Jack scoffed. “If you want to be old-fashioned.”
Hugo didn’t know what he was more excited about—seeing Lucy again or seeing Lucy see Christopher’s bedroom. He’d spent the entire month preparing Christopher’s bedroom for him based on what Lucy had told him he liked. He’d painted the ceiling like a cloud-wild blue sky. The walls were ocean scenes—boats being skippered by sharks in captains’ hats, octopi knitting fishing nets that caught letters, the letters spelling out Christopher’s name. It was some of the best work he’d done. Who knew happiness was the best muse of all?
“Next time a child asks me if the Mastermind is real,” Hugo said, “I’m telling them yes.”
“I had no idea you would take to Lucy like you did,” Jack said with a soft chuckle. “Don’t lay that one at my feet. That was all you.”
“For some reason, I don’t believe you.” Hugo glanced at the arrivals board. Soon. Very soon…
Jack smiled his Mona Lisa smile. He had the mind of an author, always seeing ten, twenty, a hundred pages ahead of the rest of the world. “I am sorry for keeping you in the dark about the contest. I really am. But I was afraid you’d talk me out of it, and it wasn’t the time for second-guessing. I’d been a coward too long. It was time to take my own advice and be a little bit brave. Or stupid. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.”
Jack checked his watch. They were both counting the seconds.
“While we’re waiting, I meant to tell you,” Hugo said. “Got a strange email from Dr. Dustin Gardner. He wanted me to make sure you saw his thank-you card.”
“I did, yes.”
“Thank you for what? Kicking him off the island?”
“No reason.” Jack wore a look of purest innocence that Hugo didn’t buy for one second.
Hugo stared at Jack, though Jack would not meet his eyes. “You paid off his student loans, didn’t you?”
“No comment. But,” he said, “if I did such a thing, the gift would come with the condition to get anger management therapy.”
“What about Andre and Melanie?”
“They didn’t win the game, but no one said I couldn’t give them nice consolation prizes.”
“I did notice that for some reason the book’s release party is being held at something called the Little Red Lighthouse Bookshop in Saint John, New Brunswick. New Brunswick? We’ve never even been to Old Brunswick.”
Jack put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I’ve always been a supporter of small independent bookstores.”
Supporter? More like savior. Hugo could already see it. Reporters and fans would descend on Melanie’s bookshop in droves the week the book came out. There’d be lines snaking around the block to meet Jack and get his autograph. The online orders alone for signed copies of his new book would keep a roof over Melanie’s head for a decade.
“I’m afraid to ask about your kidneys,” Hugo said. Andre’s one wish was a kidney for his dying father. When Andre was on the island, they’d yet to find a match.
“I didn’t give anyone either of my kidneys. Doubt anyone would want them after all I’ve put them through. But with the help of a detective in Atlanta, they were able to find a second cousin who was a match. Looks like the surgery is going to happen very soon.”
“Jack, you can’t save the world.”
“And I would never try,” Jack said. “All I did was keep my promise to those kids.”
Hugo still wondered…why now? Why had Jack suddenly shrugged off his grief and started writing again? Opening his home again? Start living again? He’d been wondering this for a while, and Jack’s mention of time opened a door that Hugo was afraid to step through. But he knew this might be his only chance for a while.
“Are you ever going to tell me why you started writing again? We’re not going bankrupt, are we?”
Jack smiled. “I’ll tell you but only in a riddle.”
“Never mind.”
“It comes after Q.”
He almost said R, but Jack had his brain so well trained—or possibly damaged—that Hugo knew it wasn’t R. It was U.
You.
“Me,” Hugo said. “You did all this for me?” He could barely hear his own voice speaking. The words were like knives in his throat.
“You were going to leave, yes? And here you are. And you haven’t packed a single bag yet.”
He swallowed. “Jack.”
“Can’t see my own hand in front of my face sometimes. Kicked myself for years for not having children. Didn’t realize until we started getting flyers in the mail from real estate agents in New York that I was about to lose my only son. And when I did, I would have no one to blame but myself. I knew you’d stick around long enough to see what happened with the contest. And depending on how the game went…well, maybe if I found a reason for you to stay, you would.”
Too moved to speak, Hugo could only look at Jack for a moment.
He remembered the night Lucy had shown up at the guesthouse, ready to go home. What had Jack told him to do to make her stay?
Distract her with something. Make her help you with a project. Works every time.
He was right. It worked.
Finally, Hugo said, “This whole bloody game was a ploy to try to trick me into staying?”
Jack laughed his old laugh. The laugh he laughed when his cleverness astonished even him. He elbowed Hugo in the side and pointed to the escalator where Lucy and Christopher were slowly descending.
Jack said, “We win.”
* * *
—
Here we go, Lucy thought as she and Christopher reached the escalator. Their new life together in Maine would start the second they reached the bottom. Christopher paused at the top of the escalator and looked up at her.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I can carry you down, or you can try it. Just grab the railing and step onto the top step fast.”
He reached out, touched the railing, snatched his hand back as if it had been burned. But then, instead of jumping into her arms in fear, he tried it again.
This time he did it. He grabbed the railing and stepped onto the escalator. Lucy held him by the back of his T-shirt just in case.
“Whoa,” he said, then laughed at himself.
“Good job, kiddo,” she said. Christopher grinned in triumph. He’d been doing that a lot lately. The dark circles under his eyes were long gone. The hundred-yard stare he sometimes wore on rough days rarely showed itself. And he smiled and laughed and did somersaults around their house for no reason except he could. Because he was safe now. Because he was loved. Because that safety and love weren’t going anywhere ever again.
Lucy tugged gently on the back of his shirt. He looked up at her.
“Mama loves you,” she said.