Epilogue | Lucy
“She was just here!” Aunt Ruby’s voice echoes throughout the empty gallery, bouncing off the walls and making the place feel haunted.
“Don’t worry, Auntie,” I say, reaching fruitlessly for one of her fluttering sleeves as she rushes past me, “we’ll find her.”
I started the day anxious, breathing hard in bed, heart beating fast. The guys had to rally, bringing me hot tea and encouraging me, practically dressing me in my chosen gallery opening outfit.
Maybe Pudding going missing should make me feel worse, but it’s actually helping soothe the nervousness.
I’m not thinking about the people who will show up soon, or the fact that it’s my paintings hanging on the walls.
All I’m thinking about is the spoiled Burmese surely hiding under one of the tables in this room.
“I’ve never seen her like this,” Nico whispers, his drink held against his chest like he needs to protect it from my aunt, who’s still walking around the space, rubbing her fingers together and cooing to her cat.
“She lost her baby. Have a little respect,” Julian hisses, following in Aunt Ruby’s trail, ducking down to look under tables.
Aunt Ruby races around the art gallery, jewelry clanking as it swings around her neck. With each step, she passes in and out of the spotlights, which just makes her look more dramatic, the shadows playing starkly on her features.
“We’ll find him,” Dane says, already on the phone. He also looks dramatic—and handsome—in his suit, surrounded by my artwork. He stops Aunt Ruby with a single hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry.”
“Pudding is a lady,” Aunt Ruby mutters, hardly paying Dane any mind. Dane snaps onto the phone, calling people out to look for the Burmese, and though he doesn’t look it, I can tell he’s still trying to figure out how to get Auntie to like him.
“Pudding is a very intelligent animal,” Cole says, in his normal dead-pan manner.
He’s dressed up today, wearing a button-down and a pair of slacks, his curls tamed and cropped shorter on his head now.
I miss running my hands through them, but I can’t deny that he cuts a handsome profile like this. “She’ll come back.”
This is the first thing that’s stopped Aunt Ruby in her hastening around. She pauses, blinks, puts her hand to her chest and says, “You are so right, Cole. I can trust her to come back to me.”
Dane shoots Cole a jealous look, and Nico laughs from behind his glass.
Then, there’s a rustling from the back of the room, and Augustus appears in the suit Dane got for him, holding a sleeping Pudding in his arms.
“Oh, thank heavens!” Aunt Ruby throws her hands up and rushes across the room to my brother, who looks bewildered.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, as Aunt Ruby scoops up a surprised Pudding and hugs the cat to her chest.
“We’ve been looking for her,” Julian says, brushing off his leather pants and shooting my brother a look. “You can’t just… catnap!”
“Pudding was the one taking a nap,” Auggie shrugs, and I can’t help it—I laugh. We’re ten minutes from the official opening of my first gallery as an independent artist, and instead of throwing up from the nerves, I’m laughing.
“Okay, okay,” Julian says, sidling up next to me and picking up my hand in his. His fingers are cool, while my palms are sweating. “Let me see it.”
I blink at him until I realize what he’s talking about—the ring glittering on my finger. The one the guys presented to me last weekend on a trip to the Louvre as a celebration for this opening.
Smiling, I raise my hand to the light and watch as Julian tilts his head, admiring it. Then, he turns to me with a smirk and asks, “Shouldn’t there be three?”
I give him an equally smug look and point to the ring, “Three diamonds.”
He laughs and rolls his eyes, then slings an arm around me, tugging me in close. I’ve made more friends since starting my art program—young people who love painting and museums like I do—but Julian was my first real friend in the city. He’ll always have a special place in my heart.
I’m graduating from my program in one month, and I’ll have my master’s degree in hand. After that, this summer, we’ll have the wedding.
Everything feels new, wide-open with possibility. For the first time since meeting one another, the guys are taking a break from business-building. Nico is going to sail around the world in his boat. Cole is heading up a foundation for fledgling scientists and under-supported causes.
And Dane has been fully consumed with reading parenting books, studying what it means to live life with an infant.
He’s tried to keep it from me, surely not wanting to pressure me in either direction, but he should know by now that it doesn’t work.
I’ve known about his desire to be a father since the day his own passed away, nearly a year ago.
“Opening in five!” the gallery manager, a chic older woman with short hair and wearing a pant suit, says, meeting my eyes. “Everything good?”
I nod, not sure if she knew about the cat crisis. If not, I’m not going to enlighten her. She’s been just as nervous about this as I have.
If I’d been willing to let the guys throw their weight around for me, I probably would have had a showing a lot sooner than this.
Actually, I would have. But over the past two years of the program, I’ve insisted that we keep our relationship quiet.
That nobody in the art world should know about my connections.
I wanted to earn this on my own.
And now, I have.
The doors open, and people flood in.
My mom and dad with the rest of my siblings, who all ooh and ahh at seeing my artwork on the walls. Putting an arm around me, his voice choked, Dad says, “Proud of you, kid.”
Things are still not perfect. There are plenty of issues my parents and I don’t agree on. For example, they still think New York City is a stinky, crime-riddled hellscape. But they’re here for me, and they love me, and it’s really all I can ask.
Friends from art school, professors, and connections from Hunter follow, holding their champagne and gazing at the various compositions. My pulse flutters, and I accept their compliments, keeping my sadness just at bay.
Cole’s parents attend as well, gushing over me, his mom wrapping me in a hug when she sees me.
