"Then I'll wait until you're ready to pull me back."
"What if?—"
"Lila." His thumbs brushed her cheekbones. "I spent twelve years in a job that required me to trust no one. I know what it's like to build walls so high you forget there's anything on the other side. And I understand it won't disappear simply because you wish it would. He pressed his forehead to hers. "We'll figure it out. Together. One day at a time."
She closed her eyes. Let herself breathe.
"They poisoned his coffee," she said. "At a town council meeting. He probably shook hands with the person who did it. Smiled at them. Talked about the weather."
Ronan didn't say anything. Just held her.
"Warren is going to spend the rest of his life in prison. And I know that's supposed to feel like justice, but right now it just feels like—" She searched for the word. "Arithmetic. Like I'm trying to balance an equation that can't be balanced. My father's life on one side. A prison sentence on the other. The numbers don't add up."
"They never do."
"Then what's the point?"
"The point is that he can't do it to anyone else. The point is that the truth is finally on the record. The point is that you didn't let them get away with it." He pulled back to look at her. "The point isn't closure, Lila. It's just—the next chapter. A different story than the one they wanted to tell."
The microwave had long since stopped beeping. The pasta was probably cold. Outside, the darkness had settled in completely, the stars emerging one by one above the tree line.
"I went to his grave," she said. "First time since the funeral."
"How was it?"
"Hard. Good. Both." She stepped back, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "I told him about you."
Ronan's expression flickered. Surprise, maybe. Or something softer. "What did you tell him?"
"That you're complicated. That he'd have questions about your past. That you're good in the ways that matter."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "That's generous."
"It's true."
"It's the version of me you want to see."
"It's the version of you that's standing in this kitchen." She reached up and touched his face. The stubble on his jaw. The faint scar along his cheekbone. "The other versions—the ones from before—they're part of you. But they're not all of you. Not anymore."
He turned his head and kissed her palm. A small gesture. Quiet. The kind of intimacy that didn't need words.
"The pasta's cold," she said.
"I'll make more."
"I'm not hungry."
"Then we won't eat." He took her hand and led her toward the screened porch. "Come sit with me. Watch the stars come out. Tell me about your father if you want. Or don't talk at all. Whatever you need."
They settled onto the porch swing, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her. The string lights cast soft shadows. The frogs sang. The inlet stretched out before them, dark and still and patient.
She didn't talk about her father. She didn't talk about anything. She just sat there, letting the silence hold her, letting Ronan's warmth anchor her to the present moment.
Tomorrow, she would call Delia and tell her the truth. She would go back to work and process permit applications and pretend everything was normal. She would start preparing for the trial, for the testimony, for the public reckoning that was still months away.
But tonight, she would just be here. In this cottage with its new dock and its string lights and its man who smelled like motor oil and kept leftover pasta in the fridge.
It wasn't a fairy tale ending. It wasn't closure. It wasn't the tidy resolution that stories promised, and life rarely delivered.
