Epilogue
EPILOGUE
Five Months Later
“Stop screaming,” Adam grunts, red in the face. His breathing is heavy, harsh, pulls his well-defined chest taut. There’s sweat dotting his brow, like I’ve worked him too hard.
“No!” I shout, wheezing an extra, “I won!”
“Only because I thought you tripped.” He’s playfully angry, with the slash of his eyebrows and downturn of his mouth. He is completely unamused by me. And completely obsessed with me.
The feeling is mutual.
Adam and I have a new sort of routine now that Lovie is safe and sound in her full-time care facility. Parts of it are the same as they were: Adam trolls my trolls on social media, puts Band-Aids on whatever injuries I give myself trying to cook dinner or tackle home improvement projects well above my skill level.
But we’re different now too: I’m back in the city, and in therapy twice a month. Forget Me Not reached its natural conclusion when Lovie got placed in her facility, although I still pop in and give updates as necessary, for better or for worse.
Adam has a new place, an hour or so away by the hospital where he works. Exactly one hour between his family in Elkhart and me in Chicago. He has seven more months on his lease, and he already decided he won’t be renewing it. I’m not sure yet whether he’ll move into my apartment or if we’ll find something else together. He wants an extra bedroom for when his nieces visit.
Because the beginning of our relationship was so isolated, we’re taking our time getting to know each other in the real world. We spend a few nights a week with each other, at his place or mine. Go out for dinner, drinks, dancing. Not to brag, but he did kiss me on our first date. (He asked permission.)
And when we can, we run together, through the streets of Chicago. No matter where we start, we end up outside Liss’s bakery, ready to consume all the calories we just burned off.
He rolls his eyes playfully at me now, even as he holds the door open for me.
Thirty minutes later, I’m fanning myself with the lid of an empty cake box, stuffed full of Liss’s leftovers. “I don’t want to look at chocolate for a month.”
“I’m going to need a little bit longer than a month.” Liss huffs as she licks her lips free of icing and crumbs. “Like, at least the summer.” With a sigh, she drops her head to the tiny bistro-sized table in the corner of the shop. I think it’s here just for our visits.
Adam’s hand creeps from my lower back, down toward my ass. “Do you have a lot of business booked so far this summer?”
Dakota’s eyes go alarmingly wide. “Oh, God. We’re quadruple-booked almost every weekend. Which wouldn’t be so bad if we had a semifunctional kitchen.”
“Don’t talk about the kitchen like that,” Liss groans, rocking her head back and forth on her forearm. “The appliances will start an uprising.”
“Complete anarchy,” Adam agrees, pinching my butt.
My grandmother doesn’t remember me the next day.
Even with around-the-clock care, Lovie’s distant most days, unable to remember the name of the nurses who bring her breakfast every morning. I make the drive twice a week to come see her. Adam comes with me when he can, but today it’s just me.
As Lovie stares absently out the window and spins her wedding ring, I tidy up her pictures, clear them of dirt and fingerprints. The one of her and Grandpa Bobby—the one that started everything—sits on her bedside table, where she can see it every night. The scrapbook of my successes sits beside it. It needs less and less tidying each time. I check her puzzle book stash, making a mental note to bring her a fresh one next week. I sit with her, tell her about my life, the podcasts.
About Adam, and how I have her to thank for him.
And when I kiss Lovie on the forehead in goodbye, she makes a little hum of acknowledgment. It doesn’t reach her eyes. It still hurts, but not as much. This is the best place she could be. My guilt ebbs and flows at that. Today it’s a stream-like trickle through my consciousness as I leave her again.
After, I head to meet Adam’s sister and nieces at Lovie’s house. Or their house, rather.
I decided to rent out Lovie’s magical pink house after all. It was Adam’s idea, of course, to see if Ruth would be interested in a safer neighborhood with a bigger yard and free maintenance.
They moved in a few months ago and have already added to the character of the place. The girls share the second bedroom, the one that used to be mine.
