Epilogue
STERLING
“I love Saturdays,” I said, rolling over in our bed in Heartstone Manor, my cheek pressed to Forrest’s chest.
For the first time in my memory, everything was right in my world, and I was exactly where I wanted to be.
“Let’s stay here all day,” I said, letting out a contented sigh.
Forrest’s hand came up to stroke down my hair, and he kissed the top of my head. “That works for me. It’s been a busy few weeks.”
He wasn’t kidding. I was ready to take a break from being busy for a while. We’d stayed in Oregon with Emily and Jerry for almost a week, using as much of my time away as we could, considering the possibility of delayed flights. Oregon was a long way from North Carolina. It wasn’t like we could jump in the rental car and drive back in a flash if our flight was canceled.
Emmett and the team he brought with him pretty much took care of the aftermath of Brax and Callum’s attempts to claim Alan Buckley’s fortune. Forrest and I talked to the police about Brax and what had happened, but they didn’t really need us. They had Callum Leary in custody and some very high-definition video. We were only needed to substantiate the evidence they already had. The quest for the secrets of the Vitellius had been Callum’s pet project. With him out of the picture, the rest of the Learys weren’t interested in us.
I was trying to be sorry that Brax had died. Maybe it was callous to say all was right in my world when my brother had died right in front of me, but he’d been a real shithead of a brother and a crappy human being, cemented by his plan to shoot me and throw my body over the cliffs. It was hard to feel sorry he was gone.
Maybe someday, when the memory of the dark barrel of that gun pointed at my forehead had faded some, maybe then I’d feel bad. I wasn’t there yet.
I could have stayed in Oregon for a lot longer than a week. Learning the truth about Forrest’s father had bridged the distance between Forrest and Emily as nothing else could have. Seeing their relationship up close—the open affection, the way she was excited to hear every detail of his work at the inn, and most of all, the smile on her face when her son walked in the room—all of it was a revelation. I hadn’t grown up with love like that. There’d been some love in our house thanks to Darcy and Miss Martha, but not enough. Not like that. Emily delighted in Forrest, and he had an easiness with Jerry that was sweet to see.
And on top of all of that, Emily seemed thrilled that her son and I were together. I’d never really thought about the parents of anyone I’d dated, maybe because I’d never taken my dates all that seriously. But where Emily was concerned, what she thought mattered.
I was in love with Forrest and didn’t plan on being parted from him ever again if I could help it. If I got my way, someday, Emily would be my mother-in-law. I wanted that. I would have claimed Forrest even if his mother had been an evil witch, but I couldn’t deny that I was thrilled she wasn’t. I leaned into every hug, soaking in her maternal affection.
It wasn’t hard to adore Emily. She was fun and loving and wise and weird in the coolest ways. She had full conversations with her goat, which seemed to be two-sided based on his head nods and vocal responses. She made vats of homemade yogurt and always had fresh sourdough bread. After Emmett saved us from Callum, we’d returned to the house, shaken by the scene on the cliffs. When she heard what happened to Brax, Emily pulled me close and rocked me from side to side, rubbing my back, saying, “Oh, you poor, sweet baby. Oh, you poor girl.”
I wasn’t ashamed to say I wept. A lot. I didn’t think I’d ever had an embrace like that. Not since I was a toddler. While a part of me was a little homesick—Parker had been sending me pics of Shadow, who she swore missed me—a part of me wanted to stay, to sink into the rhythm of the little farm, eat sourdough toast and yogurt with fresh berries. To learn to throw pots and collect eggs from the chickens and get Emily’s hugs three times a day. But home wasn’t Oregon, and I had a wedding to plan back in Sawyers Bend. Forrest could handle a lot of his job remotely, but I could tell he was eager to get back to the inn. Emily and Jerry promised to visit Sawyers Bend in the fall for leaf season and the annual craft fair. Jerry was already making phone calls to potters in the area to tour their workshops.
We’d arrived back at Heartstone Manor to find a beautiful arbor in Quinn’s clearing, with flowers and low bushes already planted around it. It was wider than I’d expected, with four sturdy posts and an arching roof of woven peeled branches. And because it was for Quinn, Hawk had added hammock hooks. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Quinn’s double hammock hung there now and then, the two of them cocooned away from the world.
