Epilogue
EPILOGUE
Ken Brennan dies on the sofa in his living room the same way he lived the final decade of his life; sad and alone.
She cries. The woman he loves weeps, but he knows those aren’t tears of sadness. He knows relief when he sees it—he knows it because he feels it too. Every day since, when he wakes up and knows that man is no longer in the world, he feels it. He feels it when he rolls over and sees his wife, his partner, the love of his life curled up as close to him as she can get, hogging the covers like she always does. He feels it when he looks at his children, his beautiful, perfect children, and he knows they’ll never have to meet the man who convinced their mother she was unloveable.
There isn’t a funeral. No celebration of life. Just a headstone with a name and two dates, next to another slab of granite that’s never gone without fresh flowers. They visit it once, a month after the fact, when she decides she’s ready, and she doesn’t cry then. Her bottom lip wobbles and she grips his hand hard enough to leave half-moon prints in his palm, but she doesn’t cry. She kisses the baby cradled in her arms, she hugs the twin girls wrapped around each of her legs, she leans against him and nuzzles the toddler clinging to his neck, she tells them how much she loves them, and she doesn’t cry.
“Am I a terrible person?” she murmurs later that night in bed, careful not to wake the slumbering children snuggled between them. “For not being devastated?”
He shifts his hand from the head of their little boy to graze his knuckles along her cheekbone. “Never.”
She hums quietly, leaning into his touch. “I’m glad that we can come here now without worrying. That I can bring the kids here. I want them to love it, to know it, like we do.”
“You miss livin’ here?”
She pauses for a moment. “I love our life. I do.”
“I know, honey. That’s not what I asked.”
Those beautiful brown eyes, the same ones all their kids have, narrow. “ Yes . I miss it. Of course I do.”
He knew that already. He knew it before she did, probably. He knows everything about her. He knows it started with the twins, when he caught her whispering stories about where she grew up while raising their girls on the land he did.
It’s his turn to hum as he carefully leans over the tangle of small bodies he sometimes can't believe he had any part in creating, and kisses his wife’s forehead. “Go to sleep, honey.”
She does, and he watches her for a while. He watches her the next day too, stealing glances at her in the passenger seat of his truck as they drive across Serenity’s acreage, childless for the first time in years, and it amazes him how she looks so different yet exactly the same. Older, but still his Caroline.
He’s nervous, but he’s sure. She knows exactly where they’re going, but she doesn’t suspect anything. He watches surprise paint her pretty face when they pull up to Hell and there’s something inexplicably different about the place they both so dearly cherish.
“Is that a new roof?” she wonders aloud as she exits the truck, walking barefoot towards the building. “Love, look at the walls!”
He doesn't have to. He knows exactly what he’ll see—smooth wood without a crack in sight, primed and ready to be painted. Just like he knows the interior will look as miraculously renewed, gutted of rotting rafters and paved with real floors. The loft is an actual second story now, he knows that too. They can’t see it from this angle, but there’s a sunroom attached to the back of the building—a greenhouse, for all intents and purposes. In a few months, the wooden posts he can barely see in the distance will become a barn. Just last week, he poached some of Lux’s ranch hands to till a patch of nearby land and scatter seeds in the dirt so that one day, when they look through their bedroom window, color will be all they see.
Smoothing his palms over the soft cotton covering her hips, he drops his chin to her shoulder. “Did Lux tell you she needs a new vet?”
Her breath warms his temple. “No.”
“She called me a couple of months ago.” His hands move, fingers spread wide over the stomach that, less than a year ago, was swollen with his only son. “Asked if I would be interested.”
Her breath hitches. Extricating herself from his grip, she turns to face him, a million emotions contorting her face. She twists her fingers together, nervously tracing her knuckles with her thumbs. “What did you say?”
His shoulders slump with relief—cautious hope. That’s what he hears in her tone. He knows her, he knows he does, but a little affirmation never hurts. “I told her I’d ask my wife.”
With a soft laugh, her hands unfurl, curling around the waistband of his jeans instead. She casts a glance over shoulder, and when she faces him again, she crooks one fair brow. “It looks like you already made a decision.”
“I bought it after the twins were born,” he admits his little secret—the second one he’s ever kept from her, the only one in the past decade. “After you cried in my arms and told me you just wanted to go home, I called Lux, and I bought it.”
She blinks, surprised. “I don’t remember that.”
He knows she doesn’t. She never brought it up again. Not until their boy was born and she got that look on her face again, and he knew. Only a little while after, his old boss’ name lit up his phone, and he knew then too. And then her dad died, and it was the final puzzle piece slotting into place.
He’s never been one to believe in fate, but what else can he call the universe guiding him back to this town?
“So?” he whispers in her ear anyway, wanting to hear her say it. “You ready to come home, honey?”
Slowly, she gives him that smile. Her real one. Not the fake shadow of a thing he found so very infuriating, he hated , but the one he fell in love with. Fucking sunshine to his soul.
Caroline wraps her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, and she gives him that laugh he loves so much too. “ Yes, ” she cries—and she cries, literally, because of course she does. She cries and she kisses and she whispers against his mouth, like she has so many times before, “ My bright side. ”