Chapter 8
We found the house a month later.
It was in Southeast Portland, in a quiet neighborhood with big trees and sidewalks and neighbors who waved when you walked past. It was a 1920s craftsman—three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a basement, a big backyard with an oak tree just begging for a treehouse. The kitchen had been updated in the nineties and was ugly as sin, but the bones were good. The price was just within our budget, especially after Rita called in a favor with a mortgage broker who owed her a life debt.
The inspection went well. The appraisal came in on value. We signed the papers on a rainy Tuesday in September. Noah was there, holding a giant lollipop the realtor had given him, and he signed the bottom of the deed with a purple crayon.
“Official,” he said, holding it up. “Now nobody can make us leave.”
Moving day was chaos.
All our friends showed up—my coworkers from the firm, Megan’s weird artist friends she’d reconnected with, Detective Alvarez and his wife (who brought cookies and ended up staying to unpack the entire kitchen), even Rita the lawyer, who showed up in a moving truck she’d borrowed from her brother and lifted boxes like she was training for the Olympics.
By the end of the day, the house was full of boxes and half-assembled furniture and the smell of pizza and beer. Noah claimed the biggest bedroom on the second floor—“I need space for my Legos and my science experiments and the fort I’m gonna build in the closet.” Megan took the smaller bedroom down the hall, the one with the bay window she’d fallen in love with at the open house. I took the master bedroom at the end of the hall, the one with the attached bathroom and the walk-in closet.
That first night, we were all exhausted. We’d ordered Chinese food and eaten it off paper plates on the living room floor because the dining table was still in pieces in a box. Noah was asleep on the couch, his head in Megan’s lap, an empty carton of fried rice next to him.
Megan was running her fingers through his hair, a soft smile on her face.
“Can you believe it?” she said quietly. “We actually did it. We have a house. We have a kid. We’re… normal.”
I laughed. “We are so far from normal. Normal families don’t have two moms who once snuck onto a billionaire’s estate to rescue their son. Normal families don’t keep a baseball bat by the front door ‘just in case.’ Normal families don’t have a lawyer who knows how to hotwire a motorcycle.”
“Okay, fine. We’re not normal. But we’re ours.”
She was right.
The first few months in the new house were the happiest any of us had ever been. Noah started at the local middle school. He made friends instantly—his sense of humor and his talent for drawing dragons won people over fast. He joined the robotics club. He tried soccer for three weeks and quit after he realized it involved running. We put up a basketball hoop in the driveway. Megan built him the most elaborate treehouse in the entire neighborhood, complete with a trap door and a zip line.
Megan got a job at a small graphic design firm downtown. She was good—really good. She’d spent eleven years designing fake IDs and forging documents to keep us hidden; turns out those skills translated perfectly to logo design and brand strategy. Her boss loved her. Within three months, she was making almost as much as I was.
I got promoted at the architecture firm. I was put in charge of the big new library project downtown—my first lead design job. I worked long hours, but I always made it home for dinner. No exceptions.
We fell into a rhythm.
Mornings were chaotic. Megan was in charge of breakfast (pancakes on Sundays, frozen waffles during the week, eggs when she was feeling ambitious). I was in charge of getting Noah up and making sure he had his homework and his lunch and that he was wearing matching socks (a constant battle). We’d all pile into my car, drop Noah at school, then head to work.
Evenings were quieter. We’d eat dinner together at the table—no phones allowed. Noah would tell us about his day. Megan would complain about her annoying coworker who thought Comic Sans was an acceptable font. I’d tell them about the drama on the construction site. After dinner, we’d read together on the couch, or watch a movie, or play board games (Megan was banned from Monopoly after we caught her stealing from the bank three games in a row).
But nothing is ever perfect.
The nightmares didn’t stop.
Noah had them at least twice a week. He’d wake up screaming, sweating, convinced Voss was in the room, that the men in black suits were coming to take him away. One of us—usually Megan, who was a lighter sleeper—would go in, sit on his bed, hold him until he calmed down. Sometimes he’d want to talk about it. Sometimes he’d just want to be held. Sometimes he’d climb into bed with one of us and sleep there for the rest of the night.
