"And country, career, home. Do you enjoy art curation and chairing?"

"It wasn't my first choice, but it was my choice, and I don't have to carry a nine millimeter or any of the other-- burdens I left behind in the states."

Jarod smiled broadly. "You've given yourself the gift your father denied you: freedom."

"Rght," Parker murmured, closing her eyes, briefly. "You don't know." 

Parker was accustomed to Jarod being a step ahead of her. He truly hadn't exaggerated his ignorance.

"Don't say you're married," Jarod remarked, mostly in jest, "not after the kiss we shared earlier."

"Oh, puhhlease," Parker declared, revolving her eyes. "It's Angelo's bathroom."

"Ange," stammered Jarod, adding with a cheerful laugh, "is with you. How did you find him?"

"I didn't. Couldn't. He found me. No, he's not here," Parker said when Jarod slid his expectant gaze over her left shoulder. "He spends a lot of time at the gallery." Parker rose, and collected her keys. "It's five blocks. Feel like taking a walk?""

"Yes," Jarod answered enthusiastically, rising and following Parker. "Wait, the same gallery, your gallery?"

"Mhm," Parker confirmed with a light hum. "He likes the music and art, and the file room. 

He said he fits there, and here in Valladolid. He's comfortable, safe, has established a routine, made some friends. He deserves this."

"And that's the reason you accepted the position at the gallery."

Parker closed and locked the door and walked down the steps at Jarod's side. "I didn't really want to make eight figures as a security detail coordinator for a trillion dollar corporation in Moscow anyway," Parker confessed softly. "I thought I wanted it because it's what I'm comfortable with."

"You traded your comfort for Angelo's," Jarod said.

"Belatedly," Parker asserted thinly. "It's my fault that Angelo is-- Angelo."

"That isn't fair," Jarod contended sharply. "Raines is the reason he's Angelo, and-"

"No, it isn't fair, Jarod," Parker argued in a taut, brittle voice, "to Angelo. He's going to be dependent on someone else for the rest of his life, and it's my fault." 

"But it," Jarod began desperately.

"No," Parker said peremptorily, and angrily pushed away her tears. "I've apologized to Angelo, and he's forgiven me, but I'm never going to forgive myself, and I don't want to argue about it with you."

Jarod nodded somberly, and, after a moment, suggested tactfully, "We're all dependent on someone else at some point in our lives. People need each other. I couldn't help but notice your backyard garden. Do you care for it by yourself?"

"You know," Parker confessed with a snort of incredulity, "I'd almost forgotten how silly you can be sometimes. I murder, remember? Angelo creates, and nurtures." 

Parker and Jarod both fell silent and still long enough for several cyclists to pass before crossing the street, and resuming their conversation.

"He grows the majority of the food we eat, and regularly trades at the market. He's a natural barterer. Mrs. Cardenas, our elderly neighbor, taught him various food preservation techniques, and in return Angelo helps her maintains her gardens and provides her with companionship when the weather's nasty. 

He can also repair any appliance and car, lifts the heavy items for me, and he took care of me when I felt ill last month. I know what you're doing," Parker added stiffly, "and it isn't going to change how I feel, but I'll concede that I can appreciate your perspective. Point taken. What can I say, Jarod," Parker added in response to Jarod's stunned expression, "it's a new me, too."

"Or the real you," proposed Jarod.

"Angelo said the same. Mm, and I don't know how I feel about that yet," Parker murmured softly. 

Jarod leaned in close to Parker, briefly, and assured her tenderly, "It's okay not to know."

"Yeah, it's going to have to be. Enough about me. How's your family?"

"You've already asked that question, and I've answered," Jarod said softly.

"The extended play version this time," Parker insisted.

"They're well," Jarod answered, squinting beneath a sudden shaft of sunlight. "Emily's returned to journalism, Dad's enjoying retirement, Ethan's worked his way up to a supervisory position at the coffee shop. Mom and Kyle are in therapy together, and they're making progress. I don't know what it was you said to my brother when the two of you were alone, but it turned everything around for him, and for all of us. He was so hurt, too hurt and angry to listen to anyone else- even to me."

"Oh, you would have worn him down, eventually," Parker assured Jarod. "I'm glad they're well."

"And you're surprised that I'm not with them."

"Puzzled," Parker corrected. "I don't ever want to be the reason you're separated from your family," Parker said somberly, "again."

"I'll never believe that you separated me from my family," Jarod said, "and nothing you can say will ever change my mind, but I suppose I can understand your perspective."

"I see what you did there," Parker purred, "and I don't like it."

Jarod shrugged noncommittally in response.

"Tell me, Jarod," Parker said. "Do you have plans for the evening?"

"I had no plans beyond finding you. Why? Do you have plans for the evening?"

"Every evening," Parker answered softly.

