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Ava shakes her head, eyes red, swollen with tears.

“Is it safe for you to be here?” Beth asks.

“Not particularly.” I disabled all CCTV within two blocks of the school, but AI would likely sniff out the virus and have it removed within the next fifteen minutes. I’d be gone by then.

I look at my daughter. “Number three in your class.”

“It’s perfect,” she says, finally finding her voice. “The top two had to make speeches. I hate public speaking.”

It’s like a dream being in the same space together. Nothing and everything to say. In proximity, I can see the subtle toll the last four years have taken on Beth: deepening laugh lines and a heaviness in her eyes that wasn’t there the last time I looked into them—the residency of grief.

And in my absence, Ava has changed. I see far more of the woman she is becoming than the child she used to be.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Beth says.

After New York, I wrote her a letter—the hardest words I’d ever put to paper. I tried to explain everything. The breadth of my transformation. Kara’s plan, and what I’d had to do to stop her. I told her that, as much as I wanted to be her husband, my presence in their life would only be a liability. I encouraged her to move on from me and seek happiness. I told her I would always love her.

I hand Beth the package. “This is for both of you.”

“What is it?”

“When I was looking for Kara, I kept a journal. Sometimes I’d write you letters I never thought you’d get to read. Maybe this will help you understand what I’ve become. There’s also a letter in there. To both of you. I can’t stay long enough to tell you what I’ve been doing these past few years. It’s not safe. Read it later, after you’ve celebrated.”

Beth stares at the package, uncertain. While it’s true I don’t have time to linger, I’m also terrified of what they’ll say when they learn what I’ve done.

“We’re having a little party back at the house,” Ava says.

“I can’t, honey. I’d put all your guests in danger. I’m sorry.”

She nods, holding back tears.

“You took my name,” I say.

“I’m not ashamed of it. Are you still?”

“No.”

“Good. You shouldn’t be. I mean, you kind of saved the world.”

It takes everything in my power not to break down. I had stopped using my emotional Faraday cage months ago. To save humanity, I needed my humanity.

I lean forward, touch Beth’s hand. “Does he make you happy?”

She smiles through her tears. “Very much so. But I miss you. I’d rather have you.”

I stare through the glass, breathing through the hurt. The loss. All the moments we would never have. All the chess games I’d missed with Ava. The ten thousand dinners with Beth. Late-night soaks in the bathtub, just talking. I would take a bullet over this pain. Would hand back my beautiful mind and return to the 118-IQ Logan of old in a second.

The urge to wall myself off from the ache is acute. But I want to feel it. If I lose the ability to hurt, I also lose my grasp on joy—those brief moments of contentment that make consciousness worth the voyage.

Beth says, “You could’ve left this package at the front door.”

“I came for Ava. And to see you.”

“You may have transcended to another level of being, but I still know you. So let’s try that again. Why did you really come? Why take the risk?”

“I should let you get back to your celebration,” I say.

She looks me in the eyes.

I hesitate.

“Logan.”

I just stare at Beth.

She says, “I know they might never let you come back to us. And even if they did, you’ve changed in ways I can’t understand.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not saying it doesn’t hurt—badly—but we’ll make it. So whatever it is you need to do, go do it. We’ll be okay.” She looks at our daughter, gesturing to her graduation gown, and behind the tears, I detect a spark of defiant happiness. Resilience. “Because as hard as it’s been, life went on.”

I look at my daughter.

Her eyes are filling with tears, but she says, “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too.”

Silence. More tears. For all of us.

I finally open the door. We step out of the car, and I go to my daughter and wrap my arms around her. Beth comes over, and we all hold one another in the parking lot, the sodium lamps humming softly above us.

I want to tell them I still love them, and also how that love has been changed and deepened—made infinitely more complex by the intimacy of being able to relive every memory of them in perfect detail.

But I have no words. Or none that would be sufficient.

And so I settle for dividing my consciousness and decelerating my perception of time to the slowest possible crawl, savoring every elongated second of their touch, their warmth, their smell, their presence.

As I walk across the parking lot, away from the two most important people in my life, I feel more alone than I’ve ever felt before.

But also—more at peace.



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