614. Chapter 614

She leaves a message for her dad, but she doesn’t expect to hear back from him.

And she doesn’t.

She doesn’t hear from anyone.

Until a few hours before the party.

Until she gets a text from a number she’s known for years but rarely dials these days, because it’s not like it was a great three years they had together.

It’s not like Maggie stayed a day after her seventeenth birthday, the age where she could emancipate herself, the age where she’d figured out how to get enough credits to graduate high school early and get herself the hell out of Blue Springs.

Forever.

The text tells her that the bus from the airport should get into the city’s center around four pm.

The text from the aunt that she’d lived with when… when.

They hug, and it’s awkward.

They talk, and it’s awkward.

They pretend they know each other after all these years, and it’s excruciating.

But she’s here.

“How did you… I left the message for my dad. You – “

“Your mother and I still talk every day, Maggie,” her aunt reminds her, and she gulps in soft gratitude, because at least her aunt had used the nickname she’d started insisting on as a teenager.

Anything to get the rhythms of her father’s speech out of her ears.

“Oh. And she didn’t – “

“Oh, you know how she is about flights – “

“No, no, you don’t have to explain.”

It’s awkward and it’s excruciating, but even after all these years, it’s… familiar.

And when Alex answers the door at the party, Maggie’s stomach sinks, but Winn holds her hand, and Eliza puts her hands on her shoulders, and James gives her thigh a gentle, supportive squeeze.

“There aren’t any pictures of you, I notice,” her aunt tells her, and Maggie just stares, because really, her aunt knows exactly why. “I didn’t think there would be. I hope… I hope you don’t mind, but I… I brought you some.”

“You kept them,” Maggie whispers when her aunt takes an entire album out of her bag, and Alex can’t squeeze her hard enough, and Maggie doesn’t want her to ever let go.

“After your parents took them out of their albums? Of course I did. Just because they couldn’t bear to… they missed you, Maggie, but that’s… here. I brought them for you.”

Maggie’s hands shake and Alex steadies them and Eliza keeps watch and James and Winn flank her on either side, like her protectors, because that’s how they feel, and that’s what she deserves, and that’s what they are.

James is the first to smile, and Alex is the first to cry.

“Looks like we went through the same overall phase,” Alex’s voice cracks, and Maggie laughs shakily.

“It wasn’t a phase for this girl, it was practically all she wore,” her aunt chimes, and Maggie shakes harder, and Alex holds her closer.

“And someone had a thing for ice cream,” Winn smiles, and James snickers.

“Still does,” he grins, and Maggie leans into his chest for a cathartic moment.

And for a moment – as they pour over pictures of Maggie in various states of awkwardness, various stages of puberty, various moments of joy and irritation and newness – the four of them feel. Just feel. Together.

James, his dead father who gave him his camera but no roadmap for living without him.

Winn, his murderous sadist who swore he was just like him.

Alex, hers who abandoned everything decent about humanity and said it was for her.

And Maggie, hers who abandoned… her.

“Alex,” Maggie’s aunt jolts them all out of their shared memories, even though her voice was soft.

“Yes,” Alex straightens and questions Maggie with her eyes before going to follow her. Maggie nods and Alex kisses her. Maggie melts, and before she can feel the keen pang of Alex’s body moving away from hers, James, Winn, and Eliza step forward as one to keep her standing, to keep her steady.

“I can’t stay, Alex, I… I may not agree with Maggie’s choices, and I also may not agree with her parents’ decision to – “

“To abandon her,” Alex fills in, and it’s a statement, not a question.

Their eyes lock long and hard and it isn’t Alex that looks away first.

“But I do need to live with them. In that same town that Maggie left. She’s changed; it hasn’t. I can’t stay long. But I wanted to bring her those photos, and I wanted… I wanted to meet you. To see if this woman, this Alex, she spoke of on the phone was… was worthy of my niece.”

Alex narrows her eyes slightly, unimpressed but somehow calm.

“And my dear, I… I have never seen her happier. And I don’t just mean from those awful teenage years she had, I mean… ever. I’ve never seen my only niece happy like this. And that’s… that’s clearly thanks to you. Thank you, Alex. Thank you for looking after my Maggie.”

Alex stands a little straighter, and when she speaks, it’s gentler than she thinks any adult from Maggie’s past deserves; but if she’s learned anything from all these years as Kara Danvers’s sister, all this time with Maggie, it’s something about second chances and it’s something about kindness.

“She doesn’t need looking after. She’s…” They both turn to watch Maggie, laughing into Winn’s chest. Alex’s eyes immediately lock with her mother’s, who’s watching her protectively. Alex smiles softly. “She’s really spectacular. I’m lucky to have her in my life. I’m the luckiest woman in this or any world.”

And as she stares across the room at the woman she’s going to marry, she knows every word of that is true.