My throat tightened. I flicked my eyes up just in time to see Harriet watching, her jaw tense, her hands rubbing the baby’s back compulsively. I continued, my words meant for the children but weighted with another meaning.
“Sometimes we hurt people, even if we don’t mean to. And they really don’t deserve to be hurt. But if we’re lucky ...” I swallowed, my voice steady but low, “...we can say we’re sorry, and show we’ve changed by being better every day.”
The girl nodded seriously, as if this were sage advice meant only for her. “Like when I broke Mommy’s vase and then helped clean up?”
“Exactly,” I whispered, offering a small smile. “You make it right by helping, by being kind. You can’t make it right completely because the vase has been broken, but you can say sorry and help clean up.”
Harriet’s eyes glistened, though she kept her lips pressed thin, giving nothing away.
The girl tugged on my sleeve. “Can we take it home?”
“Of course,” I said, slipping the book into her eager hands. I let my gaze linger for a moment on Harriet, letting unspoken apology and regret pass between us like a fragile thread. I did not ask for forgiveness. I was not deserving of that.
“You have beautiful little sisters,” I said to the young girl. “I have little sisters, and I love them. I have a little boy, and I hope one day he has a sister or brother who he can read to.”
Harriet gave the barest nod, enough to acknowledge what had been said without words. Then she ushered the children toward the checkout desk, her back straight, her pace brisk.
I remained crouched by the shelf, heart hammering, knowing I had just spoken the only apology Harriet would ever accept. I wanted desperately to tell Harriet that I had been wrong. That I had been sick. Blake was never mine, and he wasn’t meant to be. I had my person now and loved my family, making me all the more aware of how hurtful it must have been for her to see someone like me trying to tear hers apart. But I couldn’t say that. Harriet knew I was regretful and didn’t need my life story. Time to let things go.
Epilogue III: The Hound—Ten years later
“Great work buddy.” My youngest son Edward had built his own little camping seat and was very proud. I’d have to come and pound fresh nails in it later or it would collapse under him, but he didn’t need to know that. Edward was seven and showing all the signs of becoming an outdoorsman and handyman. Our eldest child Ben was more of a studious book lover, like his mom.
Rose was buzzing about inside preparing for Thanksgiving. Edward had made the centerpiece with Ben as his reluctant partner. Our house would be full of family and friends tomorrow. Gloria was coming with her daughter, and of course Paul, Sally, and the kids would be there. Sadly, I’d lost both parents in the last few years, so we would miss their presence, but I knew Rose would have some kind of remembrance gesture in place, a candle or a flower. Brett was out on a job, so we’d miss him too, but his wife and kids were coming, so it was going to be a big crew.
Loretta would never have been welcome in our home, but any kind of reconciliation between her and Rose was now impossible. When I told her about her mother’s death a few years ago, Rose only sat in silence, her face unreadable as I explained the jealous wife, the rage, the knife in the wrong place at the wrong time. She didn’t cry. There were no tears left in her for a woman who had died as she had lived: messing with people’s happiness and bartering her dignity for cash. Instead, what settled over her was a strange, heavy regret, not for the loss itself, but for the shallowness of the life her mother had clung to. Her voice didn’t break, but I could hear the wistful ache there, a daughter mourning not the woman, but the wasted years that woman had never redeemed. Rose thought it a waste. Not that her mother was gone, but that she had never known how to be truly alive. Happiness had always eluded her because shemistook money for love, men for security, and her child for a burden. She never built anything lasting, never gave or received the kind of affection that wasn’t bought or transactional. Rose felt the ache of it deeply. Not because she missed her mother, but because she pitied the empty life she had lived.
I never thought I’d be this man—domestic, settled, married, with kids who had my eyes and her smile. The wordnormalhad always been a foreign language to me, one I’d mocked from the shadows as I stalked and prowled. But with my Zahra ... it was different. Our life wasn’t ordinary. It never could be, not with us as the main characters. Our little game of watching and leaving signs, our constant undercurrent of pursuit and possession, kept the pulse of our love wild and sharp. And that was what thrilled me the most. I hadn’t been tamed; I’d been chosen.
What made it perfect was that it wasn’t ordinary. Rose would leave me little traces, a lipstick mark on a note hidden in my jacket pocket, or she would slip out in the night just to make me follow her. I left signs too, a rose where only she would find it, a photo of her taken when she didn’t know I’d been watching. To anyone else, it would look twisted. To us, it was love. I hadn’t been softened. I’d been sharpened, made dangerous and alive by the one woman who could look straight into my darkness and smile.
Sometimes I wondered if Ben and Edward would ever sense it, that current running under their parents’ love. Probably not. The kids just saw a mother and father who adored them, who laughed too loud at bedtime stories, and who hugged a little too long in the kitchen. But Rose and I knew. We weren’t normal. We weren’t safe, and that was why it worked. Somehow, by the strangest twist of fate, the stalkers had found a home. And God, I loved every second of it.
