Chapter 23: The Ribbon

He drove me to Santa Monica with the windows down.

He wouldn't say where we were going.

He didn't have to.

The tower stood at the end of Ocean Avenue, twenty-two floors of glass with the sea in every window.

Six months ago it had been a concrete skeleton with a crane on top and a fraud underneath.

Now the glass was in.

The crane was gone.

A crew was planting palm trees along the front walk.

Caelen badged us through the construction gate.

"You have a badge for this?"

"Head of risk," he said. "I have a badge for everything."

The lobby was finished.

White stone floors. A long front desk of pale wood. Light coming in off the water.

And on the wall facing the doors, a slab of polished stone, taller than me.

Forty-one names were cut into it.

I read them one by one.

Halfway down was the retired teacher's.

Above the names, smaller, it said: For the teachers of the San Gabriel Valley, who held on.

I stood there for a long time.

"Your idea?" I said.

"Your mother's." He put his hands in his pockets. "My wording. She wanted something in Latin. I talked her out of it."

"How?"

"I told her the teachers would correct the grammar."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

He took his right hand out of his pocket.

It was holding a small box.

Dark blue, worn soft at the corners.

He didn't open it.

He didn't kneel.

He held it out flat on his palm between us.

"It was my grandmother's," he said. "She gave it to me in March. She said if I didn't use it by the summer she'd give it to the mailman."

My heart had stopped.

"Caelen."

"I'm not asking you now," he said. "I'm asking if I can ask you."

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