truck went past. The radiator in the corner clicked. The early summer dawn was coming up gray at the corner of the curtain I had not fully closed when I had come in last night.

Her heartbeat was against my chest. Mine was against her ear.

"Stay."

"I'm staying."

EPILOGUE

LEAH

I was in the bathroom, in a navy dress, when Julian came out of the closet, half-buttoned.

The dress was one I had bought myself. Simple. Knee-length. Sleeveless. My hair was down. I wore it down now. The watch was on the inside of my left wrist.

I moved in two months ago.

Half my boxes were still unpacked because Julian kept getting distracted by what was inside them. He had found my behavioral psychology textbooks the second weekend and had spent an entire Saturday afternoon reading passages aloud in the voice of a Shakespearean actor until I had thrown a pillow at his head from across the room.

"We're going to be late."

He was behind me in the bathroom mirror with his arms wrapping around my waist and his chin coming to rest on my shoulder. The white shirt was open at the collar. His sandy hair was damp from the shower. He had not put his jacket on yet.

"We are always late, Julian. That is your fault."

"You say that like it is a bad thing."

He kissed the side of my neck.

"Get dressed. I am going to start the car."

"You can't start the car. You don't have the keys."

"Don't make me start without you."

I pushed him toward the closet. He went, smiling.

I walked through the living room while he changed.

The sketches were on the wall. Framed. Every one of them. The twelve-story building with too many windows. The bridge over the river he had never been to. The doorway that led nowhere. I had made him do it. He had argued they were not finished. I had told him, “Nothing ever is.” He had taken three of them down to the framer the next morning and brought back twelve.

My plant was on the windowsill next to his vinyl shelf. The new leaf at the top of the stem was the size of my thumbnail now. My nonfiction books were stacked at the end of his Coltrane row. Two lives that should not have fit in the same apartment, fitted.

My badge was in the drawer by the front door.

I still carried it. The conduct review had cleared me — Julian's cooperation had produced more evidence than any subpoena would have, and the case against Conrad had been airtight, and Harlow had written the cover memo herself. The violation had stood. I had lost undercover certification. I would never be someone else again.

I stayed at the Bureau. Analyst track. Case strategy. Eventually, the handler asked if I wanted it. Harlow told me at the review that I would be good at it. I told her I would think about it. I was still thinking.

I thought I would miss the covers.