Page 59 of Never Forget
It took me a second to process what she'd said.
"Last night." Her voice cracked on the second word. "After you left. I called him to tell him about the hearing, and we just..." She pressed her lips together and swallowed. "It's over."
I didn't know what to say. Part of me felt something close to relief. I wasn't proud of that. I had no right to feel it while she was standing in front of me with tears welling in her eyes.
"I'm sorry," I said. Because that was the truth, even if it wasn't the whole truth.
The tears spilled over. She wiped at them with the back of her hand.
I stepped forward and pulled her into my arms.
She stiffened for half a second. Then she let go. Her face pressed into my chest, her hands gripping the front of my shirt. She cried the way people did when they'd been holding it together for too long.
I held her. That was all I could do. All I'd ever been able to do.
After a while, her breathing slowed. She didn't pull away, but she started talking, her voice muffled against my shirt.
"I moved to New York because I needed to be somewhere no one knew me." She pulled back just enough to look at me. "I really thought Mark was going to be part of that. I thought we were going to figure it out together."
My heart cracked a little watching her grieve a future with another man.
"He's not ready to be a father." Her voice was steadier now, flatter. "He told me last night. He wasn't planning on having kids for another five years. Maybe more."
"Jamie..."
"I asked him, Sam. I asked him directly if he was ready, and he said no." She wiped her face with both hands. "So that's it. That's the answer."
I wanted to tell her Mark was an idiot. That any man who had a chance to build a life with her and Rosie and didn't take it was out of his mind. But that wasn't what she needed to hear right now.
"Mark isn't New York." The words came out before I'd fully thought them through. "Everything you built for yourself is still there. You can still go back if you want."
She looked at me for a long moment. Something shifted in her face.
"It doesn't matter." She straightened and squared her shoulders. "I'm not done here. The proposal isn't finished. Jack's death can't be for nothing."
There she was. The Jamie I remembered.
"Okay," I said. "Then we finish it."
She nodded and wiped her face one more time. The tears were gone now, replaced by something harder and more determined.
A small voice came from the hallway.
"Auntie Jamie?"
We both turned. Rosie was standing in the doorway to her bedroom, rubbing her eyes with one fist, her stuffed rabbit dangling from the other. Her hair was mussed from sleep, her pajamas rumpled.
She looked at Jamie's face. Then at me. Then back at Jamie.
"Why are you crying?"
Jamie and I exchanged a look, one of those wordless conversations you have with someone when a child asks a question you're not prepared to answer.
"I wasn't crying," Jamie said.
Rosie frowned. "Your face is wet."
"That's because Uncle Sam told me a really funny joke." Jamie crouched down to Rosie's level. "It made me laugh so hard I cried."
