Frank ignores this, keeps talking through, as much for himself as for Nicholas. “Then you know as well as I do that this won’t end here, not for you. It can’t. You must know that. I can’t protect you from it. You knew that, showing up here today.”
“I’m aware.”
And Nicholas was aware, of course. Tonight’s delivery has sealed it. It has sealed what Owen and Nicholas most needed sealed. Quinn and Teddy won’t ever go after the kids again. No one in the organization will. They can’t. There will be no bomb under a car one day. No men around every corner, not anymore. Because it will seal their fates too. And they are nothing, Quinn and Teddy, if not self-interested. They are interested in protecting themselves first and foremost.
But they’re also interested in punishing someone for putting them in that position. That someone, this time, will be Nicholas.
“I don’t understand you doing this, Nicky…” Frank pauses. “Not for him.”
“It’s not for him.”
“You sure about that?”
Nicholas starts to answer, but then he thinks better of it. Because it’s beside the point. The point is what’s best for Bailey. Bailey and Hannah. That’s his primary concern—and Owen coming home is good for them. Bailey needs a father again. Hannah deserves her husband. And, if Nicholas is being honest, Owen has earned some relief. For the last five years, Owen did everything to keep Bailey safe. He did everything to ensure Hannah’s and Bailey’s safety long-term.
But even if he hadn’t, if none of those things were true, would it matter? Wouldn’t Nicholas be here anyway? We do what we need to do for our children—and they are all his children. Owen belongs to him too, after all.
Which brings Nicholas to it. What this is all really about—what he should tell Frank and what he can’t tell him, what he can’t say out loud, not to anyone.
That Nicholas still dreams of his daughter every night—every single night. He still dreams of that day he found Kate on the side of the road. He plays it over and over again, on a relentless loop, that moment when he found her.
He and Bailey had just left the park and Bailey was asleep in the stroller—the only blessing of this was that Bailey was asleep in that stroller. Nicholas assumed Kate was running late and so he’d just left her a voicemail that they were leaving the park and they would meet her at her house. That she should take her time. That they were doing great.
Then he turned the corner, and he saw Kate splayed out, halfwaydown the block. Her body, his daughter’s body, was half on the curb, half off it—her head and shoulders in the street, her legs twisted out in an unnatural direction.
And, still, before he got to her—before Nicholas bent down beside her and turned her over—he got to believe it. He got to believe his daughter was okay. That she had been in some sort of accident. That she was hurt, but she was okay.
He was her father. He raced down the street toward his kid with that one, unshakable thought: He was her father and he would do all the things that needed to be done so his daughter was okay again.
Then he touched her.
And there was no story he could tell himself to make anything better, not anymore, not ever again.
Nicholas never really left her there. He never left the side of that road. The rest of his life—the glorious and miserable rest of it all—has all been details.
Nicholas offers Frank a small smile, a sad smile. “Didn’t think you’d make it to eighty, Frank.”
“Who did?”
Nicholas stands up, taps Frank on the shoulder, like Morse code. Like a reminder that he needs to go now. Right now. Or Owen will have the police in here. He’ll have them in here, escorting them all out.
“It was smart of you to bring her with you tonight,” Frank says. “It was smart to bring Hannah.”
“No, that wasn’t me. She insisted on coming. I tried to stop her.”
“Either way, it helps,” he says. “I don’t have to find a reason to argue the point with my kids that tonight is not the moment to settle up on all of this. Even my kids aren’t dumb enough to want a witness…”
Nicholas nods. He knows that what Frank is saying is true. Quinn and Teddy can’t touch Hannah—that’s the deal now. She gets to besafe, just like Frank’s children are safe. They can’t keep her from walking out of here tonight, even if they want to. And by extension, because Hannah was brave enough to come with Nicholas, they won’t stop him from walking out of here either. No one, especially in this family, wants a witness.
Still, Nicholas wishes she hadn’t made that choice. Nicholas is not particularly invested in his own safety, not at this point. He’s invested in Bailey, only in Bailey, and her having a future with both of her parents, safe and together.
Bailey having exactly the life she deserves—that’s really all that Nicholas is interested in.
“Just do me a favor, Nick,” Frank says. “Go somewhere I don’t know about.”
“There’s nowhere you don’t know about.”
“I hope that’s not true.”
