Chapter 48
Chapter Forty-Eight
HAPPILY EVER DURING
Arden
This is the kind of house that makes you believe in past lives, the sort that has you thinking maybe, just maybe, you were meant to live here in another timeline. That’s how it feels standing in front of it the first time.
And when I told Will, he said ‘then it should be ours in this timeline.’
We’d seen maybe a dozen houses all in different parts of the city, before this one. All in different outskirts and on train lines that take us farther and farther from our youth. It's classic New England brick, that deep, weathered red that somehow gets more beautiful with each passing winter, like the house is aging into itself the way people do.
The wrought iron gate creaks when it opens to a brick pathway that someone laid by hand decades ago, now charmingly uneven with spots where stubborn moss peeks through. The garden is deliberately wild, and when the ground isn’t covered in snow, there are massive daylilies lining the front stairs.
The house itself sits back from the street like it's being modest about its own grandeur. Which, it is. Not in that over-the-top kind of way. But definitely in the ‘what did Kevin’s parent’s do for work to afford that house and take everyone on a trip to Europe’ kind of way. The rom-com ‘this is a totally realistic multi-million dollar home but made to feel attainable’ kind of way.
It's three stories of architectural showing-off. Each with windows marching in neat rows across the facade with their own set of black shutters.
Once it was officially ours, the first thing we did was go pick out paint for the front door. The yellow is almost offensive in its cheerfulness. But against the brick and beneath the trim of the doorframe, it works like a laugh at a funeral. Inappropriate, necessary, and somehow perfect.
My hands are gloved and still wrapped tightly around the thermos taking a sip to warm my insides. But this is the first snow of the season, and our new front yard is coated in the blanket of winter that screams for hot cocoa. Exactly what I promised Banks and Ollie if they’d ever be willing to come inside. They have yet to oblige.
But like usual, these two peas in a pod, are on some kind of mission communicating in a language they formed together in infancy.
The other benefit of this house? The Victorian one around the corner that Ethan moved into just last month. Our kids are both bundled up like little michelin men crunching in the snow with their faces barely exposed.
Oliver was born only a few days before Banks, and they have never spent more than a flu diagnosis apart. At least, that was until Banks caught it and we let them ride it out together. At the time it felt like a great idea, but immediately we realized toddlers are not really looking for conversational company when feverish.
There’s something special about this generational friendship of our children. And when Ethan told us the news, we were confused because we were about to tell him of our own soon-to-be arrival.
Sometimes I watch them together and my life flashes forward fifty years wondering what kind of life we will have given them. The burdens of our parents' expectations, the burden of ourselves? It’s hard to say. I blow out my breath and the warm air takes the shape of the thought I expel.
“ STERLING IS HOME! ” A little voice yells as her boots crunch towards the front gate. Banks meets him there, standing on the inside of the iron gate that opens into the path of our front lawn as he leans over the top of it, dusting snow off the top of her hood as Ollie rushes to her side.
Her little mittened hands gripping the gate as she looks up to him, snowflakes catching in her eyelashes just like Will's do.
“Password pleaseee” she says.
Every inch of our house , our life, has been transformed by Banks's imagination, fueled by Will's nightly readings. First it was Narnia. His voice bringing Aslan to life while she spent weeks searching every closet and cupboard for her own pathway to another world. When she finally declared our coat closet 'definitely magical, but just sleeping,' we didn't have the heart to correct her. Then came The Secret Garden, and suddenly our front gate became her own mysterious entrance to wonder. She spent hours examining the ivy growing along the brick wall, convinced it held secrets only she could unlock. The garden isn't hidden, but she treats it like it's full of magic anyway.
The scene unfolds like a snow globe coming to life. One of those precious winter moments that feels both frozen in time and impossibly fleeting. Banks is more and more precocious with each passing day, but her mind swirls around things of beauty like Will’s does. Even as she stands guard at our gate in her powder blue puffer coat.
"Sterling is home!" she announces again, bouncing on her toes as Will approaches, his messenger bag slung across his chest.
" Pass-word puh-leaseee ," Banks repeats, more insistent this time, while Ollie nods solemnly beside her, their matching winter hats making them look like coordinated conspirators.
Will pretends to think deeply, stroking his chin in an exaggerated gesture that makes both kids giggle. "Is it... 'Banks'?"
"Noooo," Banks draws out the word. "That's way too easy, Sterling."
I can't help but smile into my thermos.
She started calling him Sterling a few weeks ago, after a day at school that came home written on her face in tear tracks and confusion. During the inevitable school project about name origins, some kid had declared that ‘Bancroft wasn't a real first name’ with the kind of cruelty children specialize in, learning from their parents. And while we tried to talk to her about it, the truth really poured out later that night when Ethan texted us a photo of the note from her and Ollie's teacher about a ‘playground disagreement’ where Ollie apparently declared that ‘Banks is the best name ever’ with a little more mudslinging, the real kind, than any of us should laugh about. That night, over mac and cheese that she barely touched, we stumbled through explanations of names, mine from my mother's side, Will's from somewhere long-ago, many branches up a tree.
We talked about how names can be bridges to our past or doorways to our future, how sometimes they're heavy with meaning and sometimes they're just sounds that feel right in your heart. How one day she might get to choose a name for someone else, the way we chose hers, if she wants. We talked about Titian’s name and Sally’s nickname (after Salvador Dali) but the naming methodology behind our family pets wasn’t what she cared about. Watching her push pasta around her plate, I knew she wasn't ready for the poetry of names, she just wanted to make sense of her own. That's when she lifted her chin with a determination I recognized from my own mirror and declared that if her name was going to be a last name, then so was her dad's.
‘I’m Bancroft. You're Sterling,’ she announced, her voice still wobbly but sure. We never thought it would stick around, yet here we are, four weeks into ‘Mommy and Sterling.’ Even in her small form, she has my bones and Will's soul, but her way of reshaping the world into something more beautiful is entirely her own, turning other people's walls into her own secret gardens.
Will scoops her up over the gate and pushes it open into the walkway towards home. She is every late-night conversation we’ve ever had about our future without ever knowing it.
"Hot chocolate time?" Ollie pipes up hopefully, reminding us all of the promised reward for coming inside.
"Hot chocolate time," I confirm, watching as Banks squirms down from Will's arms to grab Ollie's hand, both of them racing toward the door that glows like a lighthouse in the growing dusk.
Will catches me around the waist before I can follow, pulling me close.
"Hello darling," he murmurs, pressing a cold kiss to my temple.
"Forgot the password again, I see." reply, breathing in the familiar scent of wool and winter and home.
"She keeps changing it!"
We make our way up the steps, following the sound of children's laughter and the promise of warm chocolate. The yellow door swings open to welcome us in.
"Do you ever feel like you stumbled into the end of a novel? Just tripped into someone else's perfect life."
"Not someone else's," he corrects gently. "Ours. Every bit of it."