I’S POV
It wasn’t supposed to end up like this.
She’d co to the estate for Aria. That was the reason she always ca....to see her daughter, to have lunch, to sit in the garden and drink tea and watch Aria move through this house like she belonged in it, which she did, which still sotis caught i off guard in a way she couldn’t fully explain.
She’d had lunch with Aria and Damien and Alexander, all four of them at the garden table with Mrs Chen bringing things out and the afternoon being exactly the kind of afternoon that would have been impossible to imagine a year ago. Then Damien had gotten a call and gone inside. Then Aria had gotten a ssage from Morrison about a patient query and gone inside too.
i had started gathering her things.
Then Mrs Chen had appeared with a fresh pot of tea and set it on the table.
Alexander was still in his chair.
He looked at the tea.
Then he looked at her.
Neither of them said anything.
Mrs Chen went back inside.
The garden did what gardens did in the late afternoon....went golden and quiet, the light thickening into sothing slower. i poured two cups because the tea was there and it seed wasteful not to.
She handed Alexander his without looking at him directly.
"Thank you," he said.
"Mm."
"She’s good in there," Alexander said. Nodding toward the house.
"She’s always been good," i said. "At everything she decides to do." She looked at her cup. "She gets that from her father."
She felt him go still beside her.
She hadn’t ant to say that. Or maybe she had. She was too tired to be sure of her own intentions around this man.
"Tell ," he said quietly.
She looked at him.
"What she was like," he said. "Growing up. What she was good at. What she...." He stopped. Started again. "I’ve been catching up to twenty four years for three months and every ti I learn sothing new I realize how much more there is that I don’t know." He held her gaze. "Tell sothing. Anything."
i looked at the garden.
She thought about Aria at seven, taking apart the family radio to see how it worked and putting it back together perfectly except for one wire she’d misplaced and spending three days figuring out which wire before she’d let i call anyone to fix it. She thought about Aria at twelve, teaching herself Mandarin from library books because she wanted to be able to talk to the old won in their building in their first language. She thought about Aria at sixteen sitting across a scholarship interview panel and coming ho and saying they asked if I thought I belonged there and I told them the question was wrong.
"She was four," i said, "when she decided she was going to be a doctor."
Alexander was very still.
"Not the way children decide things. Not I want to be a princess or a firefighter." i turned her cup in her hands. "She’d been at the hospital with . I was sick, nothing serious, but she’d seen the doctors and she ca ho and sat at the kitchen table and said Mama, I’m going to learn how to fix people." She paused. "She was completely calm about it. Like she’d just worked sothing out and was informing of the conclusion."
Alexander looked at his hands.
"She never changed her mind," i said. "Not once. Twenty years from that kitchen table to Mont Senai and she never once said she wanted to do sothing else." She paused. "Do you know how rare that is. To know what you’re for and just....go toward it. No detours."
"She’s single minded," Alexander said.
"She’s more than that." i looked at him. "She’s certain. In a way most people never manage. She walks into a room and she’s already decided who she is and she doesn’t need anyone to confirm it." A pause. "I used to worry about that when she was young. I thought....this child is going to get hurt. The world doesn’t like people who are that certain."
"And?"
"And the world has tried. Several tis." i’s jaw set slightly. "She’s still certain."
Alexander looked away.
She watched his profile. The particular tension in it....the thing he did when he was feeling sothing he hadn’t given himself permission to feel yet.
"I would have liked to see that," he said. "The four year old at the kitchen table."
"Yes," i said. "You would have."
She ant it simply. Not cruelly. Just....true. He would have loved it. She had no doubt about that, which was its own complicated thing to carry.
He turned back to look at her.
"Are you angry?" he said. "Still."
"I was never angry," she said. "I was afraid. Those aren’t the sa thing."
"No," he said. "They’re not." He paused. "Are you still afraid."
She thought about it honestly.
She thought about the man who had made her afraid. The monitoring, the control, the way his love had felt like a room with no windows. She thought about sitting in a corridor at 2am and hearing him say how are you with nothing underneath it except the actual question.
"No," she said.
He looked at her steadily.
"i." He said her na the way he’d been saying it for three months....carefully, like he understood he hadn’t earned the right to it and was asking every ti. "I know I can’t...." He stopped. "I’m not going to tell you what I want. That’s not...." Another stop.
"Alexander." She set her cup down. "Say what you an."
He looked at the garden.
"I’d like to spend ti with you," he said. "Not arranged ti. Not the estate, not hospital corridors. Just...." He paused. "Ti. The ordinary kind."
She looked at his face.
He was looking at the garden still, his jaw set in the way of soone who had said the thing and was now waiting with no certainty about what ca back.
The old Alexander would never have sat like this. Would never have offered sothing without already knowing the answer. Would never have left the space open like this....uncertain, waiting, giving her the room to say no.
That was new.
She knew it was new because she’d watched him learn it in the months since he’d arrived in her life again. The checking himself. The pausing before he acted. The monts in hospital corridors and estate gardens where she could see him deciding not to do the thing his instincts told him to do.
It wasn’t perfect. It probably never would be.
But it was real.
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