The arbor was done, and Quinn had her ring. As far as Hawk was concerned, it was go time. Thanks to Tenn and Savannah’s wedding, Griffen was ordained and could perform the ceremony. We briefly discussed waiting, given Brax’s unexpected death. His body came home while Forrest and I were still in Oregon, and the rest of the family had a small service without us as soon as I’d assured them I didn’t want to be there. All agreed that we could grieve Brax and still celebrate Quinn and Hawk’s marriage. Everyone was just waiting on me.
Considering it was her wedding at stake, Quinn gave me the week off from work. I spent it grabbing anyone I could—mostly the kids since they had summer off, and Scarlett and Parker because they made their own schedules. Together, we decorated the clearing in a midsummer night’s dream theme, fairy lights in the trees and flowers everywhere. I filled tin buckets with tulips and lined them up to create an aisle, hung lanterns from low branches, and draped swaths of tulle on the arbor.
Avery brought her nice event chairs over from the brewery, and Royal and Tenn connected me with the musicians they used at the inn to play violin for the ceremony and bluegrass for the party afterward. At Quinn and Hawk’s request, Finn planned the barbeque to end all barbeques after the wedding, right in the clearing where we held the ceremony.
Fortunately, most of the guest list was already cleared by the security team. Quinn had a few local friends, plus Cooper and Alice Sinclair, Evers and Knox Sinclair, and their wives, Summer and Lily. Lucas came with his wife Charlie, who—exactly as he predicted—I hit it off with immediately. Emmett Blake came along with them.
Two days before the wedding, Parker had shown up when Quinn and I were going through some details on the flowers.
“I know you said you have a dress,” she’d started, and Quinn rolled her eyes in friendly exasperation.
“I don’t really care about the dress,” Quinn said for the millionth time.
“I know,” Parker said with her own eye roll. “And I love you and your endless supply of cargo pants, but you are not getting married in a sundress.”
“It’s a beautiful dress,” Quinn protested, defending the cute white eyelet sundress I knew she loved.
“It is a very pretty dress,” Parker agreed, “but you’ve worn it twenty times, and this is special.”
Quinn leveled a look at Parker. “It’s not the dress that makes it special.”
Parker didn’t credit that with a response. “I can return it if you don’t like it,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” Quinn asked.
Parker held up a translucent plastic bag that appeared to be filled with white tulle. “Help me out, Sterling,” she said.
She lifted the hanger at the top of the bag, and I pulled up the plastic, revealing the dress that was so perfectly Quinn, my eyes teared with joy for her. Light layers of tulle floated from the bodice to the floor. This wasn’t a princess’s gown. It was fit for the fairy queen Quinn was at heart.
The straps were the width of my thumb and held up a structured bodice made from layers of white tulle, covered with a confection of appliqué vines and flowers that concentrated on the bodice and flowed down the skirts. It was light and fresh and would move around her like a cloud.
I glanced over to see Quinn staring at the dress, her eyes shining.
“Okay,” she breathed. “You were right.”
“I know,” Parker said with a smile. “Let’s go try it on and make sure it fits. You don’t have much time for alterations.”
It fit almost perfectly. Parker put in a pin or two where it was needed and took the dress back, promising to have it ready for Quinn’s wedding.
And that was that. We were pretty much done.
I’d seen a lot of weddings in the last year. In some ways, Quinn’s was the most low-key. But of all the weddings, this one was the most magical. For one thing, it was the only one that took place in the woods. Early evening on their wedding day, with the sun just beginning to set, Griffen walked Quinn down the aisle to Hawk, standing in the arbor, Quinn’s dog Ginger at his side. Leo had been left in the gatehouse for the wedding, as he was most decidedly an indoor cat.
The ceremony itself was short. I didn’t remember most of the words, fully absorbed by the incandescent joy on Quinn’s face, the matching expression on Hawk’s as they said, “I do,” the clearing just beginning to light up with the warm glow of fireflies. They walked back down the aisle under a cloud of rose petals and let me drag them off for a few wedding pics before the musicians switched from classical to bluegrass, and the party really got started. As the sun sank below the mountains and the fairy lights blinked on, we feasted on barbeque, and I danced with Forrest under the moon until Quinn and Hawk snuck off into the woods for their wedding night.
They’d decided to postpone their honeymoon for the winter when Quinn’s business would be at its slowest, and they could spend two weeks in the cabin where they’d fallen in love. For now, they were taking a long weekend in the mountains, just the two of them and their huge backpacks. Not my idea of a honeymoon, but Quinn and Hawk’s idea of heaven.
