The Last Minute (55 page)

‘I don’t know. I won’t promise something I can’t keep. I’ve had enough of that in my life.’

‘All right. So what city? Las Vegas or New York?’

‘Do you want to go back to art school?’

She looked genuinely surprised. ‘I … I hadn’t considered that as a possibility.’

‘Well. If you want, pick a good one. I’ll pay for it. Or I’ll get you a studio, if you don’t want to go back to school. I
would rather you be back at art than forgery.’

Delight played across her face. Art school and Daniel: that was heaven. ‘You don’t have any preference for a city?’

I shrugged. ‘My folks live in New Orleans, but I don’t really talk to them. I think, with Daniel, now maybe I should mend
that fence. I can’t teach him the value of family if I’m too distant from my own.’

‘Yes, show up with your new son and your non-girlfriend who’s not a nanny and takes care of the kid. They would love that,
I’m sure. Where else?’

I bit my lip. The wanderer gets to choose a home. ‘I like Austin. I like Savannah. I like Boston and Nashville. I like London
and Paris and Dublin.’

‘I like all those choices,’ she said.

‘Then you decide.’ And I meant it. I didn’t care where we lived. I was getting a new start. So was she, so was Daniel. So,
even, was Mila. Wind, lift me, take me, then settle me down. I’d lived so much of my life planned out and I was ready for
a jolt of spontaneity.

‘Okay. I’ll decide,’ Leonie said, and we walked back to the cottage.

But in the end, Daniel chose, that night. Leonie had written down a bunch of cities on slips of paper, tossed them into a
rainbow knit hat she’d bought down on the beach. She couldn’t decide and had thought she’d have me draw a city from the hat.

Daniel, holding onto the coffee table, pulled himself standing. He knocked over the hat and shook it and to his delight the
scraps of paper spilled loose.

He grabbed one and tried to stick it in his mouth. I pulled it from his little fist and uncurled the damp strip. Held it up
for Leonie to see. She laughed and said, ‘Sold.’

‘Good choice, Daniel,’ I said. He offered up a hand and I gave him a gentle high-five.

He plopped on his butt and began to fuss and then he reached up for the comfort of my arms.

I would like to thank Mitch Hoffman, Daniel Mallory, Peter Ginsberg, Shirley Stewart, David Shelley, Jamie Raab, Ursula Mackenzie,
Thalia Proctor, Kim Hoffman, Dave Barbor, Holly Frederick, Nathan Bransford, Sarah LaPolla, and the amazing teams at Little,
Brown UK and Grand Central Publishing.

Also thanks to Kevin Casey, Steve Basile, Dan Edwardes, James Whitaker, and special thanks to Leslie, Charles, and William,
as always.