He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 230

Chapter 230

Alex’s POV

She slept from Paris to the landing.

Not all of it…. she had been awake for the first hour, looking at the clouds, talking about what the twins might be like, returning at intervals to the restaurant we had finally found in Paris and which had been exactly what she had been describing for two months from my hospital room.

Twenty covers. East-facing window. A menu that changed every three days.

We had ordered everything on the menu

She had laughed when I suggested it.

We had ordered everything on the menu. The second hour she was asleep, her hand resting on her stomach in the automatic gesture that had been present since before I woke up and that I now understood would be present until the twins arrived and probably after.

I looked at her sleeping….

At the hand. At the face that had been carrying too much for too long and had, across a week of being allowed to carry nothing, rediscovered its own natural resting state.

I did not wake her.

I watched.

Thought about the weeks ahead…

The investigation. Reeves had the lighthouse materials. The board member was cooperating. Selina’s hearing was two days away.

The unknown man in the room that could have been anywhere.

The business card Maya had sent Carter from the aircraft.

All of it waiting.

All of it real.

And underneath it, running alongside it, carrying the same weight as all of it combined: the two children we had found out about in Paris, who were coming regardless of what the world was doing around their arrival.

We were going home to all of it.

I was ready for all of it

The reporters at the gate.

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I had expected this.

The car had turned into the road before the house was visible and the gate was visible before the car had stopped, and the reporters were there…..

Maya’s hand tightened in mine.

I got out first.

The questions arrived before I had fully straightened.

Mr. Voss, how is your recovery….

Can you confirm reports about Edwin Hargrove’s murder investigation….

What is Hargrove Meridian’s position on….

I stood at the car door

Let the questions run for a moment….

“I’m grateful to be alive,” I said.

The questions paused

“My recovery is ongoing. My priority right now isn’t the company or the media.” I held the gate with one hand. “My priority is my wife, our children, and helping Maya pursue justice for her father’s death.” I looked at the cameras directly. “We will not stop until every person responsible has been held accountable for what they did.”

I opened the gate….

I guided Maya through.

The questions resumed behind us.

I closed the gate.

The entrance hall.

Flowers

Not one arrangement…. several, placed at ntervals that communicated that someone with taste had made decisions about what went where and had applied those decisions with care. Candles. Soft music, arriving from somewhere in the house that required locating before its source became obvious.

Maya stopped walking.

Her hand still in mine

She looked at the flowers.

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At the candles…..

At me.

“You planned something else,” she said.

Not a question.

I looked at the card on the side table.

“Keep walking,” it said.

She found the trail herself….

The flowers leading through the entrance hall, through the sitting room, toward the kitchen and the back door. Notes at intervals…. not elaborate, the simple language of directions:

Keep walking.

Keep going.

Almost there.

She walked.

I walked behind her.

The music followed at a volume that didn’t require looking for its source…… present, accompanying, the string version of something I had chosen because I remembered, from inside the hospital dark, her describing a piece of music she had played on a drive before all of this and had said had felt like something she wanted to remember.

She stopped at the back door

Looked at the last note.

Go outside.

She opened the door.

Stepped into the garden.

And stopped.

The arch was the first thing she saw.

Flowers….. white, the structural kind, the same kind we had used on the beach and in Paris and throughout the week, a visual language we had developed over the past ten days that now communicated something every time she saw it.

Below the arch:

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Catherine.

Olive.

My father, standing slightly apart, the posture he assumed when he was present and was uncertain of his welcome and had decided to be present anyway.

Maya’s mother, who I had arranged to be here…. a call from Paris two days ago, a conversation in which I had asked for one thing and she had given it immediately.

Lila. Rivaldi. The people from the company who were also, more than just the company, the people who had been steady across everything that had happened.

And at the centre of the arch, a priest

Warm expression.

Patient.

I came to stand beside Maya.

She had not moved.

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