Epilogue
One Year Later
It’s Kara who has the tickets for the family for James Taylor’s Fourth of July show at Tanglewood. They were a gift from the
family of a patient. In all the years they’ve been Lenox residents, not one of the Shipmans has been to this legendary show!
They’ve always been at the Beach Club for the holiday, or off in their own adult lives.
They have seats on the lawn, and they get there early to spread their picnic blanket out among the other blankets, a giant
patchwork quilt as far as the eye can see. Natalie put herself in charge of food, with assists from Kara and Mae. Calvin took
on beverages, and Austin assigned himself bathroom duty for Caspian. Caspian is no longer wearing diapers, and they’re aware
that a break in routine can mean a break in newly formed habits. They decided collectively not to give Jordan any family jobs
because she’s in the middle of a work crisis. One of her clients, the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company, a married father
of four, was recently caught canoodling with someone not his wife on the Jumbotron at a Red Sox game, and to say the clip
went viral is an understatement. Jordan has been on her phone nonstop.
This is the first time they’ve all been together since the previous summer, and the first time they’ve ever crowded into the house on Galway Court with Kara.
(For Christmas, Natalie had hosted Austin’s family at the farm, and Mae and Jordan had joined, while Calvin and Kara had gone to visit Kara’s mom in Ohio, celebrating her first five months of sobriety.
“I hate to say this,” Kara told Mae after, “but my mom sober is harder to deal with than my mom drunk.”) Scarlett and Evangeline have been sleeping in the basement.
Natalie and Austin are in Natalie’s old bedroom, and Caspian has taken to sleeping on the floor in Mae’s room, next to Leo, who has graduated from the crate.
Sometimes Mae wakes and finds both Leo and Caspian in the bed with her, and while she knows only one of these creatures is technically allowed, she pretends she didn’t notice a thing.
Cinnamon stayed back at the farm with the new farmhand Austin and Natalie hired in the spring, after they added a dozen head to their herd.
When the Shipman girls first got to Galway Court they’d combed the house for changes, for signs that said Theresa’s memory
was being erased. They’d found the following: new pillows on the living room couch, but same couch. New deck furniture, same
deck, right down to the wooden railings that will need to be replaced next summer. Kara has brought Theresa’s vegetable garden
back to life, and the tomato plants are staked with Theresa’s old green stakes, bent like crooked fingers pointing to the
sky. Kara, it may be noted, is a better gardener than Theresa was. There’s a new comforter on Calvin and Kara’s bed, but the
bed frame and nightstands are as they were. In the kitchen, a happy surprise, all of the coffee mugs from Ruby on Rye are
populating the cabinet near the coffee machine. Today Mae drank out of one that said YUP, WOKE UP AWESOME AGAIN and Natalie (decaf) from I’M THE MIDDLE, I’M THE REASON WE HAVE RULES.
It’s no easy feat for Natalie to lower her seven-month-pregnant self down to the beach chair that Austin has brought for her. Austin holds her elbow and guides her. As soon as she’s sitting, Caspian says, “Mommy, I need the bathroom.”
“Not it,” says Natalie.
“I got you, buddy,” says Austin.
“I want Mommy to take me,” says Caspian. His lower lip begins to tremble theatrically.
“Oh, no,” says Natalie. “No no no. I just got down here. I’m not getting up until at least July eighth.”
“I got it,” says Austin. He holds his hand out for Caspian’s.
Jordan says, “I’m finishing this email and then I’m turning my phone all the way off.” Kara and Calvin begin to unpack the
coolers. They have so much food! Vegetable tarts with ricotta and pesto spread. Sour cream and onion deviled eggs. Ranch slaw.
Roast beef sliders. Strawberries and cream made from organic Hillside Haven cream.
Soon after the storm Nikoletta brokered a deal to sell to a developer who had a vision for a new home that will respect the
landscape. It won’t be Theresa’s home, but it’s not going to be as bad as anyone feared. After clearing his debts Calvin had
enough to give each Shipman girl ten thousand dollars. Mae had paid back Tony, settled her storage fees and her Afterpay account,
and bought the domain name and top-of-the-line equipment for her new business. She’s the sole proprietor of Fido in the City,
which specializes in training rescue dogs for urban life. She and Leo (and the occasional foster dog, when the foster dog
has literally nowhere else to go) are living in Jordan’s second bedroom on the Upper West Side. Close to the park—a dog’s dream! In exchange for rent, Mae
is doing admin work for Jordan’s crisis comm business. After Samantha Braddock’s article came out, many of Bernadette’s former
clients left her, and now Jordan has more work than she knows what to do with.
On the subject of articles: the previous summer, returning to Hillside Haven after the storm, Natalie had a long talk with her publicist, Bethany, who advised her that the fallout from the article was not nearly as bad as Natalie feared.
Her follower numbers were holding steady, and while you could find negative comments if you looked hard enough, you could find negative comments about anything if you looked hard enough.
Natalie decided not to look very hard. She had many long talks with Austin, when the kids were in bed and they could sit on the front porch of the farmhouse looking at the stars.
She’d gone through several bouts of soul-searching.
She’d searched for days, even weeks, and what she’d found there had been her next steps.
She finished out her contracts for sponsorships and affiliates, then she closed her online accounts. She’s trying out life
as a private person again, to see if it still fits. So far it fits! She has put her money from Calvin into the farm, specifically
into investing in wearable tech for cows, which bigger farms have been using to monitor cows’ habits and physiological changes
for early disease detection and reproductive efficiency. It’s a data scientist’s dream! Natalie is trying to figure out how
to make the investment worthwhile for smaller family farms like those in Vermont. And maybe, just maybe, she can help make
them a little cuter. The Ladies work so hard, can they please get some bling on their collars or their ear tags?
In the fall, Scarlett and Evangeline will enter the public school system. They are beyond excited, and also a little nervous. They can’t stop talking about the school bus, and when they are back home after this trip
they’re going to go shopping for lunch boxes.
Calvin will teach only one class in the upcoming school year. He and Kara are debating whether to take up pickleball or mah-jongg
on Kara’s days off. Maybe both! Maybe neither!
Now, Austin and Caspian are still picking their way back from the bathroom—the real estate between blankets is at a premium—when James Taylor takes the stage. Natalie sees Austin look around frantically, not sure where to find them.
“Stand up and flag them down,” she instructs Mae.
Mae stands up and waves until Austin sees her. He swings Caspian up on his shoulders and finds a path toward them. Before
she sits Mae looks toward the horizon, over the people, over the fan-shaped building. She swears she sees a shooting star.
It could be an errant early firework. It could be nothing at all—could be her imagination. If she told her sisters, they’d
probably tease her, tell her again that it’s not Theresa, that their mother would be more original than to show up as a shooting
star, that you can’t see a shooting star half an hour before sunset (not true, Mae knows—you can).
What a cliché! they’d say. Just like the rainbow!
Mom would never! So Mae keeps it to herself.
Hi, Mom. We miss you so much, but we’re all okay here.
She sends out those thoughts as Austin and Caspian arrive at their spot, as Austin lowers Caspian to the ground and Caspian
somehow manages to step on a deviled egg, as the music, at long last, begins.