It had only been a few days since the wedding, and I’d been doing a lot of thinking. There was nothing like a death followed by a wedding to start me down the path of reevaluating my choices. Endings and beginnings. Full circle. My life story thus far was a long list of bad decisions and wrong turns. I could blame my father’s crappy parenting and my own lack of direction, but it didn’t matter who was to blame. That part of my life was over. I knew who I was now. I loved and was loved. I knew what I wanted and where I wanted to go. And so much of that revolved around the man lying beside me.
My head had been so busy lately, not just with the wedding but with my own plans. There were so many ways to ask for what I wanted. I rolled to my side in bed on that lazy Saturday and looked up into Forrest’s warm hazel eyes, rich with gold in the morning light.
He smiled down at me, lifting his palm to press to my cheek, his fingers sliding into my hair. “I love you,” he said.
I smiled, and just then, I knew exactly what my next step needed to be. Sometimes, simple was best.
“Marry me,” I said.
Adorably, his eyes flew wide open, and he stuttered, “W-what?”
“Marry me,” I said again and grinned. “Or rather,” I rephrased, “would you please marry me, Forrest Powell?”
He grinned back, his eyes bright. But instead of answering me immediately, he rolled away from me to face his side of the bed, opened and shut a drawer, then rolled back, light flashing from what was in his hand.
It was perfect. We were perfect.
“I was going to give this to you that day on the cliffs,” he said. “But after everything that happened, it didn’t seem like the right moment. And then we got back, and Quinn and Hawk were getting married, and it felt better to let them have their time. Now that they’re married, I planned to try again, but you beat me to it.” He lifted my hand and slid the ring on my finger. “Yes, Sterling Sawyer, I would love nothing more than to marry you.”
A tear welled in my eye and skated down my cheek. I leaned up to press a kiss to Forrest’s mouth, lingering, my heart so full I couldn’t catch my breath. Pulling back, I looked down at the ring on my finger. A generous emerald-cut diamond on a gold band, it could have been plain, but for the size—a touch bigger than it needed to be—and the fire inside the stone. The diamond was the highest quality I’d ever seen, cut so every facet caught the light.
“It’s so beautiful.” I tilted my hand and watched it turn the morning light into spears of rainbow. “Where did you find it?”
“It was my mother’s,” Forrest said. “It’s the ring my father gave her. She gave it to me for you. If you want something else, that’s okay.”
My heart swelled, so much I thought it would burst. “No, I love it. It’s gorgeous.” I splayed my hand on his bare chest, admiring the picture it made. “Emmett said your father was frugal, but clearly not when it came to this diamond.”
It was exactly what I would have chosen myself. Big, but not obnoxiously so, and elegant through and through.
“Your mom really gave you her ring?” I asked. “For me?” That was huge, at least to me—to know that Emily wanted me as a daughter-in-law enough to give me a ring she must have treasured.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice gruff. “She knew I was going to ask.”
I loved that he’d been thinking about it for a while, too.
“She’s a smart lady, your mom,” I said.
“Yeah, she is. Now we have something to celebrate.” He closed his hands around my upper arms and tugged me to lie over his chest, bringing my mouth even with his own. He kissed me, his lips lingering until I sighed.
“I love you so much, Forrest,” I said as he rolled me to my back, and we celebrated our engagement. Thoroughly.
After, Forrest swore he didn’t tell Savannah a thing, and I knew I hadn’t, but somehow she and Finn had figured it out. By the time I made it to the kitchens to show off my gorgeous ring, Finn was already baking my favorite layered coconut cake in celebration.
Dinner that night was an impromptu engagement party. My heart squeezed just a fraction as I remembered Hawk and Quinn’s engagement dinner only a few weeks before. This time, no one looked annoyed at me or otherwise. Ford sat at the end of the table opposite Brax’s empty seat, a faint smile on his lips, his eyes avoiding the space where Brax should be. I grieved the brother Brax could have been, but it was hard to miss the man he’d chosen to be. I wasn’t planning to waste a lot of time grieving my would-be murderer.
Forrest and I wanted to take our time setting a wedding date. For one, I couldn’t decide what I wanted. When it came to the event itself, Forrest claimed not to have an opinion, saying he simply wanted me to be his wife and getting there was up to me. I wasn’t sure that was entirely true, but I’d find out once I got to planning. First, I had to figure out what kind of wedding I had in mind.
If I wanted to marry him anytime soon, it would have to be something small. I already knew Hawk would kill me himself if I tried to throw a big bash. The security for something like that would be a nightmare.
