Page 96 of Never Forget
The carousel in Central Park on a cold Tuesday morning with almost no one else there. Rosie on a painted horse, gripping the pole with both hands, and me walking alongside with my hand on her back because she wouldn't let me stand at the railing. Every time we came around she looked up at me like she needed to check I was still there.
Pizza at a place I used to go to when I lived four blocks north. The Central Park Zoo. The Natural History Museum for the dinosaurs. The Staten Island Ferry one afternoon just to see the harbor, Rosie pressed against the railing with her hair blowing sideways while I held the back of her coat.
She was going to forget most of it. Four-year-olds don't keep that kind of memory. But she'd have the pictures, and I'd have told her about it for the rest of her life, and that was enough. I wanted her to have it. I wanted her to know that I had walked this city before I was her mother, and that I had come back to it with her once before we went home.
Sam had been texting me.
He hadn't been calling, and I understood why. The probies had started that week, and Cap had put him on point, and what he'd described in his messages sounded like every hour of his shift and most of the hours that weren't. He texted when he could.Missing you. Hope Rosie's not driving you crazy.The phone would buzz and I'd read whatever he'd sent and smile and put it back in my pocket and keep going.
I missed his voice. I hadn't realized how much I'd come to need it at the end of a day until I didn't have it.
The phone rang that last afternoon.
Rosie was on the couch with Biscuit tucked under her chin, the apartment nearly empty around her. When she heard Sam's voice through the phone she lit up and reached for it with both hands.
"Uncle Sam! Guess what? I saw Mommy and Daddy on the plane!"
I froze.
His voice came through the speaker, confused. "You did?"
"Uh-huh. In the clouds. I saw angel wings! They were waving at us. Just like Auntie Jamie said they would."
My eyes filled.
She chattered on—about the clouds, about how high we were, about how she'd pressed her face to the window the whole way and watched. Then she handed the phone back to me. "He wants to talk to you."
I took it. Couldn't speak for a moment.
"Jamie?" His voice was thick.
"I'm here."
Neither of us said anything for a long beat. We didn't have to.
"She's something else, that kid," Sam said finally.
"Yeah." I wiped my face. "She really is."
"How's it going?"
I looked around the half-empty apartment. The bare walls where photos used to hang. Our suitcase by the door. Rosie on the couch with Biscuit pressed to her chest.
"Almost done. Flight's in the morning."
"You okay?"
"Yeah," I said. "I'm okay. I'm ready to come home."
Home. I said it without thinking.
Sam was quiet for a moment.
"I can't wait to see you," he said.
"Me too."
I hung up and sat with the phone in my hand for a long moment. Havensworth was home now. Sam was home.
