Between Here and the Horizon(92)

“That sounds like it’s going to be a very special day, Connor. I hope you enjoy it.”

Later, with Connor holding one hand and Amie holding the other, I managed to flag down a cab and get us across to Tribeca, to Sully’s warehouse. He’d set up shop making unique, handcrafted items of furniture for New York’s elite. He could easily have retired on the money Ronan had set aside for him in order for him to take care of the children, but he refused to touch a cent of it. It was all for them, he said. He’d made his way in the world just fine despite his brother, and he didn’t plan on that changing any time soon.

We found Sully covered in sawdust and smelling like fresh cut pine at the back of his studio. Connor and Amie both whooped and hollered, racing to him and throwing their arms around his body. He held up his arms, looking down on the two little people clinging onto him, and he laughed.

“Wow. Anyone would think you were happy to see me,” he said, grinning.

“We are, we are!” Amie told him, giggling. “It’s time to go home for dinner!”

“I see.” Sully looked up at me, and his smile transformed into something softer. His face was filled with light, where there was once such darkness and anger. It was as though he was a different man entirely. He was still as playfully arrogant as ever, and his comebacks were just as sharp and caustic as they had been when I’d first met him. But now there was a quiet calm to him that had made me fall even more impossibly in love with him.

We traveled home, Sully in the front seat with the cab driver and me in the back with the children. The entire six miles from the warehouse back to the apartment, Sully had his hand wedged behind him through the gap between his seat and the door, gently stroking my leg, his fingers curled around my ankle, touching me in one way or another.

We ate dinner with Rose and the children, and then stayed to bathe the kids and put them to bed.

“Will you tell us a story, Uncle Sully?” Amie pleaded. “A story about when you and Daddy were little, like me and Connor?” Sully looked uncomfortable for a second, and then he sat down on the end of Amie’s bed, folding his arms across his chest.

“All right. But your dad and I used to get into all sorts of trouble together, so you have to promise you won’t follow our lead, okay?”

Both Amie and Connor nodded solemnly.

“Right. Well. There was this one time, when Ronan and I were maybe a little bit older than you are now, maybe ten years old, and he and I did something very bad. We burned down the McInnes feed store…”

I backed out of the room, cringing. Trust Sully to tell them something completely inappropriate like that. He’d taken to the children so well, though. He loved being their uncle. Would he have ever gotten to know them if Ronan and Magda were still alive? It was doubtful. Most likely, they would have grown into adulthood and never met him once. Now, despite the fact that their parents were both gone, Connor and Amie had a loving uncle and a loving aunt taking care of them, as well as me. I may not have had a familial title for them to call me, but the way they said my name—with love and buckets of affection—was enough.

An hour later, Sully came down into our apartment, red cheeked and looking very sheepish. “Rose says she needs to vet my bedtime stories from here on out,” he told me, huffing as he sank himself down onto the sofa beside me.

“I’m not surprised.”

Sully stuck his tongue out at me, reaching up to stroke his index finger down my temple, cheek and underneath my chin. “You look very beautiful right now, Miss Ophelia Lang from California. Did you know that?”

I bit back a smile. It would be no good if he knew how happy his compliments made me; he’d tease me over them without mercy. “Sure I do,” I said airily. “You don’t look so bad yourself, I suppose.”

Sully laughed, rolling his eyes. “Come on. We both know I’m the most attractive man on the planet. Heavy lies the crown and all that.” He was joking, but he was also telling the truth—he really was the hottest guy on the planet to me. I leaned over him and planted a kiss square between his eyebrows, and Sully moaned softly under his breath.

“A letter came for you,” I whispered to him, face still hovering only an inch above his. “It’s from The Causeway.”

“Probably from Medical Center Gale, wondering when I’m leaving you and going back to her,” he told me, winking. He got up and collected his mail from the table, then opened it, scanning the letter he unfolded in his hands. There were two pieces of paper in the envelope. Sully read one and then the other in silence, then he just stood there staring at them both.

“What is it, Sully?”

He didn’t move.

“Sully?”

He folded the papers together and walked slowly back to the sofa, where he handed me both pieces of paper. “A voice from the grave,” he said quietly.

The first letter was from Linneman. It was brief and to the point:





Dear Sully,





Before your brother died, he came to see me and he made significant changes to his last will and testament. As you know, he provided a significant sum of money to you, along with your childhood home to do with as you pleased. He also made sure the children were financially secure for the rest of their lives, thanks to their majority share holding in the Fletcher Corporation. Additionally, Ronan also left me in possession of a letter addressed to you, to be mailed to you wherever you were living as of today’s date, being October 19th. As such, please find enclosed his correspondence as per his instructions.