And that was the biggest paradox of all.
Epilogue
I HAD PULLED all the bedding off the huge white bed and made a pile in the middle of the floor because I couldn’t face the mirrors. While I’d waited for Finn to come back to me, I’d slept on the pile, far away from my lonely reflection and the bed where Finn had held me and loved me like he would never let me go.
Finn carried everything back, making the bed neatly, making me laugh at his fussiness. I tended to destroy a room faster than a tornado—something Minnie had hated, and something I pledged to work on so that my fastidious husband had one less thing to tolerate in his life with me. And I would make sure we had maids. Lots of them.
“They’re just going to get all messed up again,” I pointed out. “You’re a powerful lover, Clyde. It will all just end up on the floor again. Just like the first time.”
Finn laughed and blushed, just like I’d intended, and I tackled him, toppling him into the center of the fluffed pillows and the straightened duvet. And then we talked about what came next.
Vegas was out. Nashville was out. My brother was going to be on trial for attempted murder in St. Louis, and as much as I longed to be far away from anything concerning my family, Finn and I would both be involved in the trial. Hank had gotten desperate. He had a drug habit and he owed money to some very scary people. When I came up missing, and rumors started to abound that I was in the company of an ex-convict, Hank saw an opportunity to capitalize on it. It wasn’t hard. He was living with Gran and knew everything that was happening as it happened. He sent Gran a ransom demand, pretending he was Finn, and arranged a drop off location and a time—Thursday afternoon. But then I’d contacted Bear. Hank got nervous that Bear was going to bring me back before he could get his hands on the money. So he watched Bear’s house. When Bear took off Thursday morning for St. Louis, Hank had followed him. When Bear left Finn’s father’s house in Finn’s rental car, without me, Hank had followed him to the gas station, and he’d shot him—shot him in the back so Bear wouldn’t interfere, so Hank could collect the ransom that afternoon, and so everyone would think Finn had done it. Hank had been stupid though. He hadn’t made sure Bear was dead, and he’d quickly searched the car Bear was driving, stepping over Bear’s body to get there. Bear had seen Hank’s snakeskin boots, the ones I had given him for Christmas a couple of years before, and he’d known who shot him, even as he lost consciousness. If I had gone back to Nashville with Bear, odds were Hank would have shot me too. And the sad thing was, it wasn’t hard for me to believe. Because it wasn’t hard to believe, I didn’t grieve for him, not the way a sister should grieve for her brother. Hank had never been mine in anything but name, and pretending differently didn’t change it.
But there were other reasons to settle in St. Louis. Finn’s father had begged Finn to consider going to work for a St. Louis think tank closely associated with the math department at Washington University. It would mean time with his dad and a chance to put his genius to work. He was my Clyde—but there was enough Infinity to go around, and I could share. According to Finn’s father, the math community was a small one, and it didn’t care about socio-economic status, ethnicity, or even a prison record. If you could do the math—if you loved math—you were welcomed.
St. Louis was only four hours from Nashville, my record label, and my career, which Finn insisted I had to take ownership of. He said I was too brilliant and too destructive to sit still. I needed to be singing. It was what I was born to do. That, and love him. And this time, I couldn’t argue with Infinity.
HE WAS ASLEEP now, relaxed and loose, one big arm under his head, one thrown across my body. We hadn’t left the suite at all in two days. Food was brought in, clean sheets too, and we were officially holed up. Not because we had to be, but because we wanted to be. And right now, I didn’t want to sleep. I was too happy. I wanted to burrow into Finn, but I was restless, and I knew I would wake him up, so I slid out from under his arm and tiptoed to the sitting room and flipped on the television. It had kept me company while I’d waited for Finn, but we hadn’t watched it since. I had needed it to drown out the conversation in my head and the fear that he wasn’t coming back, and it was on way too loud.
I rushed to lower the volume but halted when I saw a familiar face fill the screen. And this time it wasn’t my own. And it wasn’t Finn’s either, thankfully. It was Shayna’s, and Katy sat at her side smiling shyly into the camera, a cute flowered hat on her head.
The camera cut away to a different scene almost immediately, and I realized I’d missed the point of Shayna’s appearance. Another interview, probably pre-recorded, between an older man and a boy and one of the E-Buzz reporters began. The old man told the reporter how “Bonnie and Clyde” had stopped when no when else would. He explained how we had followed him to make sure he and his grandson made it home safely, and he got a little choked up when he relayed that I had given his grandson money to help with repairs on his daughter’s van, unbeknownst to him. It was Ben and his grandfather!
My mouth fell open in amazement as another interview, this one apparently live, began.
“So you’re telling us that Bonnie and Clyde picked you up when you were hitchhiking?” the pretty blonde correspondent asked the afroed man with the grizzly beard and the oversized army coat.
“Yes, ma’am they did. And they treated me kind. They sure did. Miss Bonnie gave me food, and Mr. Infinity gave me his boots.” The camera panned down to his feet where, sure enough, William was displaying Finn’s old boots like they were the best gift he’d ever received.