She dyes her hair back to brown, and if it's a few shades too dark, she hides her embarrassment by citing how long it's been since she dyed it purple in the first place. She takes out all her piercings but the one she started with, but she doesn't bother doing anything with the tattoo. She jokes that it gives her street cred, and she's pretty sure she's right.
She goes to work, smiling and talking to employees. She finds out about Ralph, the paralegal who rends the whole team apart. She smooths the right feathers between Betsy and Cal, teases out a knot of tension in the secretaries. She leaves behind a family, fused together, and smiles to herself.
Once this was the kind of magic she used to turn a herd of children into an army. Now she'll turn her attention to a pharmaceutical company, but that's not until next week.
John comes by for dinner, one of his bimonthlies, and they talk of TV shows and movies, composers and rock bands. His education is over - he graduated a year early - and he's opened his own practice. He's changed quite a bit. He never insults her cooking, even when it's less than perfect. But he's been that way for a while now, even when she tried to tease him about being her maid of honor at her wedding. She eventually settled on calling him the bride's best man.
She goes to a symphony ball with Anthony, the kind of thing that requires a lot of money and a floor-length gown covered in sequins. She smiles a little differently, and the wives of various dignitaries shy away.
Vigils are everywhere, at these masques and municipal dinners and corporate parties. They are a generation of six-figure savants, and their new money scares the old-moneyed patrons who were forced to give up ground. They work for different companies and share few direct corporate ties, but they appear at all the same functions calling each other by secret names.
She comes home tired to find a message from Michael. He hasn't died, and he's working in an auto repair shop in North Dakota. He's on some Jack Kerouac mission, but he calls sporadically. She tries not to worry, but it's in her nature, has been from the day he was born.
The other message is from the only Lost Boy she still talks to. Jack's familiar Lancashire drawl announces his full name and title - his promotion to the head of Hook's old precinct did nothing to shrink his ego. Cowboy's been in an accident. His funeral's on Thursday.
She sighs and shakes her head, wondering at the differences between them all. Vigils making too much money, Lost Boys not making enough. She counts herself lucky that she's been both but left free enough to choose between them. But the Boys have given up it seems. She never has. There's a parking lot where Neverland used to be. Not a bleeding wound or a ragged gash, just a smooth-healed scar. She doesn't have time for survivor's guilt, and so she doesn't have time for the Lost Boys.
On nights she's not too tired, she walks with Anthony along the river. She's finally had to buy coats for the changing weather - it's actually cold in winter. Oftentimes, it even snows in December. Her first white Christmas was her favorite. Anthony asked her to marry him after a snowball fight in the park.
It's her own private miracle, a product of blind date from a badgering coworker. She almost hadn't recognized him, in the suit and mood-lit restaurant. He'd lost the youthful translucence to his skin, gained the strong lines of fitness without being underfed. The freckles were her one assurance in the end.
He is as he's always been, compassionate and strong, supportive and sweet. He handles her black moods with ease, and when she gets mean, they fight with kitchen knives until she collapses from exhaustion. On the other hand, she's never seen him have a single bad mood. Except for the day the new CEO of a plastics manufacturer found out about her past and tried to call her out at a gala opening. Anthony punched the plastics CEO in the face. No one bothered them after that.
Sometimes Henry shows up in the door with a lopsided smile, leaning on his cane, to eat dinner with them. It's the only time she talks about things past, things made less frightening the more time that passes between. As he leaves, he always asks when he'll be a godfather, and she smiles when she shuts the door. This time is no different. She smiles, shooing him out of the loft, and winks at Anthony. It'll be three months before she shows anyway.