Epilogue
MAGGIE
When you have twins, you kind of end up just…handing one baby to someone and dealing with the other, all the while hoping you handed off baby to the right person.
Lucky for me, our little girl was extremely outgoing and didn’t mind being held by just about anyone…
and our little boy would let me know if something was wrong.
Plus—Nell watched them both like a hawk, like it was her personal duty to make sure everything was okay.
Gerald watched Nell, Nell watched the babies… we watched Gerald.
That was the system.
I currently had our son, Theo, tucked against my side, making the rounds for their six month birthday.
We’d finally decided that it was time to let the community come and meet them all at once, having a makeshift holiday party at Rick’s Bar during closed hours.
We’d dressed up the bar like it was just a restaurant, or at least we’d done our best.
Still, I had to admit that yes, we were having our babies’ first big party in a bar.
But that felt kind of perfect, given this was where everything had started.
Theo yawned against my chest, completely unbothered whenever he was glued to me.
If he wasn’t skin to skin, it was a different story…
but as it was, he was happy. Meanwhile, his sister Annie had come out loud and needing to windmill her arms and legs everywhere at all times.
That was what she was doing at the moment, smacking my brother Lucas in the face as he took Annie from Delia.
“She is…wow,” Lucas said, walking over to me. “Six months feels a little crazy for this level of strength, right?”
I laughed. Delia was right on his heels, shaking her head. “She’s gonna be a bodybuilder and beat up all the boys,” Delia said, then reached out to hold Annie’s little hand. “Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”
Annie grabbed Delia’s finger and held on.
“See,” Delia said. “She agrees.”
“She’d agree with anything right now,” Lucas said. “She’s a baby.”
“She’s a baby with opinions,” Delia corrected. “Very different.”
Lucas looked at me over Annie’s head with the expression he’d been wearing since he arrived this morning—slightly overwhelmed, deeply pleased, trying not to show either. He’d held Theo for approximately thirty seconds before getting suspiciously misty and handing him back and pretending he hadn’t.
He was eighteen and thought he was very tough.
He was not very tough.
“She looks like you,” he said to me.
“Nash thinks she looks like him.”
“It’s okay for Nash to be wrong,” Delia said. “She absolutely takes after you. They both do. And lucky for them, because you’re so much prettier.”
Nash appeared at my shoulder, kissing my cheek, and Delia winked at me. “Why do I feel like you’re out here slandering my name?” he asked. “And in my own bar?”
“Speaking of which, who has a baby party in a bar?” Delia asked. “Bad influences, every last one of you.”
“You’re one to talk,” I laughed.
“What is it I said to you once upon a time?” she asked. “People in glass classrooms shouldn’t throw stones…?”
I blushed hard. Nash cleared his throat.
Lucas looked confused, and I didn’t intend on explaining even a little bit of what Delia was saying.
“Anyway,” I said loudly. “Nash, Dave wanted to hold Annie.”
Nash looked across the bar to where Dave Prentice was on his stool, nursing his usual, watching the room with that quiet satisfaction that meant he was exactly where he wanted to be.
“He ask you or just look at her until you felt guilty?” Nash said.
“The second one,” I said.
Nash took Annie from Lucas and headed across the bar.
I watched him go. Watched Dave’s face when Nash settled Annie into his arms. The old man looked down at her with an expression I wasn’t supposed to see, and then Annie grabbed his finger the same way she’d grabbed Delia’s.
Dave…who I’d only learned recently had been Nash’s dad’s best friend.
The one guy who ever called Nash’s dad Rick, this bar’s namesake.
This was perfect. It was everything.
It was my life.
“Okay,” Delia said quietly, at my elbow. “I need two minutes. Kitchen.”
I looked at her, then at my brother.
“Lucas,” I said. “Go introduce yourself to Reid. He’s—”
“Already met him,” Lucas said. “We talked for like twenty minutes. He knows a lot about structural engineering.”