“It’s all gorgeous, Lucy. We’ll definitely be buying a piece.”
“Oh, you don’t have to,” I say, even as joy riots through me at the thought of someone wanting my art for their home.
“Of course we do,” she says, and a glimmer of delight sparks in her eyes, reminding me of Cole. “I mean, we’ll have it to show to our grandkids, one day…”
She’s been gently prodding at this since she met me. A retired woman with all the money in the world, wishing for a baby to take up her time.
“Lucy,” the gallery coordinator says, appearing at my elbow and saving me from answering Cole’s mother. “It’s time.”
Another wave of anxiety rolls through me, and I nod, following her like a little duckling to the front of the gallery, where there’s a small, elevated platform.
I know, logically, that it’s not a stage, but that doesn’t stop me from getting stage fright.
“Hello, everyone,” I say into the microphone after the coordinator’s introduction. A hundred eager faces stare back at me. Before continuing, I take a deep breath and look at the art on the walls around me.
A thousand versions of Frankie, smiling back.
Some of them are more abstract than others, shapes and colors, an approximation of her smile.
Waves and lines that represent her fearless attitude.
One is a clear profile of her in her wheelchair, rolling across the graduation stage, reaching out for her diploma with a smile on her face.
This gallery is full of her. I knew that, even with so much in my life, I needed to do something for my best friend. The girl I lost.
Her parents are here, too, her mom clutching a handkerchief, which she dabs under her eyes frequently. I know they didn’t want Frankie to go to college with her condition, but I’m glad they didn’t stop her from living her life the way she wanted.
“Thank you all so much for coming out and giving my art an audience,” I say, and now the words come out fluidly, like Frankie has lent me some of her strength. “As you may or may not know, the subject of these pieces is my late best friend, Francesca.”
Her mother lets out a little noise, and her father tightens his arm around her. I give them what I hope is a comforting smile and go on.
“Frankie was fearless about living the life she wanted, though the universe made it hard for her. She taught me how to live life for myself, and that’s what I do now.
If you’re standing on a precipice, staring down an idea or a choice, my sincerest hope is that you’ll allow my art to influence you toward the scary thing, the hard thing—the thing that’s truest to you. ”
With that, I raise my glass to the room, and I feel weightless when they raise their glasses back.
When I step down off the stage, it’s into three sets of arms, coming around me, holding me tight.
“That was amazing,” Cole says.
Nico adds, “Spoken like a true savant.”
“Lucy,” Dane murmurs, wrapping his arm around me and drawing me in close, his eyes sparkling, “I don’t know how you manage it, but every day you wake up and find a new way to make us the luckiest men in the world.”
I smile back up at him, eyes shining, and decide that I’ll tell him tonight.
Tonight, I’ll tell Dane that after I graduate, after the wedding, I’m ready to start trying. Start the fertility process. It will be unconventional, but so is everything else about our relationship.
The three of them will make great dads.
“I love you,” I whisper, and they collapse around me, folding me into a firm, flushed hug. We don’t normally do things like this in public, but maybe it’s time to let go of that secrecy. To live our truth how we want, without fear of others seeing.
Maybe it might just inspire someone else to do it, too.
The way Frankie inspired me.
“Okay, bitch!” Julian says, worming into the hug and extracting me. He’s holding a bottle of champagne, which he unceremoniously uncorks. The booze goes everywhere—all over my fabulous dress and on the guys.
On the other side of the room, Aunt Ruby does something to the sound system, and the music switches from soft, elevator-type piano, to a raucous, mid 2000’s party song.
“Sentimentality is so over,” Julian says, pulling me into the center of the floor and twirling me around. “It’s time to party!”
“Wait!” I stop, turning when I see a familiar face just behind Julian. “HR guy?”
Julian grins, “His name is Aidan.”
My mouth drops open as I watch Julian wrap an arm around Aidan’s waist, pulling him in close. The first person I met at Ember, the man who delivered me to Dane Rourke like a piece of meat to a pack of wolves. And then started a betting pool about the reason for my termination.
“Hey,” Aidan says, grinning and sticking out a hand. “No hard feelings?”
I can’t stop the laugh that bubbles out of me, and I slide my hand into his, “No—but you’d better be buying a painting, huh?”
He shoots me a chagrined look and twirls Julian away to dance with him.
Around us, the other guests recover from the shock of the champagne, and, to my surprise, all start to dance, too. Even my parents, and Cole’s parents, and Frankie’s.
Her mom catches me by the arm, her tears mixed with champagne and running over the smile lines around her mouth. “She would have loved this, Lucy.”
I look at the paintings on the wall, my friend immortalized and yet, still somehow part of the celebration.
“Yeah,” I nod, hugging the woman who misses my friend most. “She would have.”
Frankie would have loved this—all of it. The dancing, the laughter, the spontaneity. The fact that I found a love for me.
As though they can tell I’m thinking about them, the guys join me in dancing, even Cole getting into it, pushing his champagne-dampened hair back from his face.
Grabbing a flute of champagne from Julian, I toss it back and smile, throwing my arms in the air and dancing with my friends, the loves of my life.
Frankie isn’t here to be the life of the party, to dance and sing and leave her mark, so I’ll just have to do it for her. I’ll be romantic and tender, free and courageous. For her, and for me, I’ll take advantage of each wild, precious moment of this life surrounded by the people I love.