Sylvie laughs at that. “Oh, honey, we’re all dysfunctional. That’s what makes life interesting.” Sylvie turns her head to look over at Nadine and Tommy, who are still locked in their own private conversation. She looks back at Blythe and Hope and Morrow, and points in the direction of the couple. “That’s their marriage. Theirs alone. There’s no call for us to judge from the outside looking in, because we don’t know. We can’t. Every marriage is a country unto itself. And there are only two people there who speak the language.”
“Time’s up,” Hope calls to Nadine, who rises and walks back to the group without protest. For a moment no one speaks or moves, their eyes scanning the place that has been their prison for hours. Hope asks, “Everyone remember what I told you to do?”
They nod. Hope almost repeats the warning about how important it is that they do exactly as they were told, but she knows she doesn’t need to. They will. They’ve been a good bunch of hostages. Exemplary. They could teach courses on how to be a hostage. She steps out of their way and, with a flourish, indicates that they are free to walk out. One by one they take their turn atstepping into the vestibule area, each taking deep breaths of the air as if it is an ocean breeze and not the exact same recycled air they’ve been breathing all day.
When it is time for Sylvie to go, she finds that she cannot without doing one more thing. Tommy is still sitting with the dog. Without asking Hope’s permission, she rushes over to him and squats down, much the same as Nadine had done. At the doorway she hears Hope calling her name worriedly but ignores her as she leans forward and says, “I want you to have a PS.”
He looks up, and her tired eyes meet his sad ones. “Remember, the letter doesn’t end just because you sign your name.” She raises her eyebrows, willing her student to recall the lesson. “If you have something to add, you can always write a PS.” She reaches down and squeezes his hand. “And you have something to add,” she says. “Don’t forget that.” Then she gets up and heads toward the door, toward her husband who is waiting for her, toward freedom.
Signature
Chapter 38
Once the cars carrying the hostages have disappeared out of sight, Hope turns to Tommy. “You ready?” she asks him.
Tommy nods, stands, and walks over to Hope, transferring Covey’s leash back into her hand. “What now?” he asks her.
“Well, I will walk you out to the officers who are waiting out there, and they will place you under arrest and—”
“No,” he says. “That part’s pretty clear. I meant you. What now for you?”
“Oh, me?” Hope is surprised to be asked. “I guess I’ll wrap up at the station, go home, take a shower, and crash.”
Tommy shakes his head.
“What?” she asks.
“Never mind,” he says.
“No,” Hope presses. “What did you mean?”
“I meant, what’s next? After all this. For you.”
“I don’t really know yet,” she says.
They take a few steps before Tommy stoops down in front of the rack of tourism pamphlets, still in disarray. He looks up at her. “Mind if I finish this? I started fixing it earlier, but I... got waylaid. Won’t take me but a minute.”
“Sure,” she says.
He makes quick work of arranging the remaining pamphletsinto neat little stacks, then pushes them back into their designated slots. “All the things we never did,” he says, more to the pamphlets than to her.
He rises again holding one of the pamphlets and holds it out to her. “There,” he says.
She looks down at what he’s given her. It is a pamphlet about the Kindred Spirit Mailbox on Bird Island, a place she’s heard about for years but never gone. People say it’s special, mystical.
“You said you didn’t have a place to mail that letter to your mom. You could put it here,” Tommy tells her.
She looks up at Tommy. “Thank you.”
“Maybe then you’ll feel like it’s time to go home,” he says. “Like you did what you came here to do.”
Hope thinks of the flowers she left behind, of the birthday she refused to celebrate, of the honor she was ready to refuse. She sees herself putting the letter she’s carried for months into a lone mailbox on a stretch of undeveloped coastline, then turning and leaving it behind. “You might be right,” she says.
“Stranger things have happened,” he says as they exit the building.
Outside, Hope and Dale stand on the sidewalk and watch as the officers handcuff Tommy, put him into the police vehicle without incident, then drive away. Across the parking lot, the NOC is being packed up. Everyone is going home. It’s over.
“Sorry about that oversight,” says Dale. “I feel like an idiot for not patting him down.”
