Epilogue
AVA
If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be spending the following Halloween dressed as Morticia Addams while breastfeeding a one-month-old at my parents’ annual “Monster Bash and Margarita Crawl,” I would’ve laughed.
Or cried.
Actually, probably both.
“Okay, but hear me out.” Fisher holds up his phone, angling it for the millionth picture. “What if the baby had fangs? Tiny ones. For aesthetics.”
Fisher is Lestat by way of a Paris runway.
The man is wearing a bespoke velvet cape lined in crimson silk, tailored so sharply it could cut glass.
His lace cravat is pinned with a brooch shaped like dripping blood, and his black boots sparkle with tiny Swarovski bats.
Those fake bite marks on his neck? Diamond-studded.
I chuckle. “She’s only a few weeks old, Fisher.”
“She’s committed to the bit,” he argues, gently adjusting the bat-winged baby bonnet over my daughter’s ridiculously round head.
My daughter. Our daughter.
“Besides,” Fisher continues, “the vampire bat onesie was my gift. You’re welcome for her entire future TikTok following.”
“Her name is Aisling,” I remind him, “not Count Chompula.”
“Aisling Elara Pembry,” Soren adds from across the room, his voice smooth, intoxicating. “The dream and the spark.”
Devastating in a perfectly tailored pinstripe suit with a red carnation tucked into his lapel, Soren’s dressed as Gomez Addams, with his hair slicked back. The way he’s seductively holding a glass of blood-red wine is illegal. Just fucking illegal.
Stormy eyes find mine. Soren’s smirk deepens—private, knowing. It says I love you, Bells, without saying a single word. Even dressed like a fictional gothic cartoon husband, he somehow makes my entire world feel real.
Because it very much is.
“She’s an angel,” my mom croons, snapping at least fifty blurry iPad photos from two inches away. “Look at her little mouth! Like a rosebud! A milk-slicked, dribbly rosebud!”
“Mom,” I mutter, “boundaries.”
“Wait until you see the outfit I got her for Christmas!” She continues, unbothered, possibly a little tipsy. “It says I sleighed Santa’s heart. Isn’t that cute? With glitter!”
With a glittery witch hat jammed over the top of her head and a feather boa draped around her petite neck, G-Ma cackles from her perch on the leather recliner.
She’s holding a skeleton glass full of spiked apple punch.
“I like this baby. This one doesn’t cry when I talk.
Unlike your cousin’s kid—what’s her name? Tractor?”
“Trinity.”
“Right. Little demon.”
My dad dressed up as Ghostface for reasons that remain unclear.
He tries to hand me a mimosa, pauses when he realizes I’m still nursing, then panics, averts his eyes like my boob is a solar eclipse, stammering, “Oh—uh—okay. I’ll just, uh…
” His eyes bounce to the ceiling, the floor, looking anywhere but my chest. Then he flees. Ghostface indeed.
Mom has since moved into the kitchen, where she’s now whipping up something pumpkin-spiced and questionably alcoholic, sporting devil horns and her vintage “Hot Mamas Club” apron.
“Baby’s first Halloween.” Soren crosses the room, kneels in front of me. He adjusts the blanket over Aisling. “She’s going to be a legend.”
“Please,” I say. “She slept through two costume contests, one fake séance, and an argument about the moon landing. She’s thriving.”
“She gets it from you.”
“The ability to nap through drama?”
“No.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head. “The ability to make everything around her better. Just by existing.”
I roll my eyes, but it’s mostly for show. Aisling shifts against my chest with a sleepy grunt, melting me into a caramel apple of emotion.
Right then, G-Ma shuffles up behind Soren. She gently pats his head like he’s a golden retriever who fetched the paper. “Well, Morticia’s boy toy,” she drawls with a wink. “You really put the bone in bona fide daddy material?”
“I—uh—” Soren stammers.
G-Ma beams, entirely unbothered. “You planted a phenomenal seed, Pembry. I knew those strong hips of yours would make good.”
“G-Ma!” I cough, mortified. “Oh my God—stop talking.”
Soren’s shoulders shake with silent laughter as he drifts closer to me, eyes sparkling with mischief and that devastating tenderness. “I love your family.”
“Good, cause you’re stuck with us.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Across the room, Emily sips from a wine glass. She tries very hard not to make eye contact with Fisher. He, in turn, is definitely adjusting his vampire cape in a way that implies something happened upstairs that required… redressing.
“For science,” he tells me later when I corner him by the candy cauldron. “Also? Emily’s thighs? Spooky strong.”
“You’re going to hell.”
“Only if she lets me.”
Meanwhile, G-Ma has convinced Soren to judge a costume contest featuring the family dogs. Brinley’s chihuahua is dressed as a sexy nurse. Uncle Marty is trying to glue googly eyes to his cat. Soren has our baby strapped to his chest, a clipboard in hand.
And me? I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours. My boobs are sore. My stretch marks are visible. I feel like a cracked pumpkin—yet, I’ve never felt more full. I’m not talking about being full of stress, hormones, or even panic.
But of joy.
Of love.
Of Aisling Elara Pembry, the softest, most ridiculous thing I’ve ever created.
Of Soren, the man I love, forever and ever.
That gorgeous man leans in later, when the baby’s asleep and June’s reading tarot cards for the dog. “Think she’ll be a writer?” he asks.
“I think she’ll be whatever she wants to be.”
He grins. “Rebel.”
“Pembry.”
Soren takes my hand, his thumb tracing slow circles against my skin—a quiet promise in the middle of the noise.
Around us, laughter collides with clinking glasses. The fading light blurs into gold, my family’s chaos swells like a song I’ve always known by heart.
For once, I don’t fight it. I let myself feel everything—the warmth, the ache, the dizzy, terrifying beauty of being seen and wanted all at once.
It’s glorious.
Messy. Miraculous.
A moment you don’t dare breathe too loudly in, afraid it might vanish if you do.
So with that I say,
Happy Halloween.
And happily ever after.