Epilogue
MARCY
Five Years Later
The first day of kindergarten smells like crayons and wet leaves.
The school sits on the edge of Black Pine Ridge, a low brick building with a green metal roof and a playground shaped like a pirate ship.
The parking lot is full of parents with coffee cups and nervous smiles.
The mountains shoulder the horizon beyond the baseball field, soft blue in the September haze.
It rained last night; the pavement is still damp.
Someone’s playing “Here Comes the Sun” too loud from a cracked car speaker, and every time the chorus floats over, I blink back tears. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.
“Do you think she’ll remember where her cubby is?” I ask, for the third time.
Landon nudges my shoulder with his. “She’ll organize the entire room in twenty minutes and start negotiating snack trades like a union rep.” His voice is steady, teasing, the way it gets when he knows I’m wound tight. “She’s got your brain and Wes’s wit. Those kids don’t stand a chance.”
I look down at the small hand in mine. Hazel’s fingers are sticky with the remnants of the cinnamon toast we ate on the porch this morning, because first days deserve sugar.
She’s wearing the purple backpack she picked out months ago—the one with the sparkly shooting star—and a pair of yellow rain boots even though the sun’s trying hard to break through the clouds.
Her hair is in two lopsided braids I redid twice and still couldn’t get even.
After my third try she was out of patience and I didn’t argue.
Some hills are for dying on. Braid symmetry is not one of them.
“Okay,” I say, crouching in front of Hazel so we’re eye to eye. My voice wobbles and I clear it. “Remember the plan?”
Hazel scrunches her nose like she’s been insulted. “Mama. I remember. I hang up my backpack. I put my lunch in the bin. I say hi to my teacher.” She lifts her chin and adds, “And I tell the teacher if my tummy feels funny.”
I smooth a stray wisp away from her temple. She’s all cheeks and eyelashes and fierce opinions, tiny and enormous at the same time. “Exactly. And if your tummy feels funny, you can also sit on the cozy rug and count to ten. Or do three dragon breaths.”
She inhales loudly just to prove she can, then giggles when Landon copies her, exaggerated and cross-eyed. He’s an expert at cross-eyed dragon breaths, mostly because they make our kid laugh hard enough to hiccup.
He crouches beside us, knees popping. He’ll pretend they didn’t. “And if anybody gives you trouble,” he says conspiratorially, “you tell them your dad is a very important mechanic.”
Hazel nods solemnly. “I’ll tell them you fix big things,” she counters. “And you’re the best at pancakes.”
“Facts,” he grins.
The bell rings—a single cheerful clang that ricochets off the pines. A current moves through the crowd. Backpacks shift. Doors open. Two teachers in rain jackets and sensible shoes beckon a river of small people toward them.
Hazel’s hand tightens in mine for a heartbeat. I feel the tremor of it right down to my knees. Fear is contagious. So is courage.
I squeeze back. “You ready, Bug?”
She nods. Then shakes her head. Then nods again. “Are you coming?”
“To the door,” I say. “We’ll watch you the whole way.”
“Pinky promise?” She holds out her pinky—the heaviest oath we know.
“Pinky promise.” I hook my finger with hers. Landon adds his finger, making a chain, because he’s learned our rituals like he built them himself.
We walk, our feet careful on the slick steps.
The entryway smells like floor wax and pencil shavings.
There’s a bulletin board with paper apples and a sign that says WELCOME, RIDGE RUNNERS!
in crooked bubble letters. A boy in a dinosaur hoodie is crying.
A girl with sparkly barrettes is whispering to her mom about wanting to go home.
I clock exits without thinking—an old habit I haven’t bothered unlearning—and then let my eyes come back to our child.
Hazel stops at the threshold of the classroom and looks back at us.
I put my hand over my heart. Three pats. I. Love. You.
She mirrors the motion, serious for a second, and then she’s off.
Backpack hook. Lunch bin. She says “Hi” to her teacher in a voice so small my throat tightens all over again, and the teacher—Ms. Pratt—drops to her knees to meet Hazel’s eyes, like kneeling is the only sensible posture in the presence of five-year-old courage.
