The coast, somewhere between Santa Cruz and Monterey
Two months later
As we walk along the beach, following the boys as they run their toy cars along the hard-pack, the setting sun shining through the tips of the waves, it finally happens.
Kate lets me slip my hand into hers.
It’s been two months. I feel like I’m about to cry, but I don’t want to make a big deal about it. I glance at her, and she’s got that look on her face, that look I haven’t seen in a long time, that look she doesn’t even know she makes—her lids a little lower, her left brow lifting, her jaw sliding in the delight of a nice moment as she realizes that, yes, I’ve always been in love with her, and no one else, that we’re on the way back to being husband and wife.
The boys chase each other in tight circles, their laughter muffled by the surf.
Kate lets me pull her in but keeps her hands at her chest. I wrap her up in my arms, rest my forehead on hers, and fall into her eyes. The softness is returning there, and I’m the luckiest guy in the world.
“What’s next for us, Dan?”
What’s next?
I lost my stock options, sure. In fact, I was fired before my flight began its descent into Boise; the IT guys delivered on their promise to send out all those damaging details about me and then slipped back into the shadows. But we still cashed out, in our own way. I guess I’d never realized that we didn’t really even need my stock options, or anything else; we just sold our house, paid off the home loan, and headed for the coast with a tidy sum. We didn’t buy a shack on the beach, but we found a rental nearly a mile from the water, and that was okay—more than okay, really. It didn’t keep me from walking barefoot around town, from riding our cruisers to the ocean, from taking my dad’s old Coleman to the beach, from talking to neighbors and listening, from walking across the street every morning to check in on Eleanor the elderly shut-in, from having time to take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Yeah, we’ve cashed out.
I look into her blues. “What’s next is, we go get some Mexican.”
“Avocados, too. Harry wants your guacamole.”
“And orange soda.”
“And Calhoun wants to join us.”
She closes her eyes, whimpers. “Not again. Please.”
“No sleepovers, this time. I promise.”
She looks at my mouth. “Okay, and what about the bigger picture?”
I feign confusion. “Bigger picture?”
Tiny nod.
“The bigger picture is, Larry’s just a little misunderstood.”
She smiles to herself, plays along. “Dan.”
“The bigger picture is, no one really knows how those guys ended up in the Alaskan wilderness. Thousands of miles away.”
Closes her eyes, smiles. “Dan.”
“I mean, not even David Duncan will talk.”
“You know what I’m—”
“Hard for the D.A. to charge Larry with anything when the so-called victims refuse to say a word about who had them, why they were shaved bald and dressed like monks. Hard to do anything when Larry just sits there on his porch, day after day, staring into space, as the authorities still have no freaking clue how they ended up in that shed out there in the woods, all the way near the Arctic—”
She pinches my lips. “I’m not talking about this again.”
I shrug, and she releases.
“What’s next for us, honey?”
“What’s next is, we stay here.”
“Keep renting?”
“For now, sure.”
“Hold on to those investments?”
“Investments? We have everything in bonds and CDs.”
“No, that short-message thing.”
I scrunch my face. “Twitter?”
“Yeah, those guys with the short-message rule.”
“We just wrote the check out.”
“Dan, c’mon. How many people are going to use a site that only lets you write a hundred and forty characters?”
I have no answer.
“And who’s going to want to read that stuff?”
“They’re doing okay so far.”
“Dan, they don’t make any money. You admitted that.”
“They’ll figure that out.”
She looks away and laughs. “I just don’t think we should go around funding start-ups based on the advice of a man who craps in upper decks.”
“Honey,” I say, “Do you understand about Calhoun? That he was employee number eighty at Google, that he’s a millionaire many times over, that he’s friends with this venture capital guy who swears by these short-message dudes?”
“These guys with no revenue.”
“The point is, we wrote the check. They seemed like scary smart guys. And the twenty thousand has already crossed. They’ve cashed it. So I think we chill awhile, see if it turns into anything.”
She smirks, looks away. “So you’re gonna be a venture capitalist? That’s your new job?”
“Never.” I bring her in closer.
“Or you’re gonna be a ‘thought leader,’ like that new guy you hospitalized with the laxatives? That guy they had to rehydrate for two days?”
“Let’s worry about that next week.”
A moment’s pause. Then Kate breaks out into this toothy smile. “Dan,” she says, looking at my chest, “aren’t you wondering why I keep asking about our plans?”
I wasn’t, but now I am.
“Honey,” she says, extra sweet, “I think I’m nesting.”
“Nesting?”
“Got a new egg to hatch,” she says in a mock-girlish voice.
I feel my body sway. “What?”
She looks up at me with tears of joy. “We’re gonna have a baby.” Her voice breaks. “A beautiful little beach baby.”
How is that even . . . Whoa. I’m getting really dizzy.
“Dan?” Finger snapping near my ear. “Honey. Deep breaths.”
Deep breaths? Okay, I can do that. And slowly, with oxygen returning to my brain, it all starts to make sense. Kate’s slightly fuller cheeks. Her switch to virgin margaritas. The time she had me go on a 1 A.M. peperoncini and grapefruit run.
And, just like that, a half-forgotten warning echoes in my ear.
You’re still packing heat the next ten times.
“Dan?”
So be careful where you point that thing.
“Heat!” I gaze out to the sea as if it holds all the secrets. “I was packing heat.”
Kate says, “I’ve decided to look at it this way . . .”
I take a big breath and let it out slowly.
“. . . we can sleep when we’re fifty.”
One day at a time.
Then, just as I’m beginning to feel my face again, a familiar figure appears up on the bluff. Those broad shoulders. That stance, one foot out a little, a hand in a pocket. The hard lines of a profile like no other.
Rod Stone.
What the—
He realizes that I see him.
I stand there with Kate in my arms, gazing up as he lifts a fist into the air triumphantly, then turns and walks away, his fist still skyward, as Harry and Ben attack from behind and pull us to the sand.