She already knew what to say in finale: They are you. You was everybody who loved mutually. Alexandra had won the bid to make the life insurance ad, and now she needed to make people think of a happy ending after a happy ending.
They are the couple who decides if it’s “One if by land, two if by sea” to stick to their sailboat. They are the opposites attracted. They are the ones who can finish each other’s paragraphs. They are you.
“Paragraphs aren’t sexy,” her boss, Carver Ellington, said.
“They are in love letters,” she said.
“Give me sexy. Give me fun. More boats, less prose.”
“Sexy boats,” she said.
“Exactly. Float my boat. And for the record, that’s not a euphemism.” He shifted in a seat resembling a perfect red potato chip.
“Got it,” she said.
And in a circuitous way, she had gotten it. She had come to America for what it refused to give, thinking there were quick tunnels to the complete picture. In its place, she’d been given a new picture, not that family again but a new family, a son, and he was beautiful, and she was in love. She wished she could show Shel the picture of the boy who’d be her son, that the world still surprised.
Shel could be anywhere, one place in all the places. It was impossible to know what he would do, or had. But she decided he was alive because, historically, when he disappeared, he had not been dead. She knew that everyone was historically not dead until they were, and still she was sure she would know it if he had died. Her hand would cease to clasp, or she would find herself sleepwalking all the way to Nevada. Her own existence was totem became the way to think. If she could live, he lived. She only needed to continue as though nothing had happened for nothing bad to happen. And nothing had. Besides, Ray Gutierrez said he could do better this time. Now they had an address. The world was furnished with reason to hope. A son, and perhaps soon, too, a brother.