Megan had them too.
I’d hear her through the wall, crying out in her sleep, thrashing around. I’d go in, sit on the edge of her bed, talk her down. She never wanted to talk about hers. She’d just look at me with those big scared eyes and say, “He’s gone, right? He can’t get us anymore?” and I’d say, “He’s gone. He’s never getting out. We’re safe.” And she’d nod, but I could see she didn’t always believe it.
And me? I had my own demons.
I’d lie awake at night, replaying the last eleven years. All the birthdays I’d missed. All the first days of school. All the scraped knees and broken toys and bedtime stories that should have been mine. I’d go into Noah’s room when he was asleep, kneel by his bed, and just watch him breathe. Sometimes I’d cry. Sometimes I’d just feel this overwhelming, aching love that was so big it hurt.
One night in November, I was coming home late from a work dinner. It was raining—cold, miserable Portland rain. I pulled into the driveway and saw the light on in the kitchen. Megan was sitting at the table, a mug of tea in front of her, staring at the wall.
I let myself in. “You okay?”
She jumped. “God, you scared me. Yeah. Fine. Just couldn’t sleep.”
I sat down across from her. The kitchen was still ugly—we hadn’t gotten around to renovating it yet. The linoleum was peeling, the cabinets were a terrible shade of oak, the light fixture buzzed. But it was ours.
“Nightmare?” I asked.
She nodded. “Same one. I’m back in the car. The Suburban is behind us. I can see Voss’s face in the rearview mirror. I’m trying to get Noah out, but the door is stuck. And then… he hits us. And I wake up.”
She took a sip of tea. “The doctor upped my anxiety meds last week. They help a little. But some nights… it feels like it’s never really over. Like he’s still out there, watching.”
I reached across the table and took her hand. “He’s in a maximum-security prison in Pendleton. He’s got twenty-five years without parole. He’s sixty-two years old. He’ll die in there. He’s never getting out.”
“I know. Intellectually, I know. But my brain… it doesn’t always believe my brain.”
“I get it.”
We sat in silence for a while, listening to the rain hit the windows.
“Emily?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever regret it? Reading that letter? Finding out? Your life was so… simple. Before. You had your job, your apartment, your freedom. And then we crashed into it and blew everything up.”
I thought about it. I thought about the quiet nights alone in my old apartment, eating cereal for dinner, wondering if I’d ever find someone to love, if I’d ever have a family. I thought about how empty those nights felt now, compared to the chaos of our house.
“No,” I said. “I don’t regret it. Not for a second. Yeah, my life was simple. But simple isn’t the same as good. I was… bored. Lonely. Going through the motions. And then Noah walked into my life, and you walked back into it, and suddenly everything mattered. Every day was a fight, but it was a fight worth fighting. I’d rather have this messy, complicated, terrifying, wonderful life than a hundred boring simple ones.”
Megan smiled. It was a real one, the kind that reached her eyes.
“God, we’re so dramatic,” she said.
“The most.”
She stood up and carried her mug to the sink. “C’mon. Let’s go to bed. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Noah wants us to help him build a volcano for the science fair. He says it’s gonna be ‘the most explosive one in the history of middle school.’ I give it a fifty-fifty chance of burning the house down.”
I laughed and stood up. “Great. Can’t wait.”
As we walked down the hall to our bedrooms, she stopped outside Noah’s door and peeked in. I looked over her shoulder. He was sprawled across his bed, the comforter half on the floor, his stuffed fox tucked under one arm, a half-finished dragon drawing on the nightstand next to him.
“Look at him,” Megan whispered. “He’s so perfect.”
“He is.”
“We did good, huh?”
“We did great.”
She turned to me. For a second, I thought she was gonna hug me. Instead, she punched me lightly on the arm.
“Goodnight, Emily.”
“Goodnight, Megan.”
May you like
I went into my room and closed the door. Through the wall, I heard her climb into bed. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked. The rain kept falling.
For the first time in a long time, I fell asleep instantly. No nightmares. No regrets. Just peace.