"Hmm, sounds exciting. Are you going to tell me what your plans are?"

"Our plans," Parker corrected, "and, no, I'm not going to tell you. Angelo'll want to surprise you," she added softly, recalling her first visit to Angelo's favorite cenote, his euphoric laughter, and eyes filled with wonder, and the tender manner in which he'd taken her hand.

Parker had strained her eyes to see the world through Angelo's eyes, witness the magic that had been immediately evident to Angelo, and that he'd wanted to share with her. 

Angelo had watched her face intently, and Parker had tried not to disappoint him, but he'd known, he'd felt, and vowed to bring her back each evening.

Friend see. Friend's journey back to herself almost complete. 

Angelo had been aware of Parker revolving her eyes cynically, and of her unwavering belief that the magic around her, and any goodness within her, was dead-  as dead as the men she'd killed. 

But Angelo felt life, fierce and vibrant, stirring inside of Parker when she baked his favorite meal, and was warmed by the glow of Parker's concern for him when he returned late from the gallery.

Parker expressed love and friendship in her own unique way, without ever saying those particular words:

"Don't forget your rain coat."

"Drink some water for god's sake."

"Look both ways." 

"Did you eat?"

"If you hurt yourself with that shovel I swear to god I will kick your ass."

Angelo saw the vicarious conviviality ignite inside of Parker when he embraced Jarod in the gallery's arched doorway, and again when he took her left hand and Jarod's right, and ushered them outside. 

Angelo understood that Parker's happiness was not for herself. She distrusted happiness, remained unforgiving of its transiency.

"Does one of you want to tell me where we're going?" Jarod asked with some uncertainty in his voice. They'd traveled around the park, away from the city, and there was only grass, a seemingly endless field of grass, ahead.

"Surprise," Angelo explained succinctly. 

"Yeah, what he said," Parker contributed neutrally, squeezing Angelo's hand. Angelo noted the flicker of mischievousness in Parker's eyes, and nodded enthusiastically. 

"Scared, Jarod?" Parker asked.

"Not particularly," Jarod answered with a shrug. "Should I be?"

"No," Parker assured him with a soft laugh. "We're only ten minutes out."

"Jarod like surprise," Angelo assured Jarod.

Angelo wasn't wrong. Jarod stammered for a solid minute when they reached the cenote.

"It's- it's," Jarod said in a voice filled with awe, "It's- my god, it's-"

"Surprising," supplied Parker.

"Yes," Jarod answered exuberantly, slinging an arm around Angelo's shoulder. "I love it, Angelo. Can we go down there? Isn't it incredible," Jarod asked Parker.

Parker's expression remained carefully neutral. 

She couldn't see life exactly the way Angelo and Jarod did, but she perceived, nonetheless, with extraordinary clarity.

Incredible. 

Surreal.

The air felt charged, changed.

Beneath the Valladolid sky, Parker knew, felt the precise moment that the unpainted log house in remote Russian violently burst apart, instantly killing the men inside. 

She envisioned splinters of wood, bone, and flesh falling together like confetti to the frozen ground.

Parker was shaken from homicidal reverie by Angelo's bright laughter, but gently this time. 

Since the months spent in captivity, Parker was often startled back to reality after dissociating, and was always, unsurprisingly, angry about it. 

But laughter, suddenly, was contagious, the air fresher, the cenote as magical as Angelo and Jarod insisted it was.

Feeling considerably at ease, Parker joined Angelo in laughter, and Jarod did the same.

The three of them descended the steep stone steps quietly, all thinking that the excursion felt, in some ways, like another one of their Centre adventures —before the Centre had separated the seemingly inseparable.

"How did Angelo convince you to explore a sinkhole?" Jarod asked.

"He didn't," Parker answered neutrally, "and this sinkhole's preferable to the shithole that the three of us left behind in Blue Cove."

"I can't disagree with that," Jarod heartily agreed. "So it was your idea to come here."

"That depends on how you define my idea."

"Ah, I see. Angelo dragged you down here. Yes?"

"Only the first seven times," Parker answered, and laughed quietly when Jarod smiled.

"Friends see," Angelo exclaimed when he reached the bottom stair.  

The trio marveled at the shaft of sunlight piercing the darkened cavity and illuminating, spotlightesque, the circular stone platform in the cenote's center.

"Wow," Jarod said, regarding the stalactites with guileless fascination, and stopping near the water at Angelo's side.

Immediately noticing Parker's absence at their sides, Angelo and Jarod turned to seek her out as they had so often when they were children, both with the same mute inquiry and concern in their eyes. Has some vengeful Centre ghost spirited her away?

She could see that much, clearly, and believed that nothing else, in that moment, mattered.

Jarod and Angelo didn't have to ask if she was okay, not this time.

Parker's smile was answer enough.