Epilogue
"YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL, Mama."
"She does, doesn't she?"
"You're going to make me ruin my makeup!" Aislinn wailed.
Her sisters laughed, all three of them, the sound filling the dressing room and tangling together as it had all morning, as it had for months now, and oh, just the thought of that made her want to cry harder.
She had sisters, plural, and they were laughing at her. Thank goodness for waterproof mascara.
They were everywhere at once, the way they always were.
Kleah knelt to fuss over her skirt, smoothing the fall of ivory silk over the proud little curve that the dressmaker had so cleverly honored, her dark hair catching copper where she moved.
Cadence checked the bouquet for the fourth time, doe eyes suspicious, as though the peonies might attempt an escape.
And Liana straightened from the mirror, blue-shadowed waves swinging, and cheerfully said her goodbyes before taking Louis's hand to accompany him out to the garden, because the ring bearer would need to walk down the aisle first, and the ring bearer had been rehearsing his walk with the seriousness of a state funeral.
Then the room was briefly, impossibly quiet, and Aislinn looked at herself in the tall mirror.
So much had happened.
Once, not so long ago, she had been so scared, so alone, so helpless, just her and Louis against a world that kept proving how little it wanted them.
And now, in what felt like an instant, she had three sisters, three whole sisters who called and visited and argued over her bouquet, and soon, minutes from now, a husband.
The only man she'd ever loved. And in a strange way they were all of them bound together because of Viktor, the brother she never knew, who had loved four girls so much he'd made himself a stranger to all four.
She closed her eyes.
Wherever you are, I hope you are at peace. Thank you for loving us even when we never knew you.
And I'm grateful to You, God, for bringing Valerio and me back together.
A knock on the door.
Giancarlo Marchetti waited in the doorway in formal black, cane and all, and asked her gravely, "Ready?"
Ready.
The garden had been strung with white, and the music started when she appeared, and every face turned, but Aislinn walked the first half of the aisle looking at none of them, too busy holding on to the arm of the man beside her and the composure of the woman she was five minutes from becoming.
"Thank you for offering to walk me down the aisle," she said shyly.
"I was your brother's best friend for many, many years." Giancarlo's eyes stayed forward, his pace easy around the cane. "I wouldn't have it any other way."
"He tried to kill you," she pointed out helplessly.
"Your brother was always more good looking than smart."
She was still trying to choke back the laugh when they reached the end of the aisle, and Giancarlo lifted her hand from his arm and placed it, with old-world ceremony, into the waiting hand of Valerio Le Sabre.
Valerio, who had clearly been watching her fight the laugh the whole way down. "What's so funny?"
"He just called my late brother stupid."
"He is."
She had no chance to reply to that, is, present tense, said with the tiniest flicker of something she'd interrogate him about later, because the pastor was already beginning the service, and it was a lovely one at that, warm and unrushed under the arbor, a poignant reminder that what God has joined together, no one can put asunder.
And someone had tried. Someone had put eight years between their joined hands, and here the hands were anyway, and Aislinn held on and let the words wash over her like a tide that had finally, finally turned.
And then, just like that.
"You may now kiss the bride."
Her cheeks were already pink as he lifted her veil. He took his time about it, this man who did nothing slowly except the things that mattered most, and then he cupped her face in both hands.
"I love you, Mrs. Le Sabre."
Her eyes teared over. "I love you so much."
And then he was kissing her, so passionately the crowd abandoned decorum and cheered, and when they finally parted, laughing, they turned and offered their hands to Louis, who came at a dignified run and took one hand each, and the three of them walked back up the aisle together through a storm of thrown petals, past guests who were, every single one, a beloved face.
Her sisters, and their husbands.
The Marchettis, rows of them, and Boston's matriarch, La Strega herself, regal in the front. Calixte and Eden. Aurélien and Arabella. And Minna, at the aisle's edge, who caught Aislinn's eye and gave her a look that promised retribution—
Oops. Too late. The bouquet was already airborne, launched with eight years of pent-up gratitude and deadly accuracy, straight into the other woman's unsuspecting arms.
Minna looked at the peonies. Minna looked up.
"Now let's run before your cousin kills me!"
By nightfall, the three of them had boarded a jet bound for Paris, and somewhere over the dark Atlantic, Louis finally surrendered, asleep across two seats with the one-eared rabbit tucked under his chin and his ring-bearer bow tie unclipped and clutched in one hand like a trophy.
Aislinn was watching her son sleep when her brand-new husband rose and offered her his hand.
"Come with me."
"Always," she said.
His eyes gleamed. "You misunderstand. What I meant—"
"Valerio!"
The End
Thank you for reading Come with Me.