“You have everything you need for this fight, don’t you?” And yes, there’s unabashed reverence in my voice. Because this…my wife…fighting by my side?It’s everything.
Her chin tilts higher, and I’ve never wanted to kiss her as badly as I do in this moment. “I do,” she answers, meeting me squarely. “And I’m prepared to use it.”
Harrison laughs again, but it’s thinner. “You’d send your father to jail.”
“You sent his to jail so damn straight I will. If that’s what the law asks for,” she says, and her voice doesn’t shake. “If that’s what it takes to keep my husband’s project clean.” The word husband lands with a weight that makes the old voice in my skull shut up.
The manager arrives then because Mara has long arms and longer instincts. He’s polite like only New York knows how to be.“Sir,” he tells Harrison with a smile sharp as a plate edge, “we have a private room available upstairs if you wish it?”
Harrison rises with a shrug that misses graceful and lands on oily. He leans over the table to Naomi, close enough that I see the moment he remembers I could break his wrist before he doesn’t back off.
“You’ll regret this,” he whispers.
Naomi doesn’t move. “The truth sleeps on our side,” she says. “Check the lighthouse.”
He straightens. He wants the last word very badly. He doesn’t get it. He leaves. The door breathes out.
The silence after feels like the minute between thunder and rain. Theodore raises a hand and our cold food is replaced.
I take a seat and turn to Naomi, catch her cool hand in mine.
The ache in my chest is equal parts pride, fear, and the smaller, meaner thing I don’t like to admit: relief that the photo on my screen wasn’t betrayal but bait a fight she was forced into. A fight she triumphed like the warrior goddess she is.
“You kept receipts,” I say, not a question.
“I learned from the best,” she answers, chin a notch high, eyes a notch wet. “Your mother. And you.”
The fury drains, leaving me steadier and more dangerous than I was when I walked in. I take the recorder. I take the folder. And I squeeze her hand.
“I’m sorry I judged before I heard,” I say, because the Vecchio in my head is right and I would rather be a man who says it than one who explains it away.
She exhales. It sounds like a home opening a window. “I’m sorry I gave you reason to.”
Theodore clears his throat, gentle signal that love can continue after lunch. “Children,” he says, fond and ferocious, “eat the soup. It’s getting cold.”
We laugh, short and wrecked. I flag the waiter and order something that tastes like victory and penance. Naomi squeezes my fingers once and then doesn’t let go.
When we’re done, she kisses her grandfather and he leaves with an extracted promise of a visit.
Outside, the city is loud and honest. Paparazzi lurk and don’t intrude. The car door opens; I wave it away. We walk the half block to the corner because I need the air and she needs my hand.
“I have things to say, darling. But not here,” I say. “The island.”
“Before dawn,” she says, a light in her eyes that stutters my heart. “I want to wake the lighthouse up myself.”
“Then we will,” I answer, and the word doesn’t feel like propaganda at all.
We stop at the curb. Taxis slice light. Somewhere, a busker plays a violin that makes the day sound like it’s already remembering us kindly. I look at her, at the line of her jaw, at the new phone in her bag and the old stubbornness in her bones.
She fights for you. Even when you may not deserve it.
“Thank you,” I mutter under my breath, because men like me have to practice the sentences we weren’t raised with.
She lifts our joined hands and kisses my knuckles. “Don’t let go,” she says lightly, a joke that isn’t a joke.
“I won’t,” I tell her.
And I don’t.
