Chapter 33: Chapter 33

IT’S a rare sunny day in London. I step out from the funky share space where I have an office onto the street with Smuckers trailing behind.

We skirt around puddles like pale mirrors on the pavement, reflecting gray skies and the gray buildings all around, and the colorful lights of signs. There’s a scent of diesel in the air, mixed with the sweetness of hops from a nearby microbrewery.

We head up the street toward a bright-red phone box. A woman named Hanna converted it into a coffee booth—I was relieved there isn’t just tea here.

“Hi, Veronica!” Hanna says.

I tell her hi. I buy a muffin and coffee and hang around and talk to her, like I do every day. She always has a nice treat for Smuckers.

I love the colorful, international bustle of London. I love my fun, fashionable neighbors at the office shared space, but I miss New York.

The Vonda story broke after Christmas. My mom, of all things, found it in herself to confess and produce evidence that shows what the Woodruffs did to me. There’s speculation she was paid.

It was a big TV news-hour-style story that got picked up all over—it even made the front page of the Washington Post.

I cried when I watched it. And then I watched it again and again and again. And I just felt so clear. Like something painful inside me got washed clean in tears and rain.

But, strangely, I didn’t want to go back.

That thing that got washed and cleared is perfectly preserved, fragile in a nice ribbon. Going in front of the cameras as vindicated Vonda doesn’t appeal to me much more than going as hated Vonda.

Maybe I’m tired.

Carly is attending a great school, and she’s got a part in a musical on the West End that will be amazing on her résumé when she goes back to New York. I don’t want her to go, but she’ll be eighteen and done with school soon. I want her to be free to chase her dreams.

I’m using the money I got from Locke as seed money to build my dream co-op studio in the ruins of an old warehouse. I’ve got a few investors lined up, and I’m in the process of quietly soliciting bids, blending elements of the Southfield studio with Henry’s vision and some ideas of my own.

I try not to think of him too hard these days or about the way things ended with us. And how I loved to be with him.

How he helped me remember who I was. I sometimes wonder if he had a hand in my mother’s one-eighty.

I still don’t think he meant it when he said he wasn’t pretending. Or, at least, most of me doesn’t think he meant it. A tiny sliver of me thinks he did.

But I still won’t reach out to him. Does that sound screwed up?

It’s just that the memory of him saying he wasn’t faking his feelings for me is like a lottery ticket where you never go and check if you won. So you can never be disappointed that you lost. And when you look at it, you can think maybe it’s something good.

The balsawood griffin sits up on my dresser like that, faithful and loyal and full of possibilities, as if there is still some magic in the world. Like a lottery ticket I never followed up on.

I look at it when I wash dishes. When I make food. When I feel happy. When I feel unhappy.

The studio keeps me busy. There will be subsidized spaces for artisans from all over the world. It’s exciting.

I say goodbye to Hanna and head back to the share office with its hip interior of brick walls and green corrugated metal partitions between desk after desk. I make my way down to my area, saying hi here and there.

I’m surprised to find a large box has been set in the middle of my desk where I have my inspiration photos scattered. It’s addressed to me. No indication of the sender.

I ask the woman who sits next to me if she saw who brought it.

“Courier,” she says, shrugging.

Large as it is, it’s light as a feather. I grab a knife and slit the tape, opening the top.

My eyes don’t know what I’m seeing at first. My mind interprets everything as packing materials, like a company that doesn’t have its shit together decided to go into the packing peanuts business.

But my heart sees. It starts racing, dangerously racing. Fear. Happiness. Wonder.

The box is filled with hundreds of tiny balsawood griffins, intricately carved—I recognize Henry’s hand in every claw, every tiny wing.

I dig my fingers through them and I draw up a handful.

“Four hundred twenty-five.”

I spin around. My eyes meet his. My breath hitches. Shivers skim over me.

He’s leaning on a partition behind me in a deep brown suit, dark hair tousled and just a little bit too long.

Smuckers jumps at his legs, tail wagging.

“Henry.”

“I carved one every day you were gone,” he says.

My voice shakes. “You can’t be here.”

He pushes off the partition and comes to me, defiance sparkling in his eyes.

I grip the table edge behind me like that might stop the room from spinning.

He stops in front of me. He stands there, watching my eyes.

He’s all posh polish in a thousand-dollar suit, but his pulse drums in his throat. When he speaks, there’s the faintest crack in his voice. “I want us back. What do I have to do?”

My heart aches—it actually aches. “I don’t know if there was an us.” Even as I say it, some little voice in me screams that it’s a lie.

“There was an us for me,” he says. “There always will be an us for me.”

Henry’s here. In front of me. “You carved more than four hundred of those?”

His gaze sears my heart. How many he carved isn’t the question, and he knows it.

I can barely think. This is everything I didn’t dare want.

“It feels like too much to believe,” I say finally.

“I know. I get it. You’ve been burned.” He takes my hand like my hand belongs to him. He knits his fingers between mine, warm and soft. “I burned you when I didn’t tell you everything,” he says. “I should’ve, and I didn’t. I could stand here and give you excuses, but I won’t. I just need you. Give us a chance.”

“I can’t.”

His hand tightens, just a bit, like if he doesn’t hold me tightly, I might get away. “Let me love you enough for both of us.”

“What?”

“I love you.” His words are calm and sure. “That’s real. Everything was wrong, but that part’s real. It always will be.”

Instinctively I’m looking for the trick, the lie. But all I see is love, the vulnerability of Henry’s love. Of his coming here. Of his griffins.

Henry’s gaze is deep-blue honesty and miles-wide loyalty. He’s been burned, too, but he’s showing up.

Like some things can come true.

“And of course…” He lifts our joined hands, brushes a kiss on my middle knuckle. “You have to let me design and build your studio share project. I mean, please. You think anybody else can do it halfway as well as I could?”

I smile. “There’s the Locke Kool-Aid that I know and love.”

He pauses and everything seems to still. Like, do I mean I love him?

“It’s just about the Kool-Aid?” he asks.

I smile so wide, I think I can never stop. “If I tell you I love you, if I tell you how much I love you and how scared I am for it not to be real that you love me, will it stop you from carving more tiny griffins like a psycho?”

“No,” he says. “I’ll keep carving them for you. As long as I can carve.”