So, I could wait and hope we managed to catch my father’s killer and eliminate the threat against our family, or I could get married soon and have a small family wedding like everyone else had.
I was impatient to take the next step, to say the hell with it, find myself a beautiful dress, and throw my own wedding at Heartstone Manor. It was certainly a grand location, and I knew I could make it beautiful. It didn’t hurt that all my favorite people were already allowed on the estate. But I thought I wanted more than that, and we weren’t in a rush.
We went back to normal life, a new normal, one we’d never had before. I worked for Quinn, handling the office and helping her organize clients for hiking or fishing trips. Then, as soon as they were on their way and it was quiet again, I’d pull out my laptop and get back to my coding classes. I emailed Emmett when I had questions, especially once I started the cybersecurity unit, and found I had a million of them, every answer leading to more questions. It was fascinating.
One night, I asked Forrest what we would do if I actually got a job at Sinclair Security. He just kissed me and said we’d figure it out. “There are hotels in Atlanta. It’s all an adventure as long as I’m with you.”
Everything would have been perfect except for my dreams. They started not long after Forrest slid his mother’s ring on my finger. Near nightly, I had dreams of sitting in Emily’s bedroom watching her peel back the endpapers on the book of Rumi’s love poems. Dreams of the letter Forrest’s father had written him. I didn’t understand what I was so focused on.
The letter was a beautiful, heartfelt message of hope and love to his family, but why was it haunting me? Was I captured by the idea of a father loving his wife and child that much? Maybe. It had made an impression on me, but one worthy of repeated dreams? The last time I dreamed of something like this, it had been the Vitellius invading my sleep night after night until I remembered the secret panel.
I woke one morning, a little over a month after we got engaged, unable to shake my dream from the night before. It had been particularly vivid. Maybe because we’d spent a good part of the day packing up things of Forrest’s, dividing them into belongings he was bringing to Heartstone and things he’d put into storage. We didn’t want to be apart, and I couldn’t leave the Manor, so he was going to keep his house and rent it out. He loved it, and so did I, so once the terms of the will were up, we could move in together there. But for now, it wasn’t hard to find good tenants in our area. Plenty of people wanted to move to our idyllic town and were looking for rentals before they bought something.
We’d gone through a box packed with things of his father’s. Random items like binoculars and an old fountain pen; the kind of things a young boy would have held on to, to remember his father. In my dream, I’d been sitting on the bed next to Emily, the binoculars pressed to my forehead. Allen Buckley’s handwriting had been undulating in my vision, words popping off the page to disappear and reappear.
It bugged me all through breakfast until, finally, I turned to Forrest and said, “Do you have the letter? The letter your dad left?”
“I do,” he said. “My mom gave it to me. She thought I should have it.”
“Can I see it?” I asked. “I keep dreaming about it.” I shook my head and made a twirly motion with my pointer finger at my brain.
Forrest went still, his eyes narrowing. “What are you dreaming?” Before I could answer, he said, “Let’s go look at it.”
We left the breakfast table to head straight up to my room.
Forrest took it from his briefcase and handed it to me, separating out the itinerary of the trip that had been folded with it.
I sat at my desk, aiming the lamp at the page. “Do we have your magnifying glass?” I asked.
“Yeah. Hold on. I think I know what box it’s in.” Forrest found it after a minute and handed it to me.
I held it over the letter, moving it in and out, making the words change in size from small to huge as they had in my dream. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. This was probably a waste of my time, but the picture in my head wouldn’t go away, like a puzzle that needed to be solved.
I spent another minute or so and sighed to myself. There was no puzzle here. There was only Allen Buckley’s handwriting. His words were a combination of print and cursive, all of it angular, the strokes of his pen bold and strong.
Then, something caught my eye. I leaned in until my nose was almost touching the page, squinting at the letters.
Some of the print letters were randomly capitalized.
It was done so smoothly that they blended with the rest. It was possible it was simply his natural pattern. I didn’t have another handwriting sample for comparison. But in some spots, the capitals didn’t quite match the rest of his handwriting.
I could feel the excitement build and warned myself not to jump to conclusions. Until I had firm proof, I had to proceed methodically. I pulled a notepad from my desk and began to list the printed capital letters, one after the other. It didn’t take long before I said, “Forrest.”
I didn’t need to get his attention. He was already leaning over my shoulder, watching my progress. “Those aren’t random letters,” he said.
an D
A lways
W ould
S uccess
ON
tri P
OuR
Thank
mE