Maybe a hundred yards uphill, at a steep incline. No way can Maggie run that distance without blowing out her hips. But she can walk fast, and she doesn’t falter, and when the tram finally arrives at the terminal, she’s there waiting with Monica. Her hands clasped over her heart to keep it from leaping out of her chest.

“We don’t know who it is,” Monica warns, drawing her Glock 23, holding it at the ready position.

“Sure we do,” says Maggie. “Are you kidding?”

But when the car shudders to a stop and the door slides open, the man who emerges is Wendall Weems, recognizable from his photographs as perhaps the homeliest individual Maggie has ever laid eyes on. Except for his eyes, which are startling in their intensity. He spots Monica with her weapon at the ready and says, “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. If you wish to arrest me, I shall go willingly.”

Monica lowers her gun. “Good. You’ll be taken into custody. Please turn around.”

“Kidnapping the boy wasn’t my idea.”

“We’ll let the lawyers sort it out, shall we?” Monica says, pulling out her handcuffs.

As she clicks the cuffs on his wrists, Weems looks around and says, “I wonder, has anyone seen Mr. Kavashi? The security chief? I expected him to be here. He was supposed to meet me outside, at the terminal.”

Monica looks startled. “I’m confused. We thought he was your enemy.”

Weems shrugs his misshapen shoulders. “Until very recently. The last hour or two, actually. But he indicated to me that he wanted to change sides. I got the distinct impression he intended to betray Eva and cast his lot with us.”

When Monica informs him that Evangeline and her followers are dead, the victims of a toxic gas released into the Pinnacle, Weems’s face turns a whiter shade of pale. “So if Vash remained on the premises, he is among the victims?”

“It looks that way, yes.”

To Maggie’s eyes, he appears genuinely shaken by the news.

When Weems is finally clear, several frightened-looking individuals emerge from the tram, among them a woman with raccoon eyes and a swollen nose who Maggie barely recognizes as Irene Delancey, the bond-trader-turned-schoolteacher-turned-kidnapper.

Then, ducking his head, Randall Shane steps out into the clear light of day.

“Hey, Mags.”

“You okay?”

“I’m good.”

He looks exhausted, but somehow happier than she’s seen him in years. Clutching his left hand is one of the most beautiful women Maggie has ever seen, scared but gorgeous, and somehow radiating strength, and attached to Shane’s big right hand, like he doesn’t intend ever to let go, is a ten-year-old boy with a big smile on his face.

They look like a family.

Five Months Later

Things don’t always work out the way you want them to. Nobody knows that better than me. You meet someone, fall in love, imagine you will be together forever and always. You tend to forget the ‘until death do we part’ part. And when it happens you’re sure, you’re absolutely certain, you will never love again.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’re wrong.

That’s what I’m thinking as we drive back from Donnie Brewster’s Humble Mart Convenience Store with a pound of hot dogs, and a dozen buns, and Noah’s favorite pickle relish.

Plenty of mustard at home. Again, the kind Noah likes.

Okay, hot dogs may not be the healthiest food, and I know I shouldn’t be indulging his every whim, but it’s a warm summer evening and he’s a growing boy, and how much harm can a few tube steaks do?

Tube steaks. That’s what Jed used to call them.

In the backseat Noah has the window rolled down and the wind is fluffing his hair and he looks as blissfully content as any kid who is about to stuff himself with delicious nitrates could look. He’s had an amazing recovery, all things considered. For the first couple of months he did share my bedroom, in his own little bed, and he insisted on a night-light. He was leery about going outside, didn’t want to see any of the kids from school. Indeed, he stayed home for all of the semester, with me acting as tutor and feeling, to put it delicately, challenged. I don’t know squat about prime numbers, which may have something to do with Noah’s recent decision to return to school in the fall. I’m hoping he still feels that way when September rolls around, but you never know. One day at a time.

As to the events in Colorado, they managed to prove that Bagrat Kavashi, the horrible man with the mustache, had perished in a scheme of his own devising when he rigged the poison gas for the Pinnacle instead of the Bunker. He thought he had the perfect way to lay all the blame on Evangeline, who would be conveniently dead via ‘suicide,’ but he failed to escape his own trap. I don’t think of myself as a vengeful type, but, really, the scum bucket deserved it.

Noah leans forward in the seat belt harness, taps me on the shoulder. Apparently unaware that I’ve been watching him in the mirror.

“Are you happy, Mom?”

He asks this regularly, checking in. And I always answer the same way. “Most of the time, sweetie. Nobody is happy all the time.”

He nods, satisfied, and resumes his look out the window, blinking into the wind.

It’s Noah who first spots the plume of smoke when we come around the last corner to our modest-but-if-you-ask-me-perfect farmhouse.

“Mom, smoke!”

“I can see that, sweetie.”

And I can see Shane tending his new Weber grill, looking as serious as any man who ever prepared to burn a hot dog for a soon-to-be-eleven-year-old boy.

He insists on charcoal. No propane gas for Randall Shane.

I know, I know. He’s fourteen years older than me, and that can be a big deal if you let it, which we don’t. Also he’s far from rich, he doesn’t drive a cool car, and his work sometimes takes him far from home. For that matter there’s always a chance, however small, that he won’t come back, that he’ll die trying to save someone else’s little boy or little girl.

I know all that.

But I also know this: we live on borrowed time, all of us, and wasting a day of it-or a lonely night-is a crime. Besides, I love the big guy to pieces. It’s different from Jed, but just as intense. So get out of my face with this he’s-too-old-for-you stuff, I don’t want to hear it.

Sorry…you can take the girl out of New Jersey but…you know how it ends. Happily ever after, if I have anything to say about it.

And I do.