“Of course he does,” I said. “Go find Nell. She’ll give you a full briefing on everyone in this room.”
Lucas pointed finger guns at me and headed off.
I followed Delia through the door behind the bar and into Rick’s small back kitchen, which smelled like the coffee Nash had put on earlier and the cold air coming through the window above the sink.
Delia turned around.
“Okay,” I said. “What.”
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Which meant it was bad. Delia Jones did not close her mouth.
“Delia.”
“I know today’s your day,” she rushed out. “I’m not trying to mess that up—”
“I’ve had enough days, Delia,” I muttered. “Come on. Out with it.”
She groaned, her eyes rolling toward the ceiling. “I keep running into Aiden Boone at work…like his kid is always in the office, and I swear to god he doesn’t remember we slept together? It’s so embarrassing.”
I nodded. “Delia…his kid goes to our school. It’s a small town. Maybe he’s just trying to be professional.”
“He’s not,” Delia groaned again, always dramatic. “He hates me.”
“You’re getting in your head over this,” I said. “Delia…you don’t get in your head over anything, and I’ve never known you to keep your mouth shut. Maybe just…I don’t know, say something?”
“Say what, exactly?” she asked. “Hey Aiden, remember me, we had sex the night someone died on your watch and I’ve been thinking about it ever since?” She shook her head. “No thank you.”
I went very still.
Delia noticed.
“I’ve never told you that part,” she said.
“No,” I said carefully.
She leaned against the counter, crossing her arms, looking at the floor.
“The night Amy Kowalski died,” she said.
“He came into Rick’s. I didn’t know who he was.
I was—I was performing a little, you know how I do.
Made myself seem more—anyway. We talked for a long time and then we—“ She stopped.
“He left before I woke up. And then Monday morning Dylan Boone was in the office for the first time and Aiden walked in and we just—” She made a helpless gesture. “Looked at each other.”
“Oh Delia,” I said softly.
“I know.”
“That’s not nothing.”
“I know that too,” she said. “That’s the problem.” She looked up at me. “He carries so much. His kid, his job, whatever he’s been carrying since that night. And I’m—I’m me. I’m not exactly—“
“Stop,” I said.
She stopped.
“Don’t finish that sentence,” I said. “I mean it.”
She pressed her lips together.
“You’re amazing, and I know that better than anyone,” I said. “You became family to me when I needed it most, and you never even blinked.”
Her face twisted up like she was going to cry.
“Now, I will be here to talk to you whenever you need it,” I said. “You deserve someone who doesn’t ignore you.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I fucking love you, Maggie Laine.”
I smiled. “I love you too.”
We went back out together, Delia parting ways with me to go and talk to Dave.
Reid was in the corner with Theo, who had apparently decided Reid was acceptable, which was high praise.
Reid was looking down at him with an expression that was—careful.
Like he was allowing himself something he didn’t usually allow.
I watched him for a moment.
Nash appeared beside me, following my gaze.
“He’s okay,” he said quietly.
“Is he?”
“Getting there.” A pause. “Slowly.”
Reid looked up then and caught us watching and did the thing men like him and Nash did—the slight nod, the face that said I’m fine, don’t make it a thing. Nash nodded back. That was their whole conversation.
I looked around the bar.
Lucas was back with Nell, who was pointing at the framed photo above the bar—Nash’s dad, young and laughing—and explaining something at length. Lucas was listening with his whole body.
Claire caught my eye from across the bar and raised her glass. I raised mine back.
Nash’s arm came around me.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said back.
“You okay?”
I looked at my life—all of it, assembled here in this bar where it had started, everyone I loved in one room.
“Yeah,” I said. “I really am.”
He pressed his lips to my temple.
Held them there.
Around us Rick’s Bar hummed with the warmth of people who had found each other in a small town in Vermont and decided to stay.
I had walked in here because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Turned out, it was exactly where I needed to be.
THE END