Ms. Pratt points to the circle rug. Hazel goes. Just like that. She doesn’t look back.
It should feel like a severing. It doesn’t. It feels like a knot easing.
Landon’s arm slides around my back and settles just below my shoulder blades, exactly where it always lands. We step out of the flow of parents and stand against the wall, out of the way, watching. Outside, the rainclouds finally give up the fight and the sun takes the edge off the air.
“She’s okay,” he says.
“She is,” I repeat. I let myself say it again, like a prayer and a proof. “She’s okay.”
There are moments I didn’t think we’d get here. Healing isn’t a single sunrise. It’s a thousand small dawns, some bright, some gray, all stubborn.
Landon presses a kiss into my hair as we watch Hazel wave across the room at another girl with matching leggings. “See?” Landon says into my hair. “Unicorn Union rep in the making.”
“Dangerous combo,” I manage, and he squeezes my side.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. A text from Nova: Send me a picture of Hazelnut in front of the Ridge Runners sign or I’m driving down there to embarrass her with aunt-kisses.
I quickly find the one I took earlier and send it. A second later she replies with a string of heart-eyes and a GIF of a marching band. I can hear her cackling laugh from here.
Landon takes my hand and pulls me towards the exit. “She’ll be fine, sweetheart. We can’t stand out here all day.”
“I know.”
When we step back into the sunlight, the air is warmer.
The clouds are shredding. The steps are damp but not slick anymore.
Landon threads his fingers through mine and leads me to the top stair, where we lean against the rail and look out over the playground where our daughter will scrape her knees and learn to pump her legs on the swings.
Landon shifts behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, hands meeting under my ribs.
He rests his chin on my shoulder, and we fit like two puzzle pieces.
“Hey,” he murmurs.
“Hey,” I echo, leaning back into him.
“Remember the first time you asked me to pretend to be your boyfriend?” he asks, mouth curving against my cheek.
I huff a laugh. “I remember thinking it was the dumbest, bravest thing I’d ever done.”
“You saved yourself,” he says. “And I got the honor of standing where you pointed.”
I swallow. The lump in my throat is big and sweet and not scary. “We saved each other.”
He hums. “That we did.”
Over the last five years I’ve realized that healing doesn’t always feel like angels.
It feels like choosing the same small good thing again and again until my bones finally learned it by heart.
It feels like Landon’s palm on my back when a door opens and I’m not sure I want to go through.
It feels like Wes leaving casseroles and bad jokes on our porch, like Nova showing up with paint swatches and refusing to leave until I picked a color for her bedroom, like Joon changing the oil in my car and installing a dash cam without making a speech about it.
Like Becket reminding us to breathe when we are spiralling and Ravi bringing his nephew over to play with Hazel.
Home is a place and a practice. Today it’s a school with a green roof and a chain-link fence and a teacher with kind eyes. It’s a man holding me while we watch our daughter run. It’s the mountains refusing to apologize for how big they are.
“Ready to go buy celebratory muffins?” Landon asks into my ear.
“Bribing me to leave?” I tease, wiping at a tear I pretend is just from the sun.
“Strategic snack diplomacy,” he says. “Ask Wes. It’s a legitimate political strategy.”
I turn in his arms to face him. The years sit kindly on him. His beard is a little thicker, there’s a silver thread at his temple I love too much. When he smiles, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepen in a way that makes something in me relax completely.
“Okay,” I finally breathe, stepping back. “Muffins. And then I’m going to go home and sit on the porch and cry about how big my baby is.”
Landon chuckles. “I’ll join you.”
We start down the steps, the school bell chiming behind us.
Every sound, every heartbeat, every small ritual has led us here—to this place where fear is just a ghost of an old story and love is the thing that’s stayed.
And I know, fully and without flinching, that the life we built is not fragile.
It’s welded, yes, but more than that, it’s alive.
It bends, it breathes, it holds. And as the mountains stand watch, I know we’ll keep choosing each other—together—every day.