They greet me at the door as always. Usually, Cora is begging to live stream on my Instagram while Chloe pleads to wear my shoes, but I never let them without supervision. Turns out being the cool aunt doesn’t mean giving the kids free rein. Who would’ve thought?
Today, though, they’re searching every inch of me with observant eyes. “Where is it?” and “Can we see?” and “Did it hurt?” are given in place of normal greetings, and I slip out of my boots by the door. Old habits die hard.
“Okay, okay,” I say. “Here, let’s go into the living room.”
The first thing to go when Ruth and the girls moved in here was that God-awful rose-patterned couch. In its place is a new kid-proof sectional, a housewarming gift from Adam and me. It sleeps much better than those benches in Union Station. I know, because on the off chance I end up crashing here after too much wine, it becomes my bed.
“Hey,” Ruth calls from the laundry room. I showed the girls the loop a month ago, and it’s their new favorite game to run it. Ruth’s already used it three times to get them worn out before bedtime. “I found more of your socks behind the dryer. Still no pairs yet.”
“Auntie Elle,” Chloe says, tugging on my jeans. “ Show us. ”
“Ahem,” Ruth yells.
“Show us please ,” Chloe amends.
Grinning at the twins, I roll up my sleeve to expose my left forearm. It’s been about a week, so it’s not tender anymore, but the ink is still vivid and fresh. Adam went with me, and I was proud I only cursed twice. A little bunch of forget-me-nots, four inches end to end, sits there. I decided on it the day I moved Lovie into her new facility, and it felt so right I booked the consultation before I left the parking lot.
“So pretty,” Cora says, going to run a featherlight fingertip along the edges. She hesitates, her eyes full of concern, so much like Adam’s. “Will I hurt you?”
“Go for it. If you rub here,” I say, demonstrating, “you can feel the ink.”
She and Chloe reach there at the same time. “ Whoa ,” Chloe says. “I want a tattoo.”
“Easy, chick,” Ruth says. “Let’s get you to middle school before you start getting tatted.”
“It’s like the flowers in Lovie’s garden,” Cora says absently, circling her index finger around one of the blue buds.
A chill runs up my spine. Ruth is so reasonable with the thermostat I know it can’t have been a draft. “What’d you say?”
“This looks like the flowers in the garden.” Cora continues running her finger over the tattoo, oblivious to the skyrocketing pulse in my wrist a few inches away. “Claire likes to play in them, but Mom won’t let her because she gets so messy.”
I look at Ruth. “There are flowers in the garden?”
“Uh, yeah?” Her forehead creases between her eyebrows. “Didn’t you plant them?”
I head toward the patio door. Because, no. I didn’t plant them.
This shouldn’t be possible. Lovie planted those seeds in mid-October in northern Indiana, in the middle of a frost.
But yet—
I gasp when they come into view. Little forget-me-nots, exactly like the ones I have on my skin forever. The ones my grandmother spent every day tending to, watering. Looking after them, the way she’s always looked after me.
“Hey,” Ruth says, leaning on the still-open patio door. “Everything okay?”
I nod, gaze locked on the flowers. “I didn’t think anything ever grew in this garden.”
She studies me curiously but ultimately decides to leave it untouched. “Do you want a drink? I know you saw Lovie today.”
I give the flowers one long, final glance. But something tells me they will still be here the next time I need them. “I wouldn’t say no to some wine,” I say. “I’ll help with dinner.”
We go inside, her wrestling away the remote from Claire before she hides it again. Adam will join us once he gets off work, and together we will head back to his place for the night. For now, the girls run the kitchen-hallway-laundry loop and show me their most recent school assignments hanging on the fridge, and Ruth and I discuss taking a family trip to a Michigan beach for the girls’ summer vacation. By the time Adam comes in, fresh flowers for her table and mine, we’ve got it narrowed down to three cities.
I thought I knew where I belong, the people and places that keep me so well. In Elkhart, I belong. In Chicago, I belong. With Liss and Dakota, I belong. Now, with Adam, with this family, I belong too.
I don’t just have happy places anymore. Now I have happy people too.
THE END