Epilogue
Sam
New York
Eighteen months later
I’ve lost my girlfriend.
I’m not sure how. Yes, the world is busy today with shoppers, but she’s pretty tall, and the last time I saw her three minutes ago she was wearing a very blue coat, so she shouldn’t be that hard to spot in the sea of gray and black. Yet, somehow, I’ve managed it.
I shift the clutch of shopping bags from my left hand to my right as I gaze down the street, ignoring the buzz of my phone in my pocket. I know it’s just Lizzie with her standard we’re running late update. We’re supposed to meet her, Ben, and the kids for lunch, but first: girlfriend.
She told me she was stepping outside for some air. Unless she’s gone back inside. Or she’s— Ah.
I turn as a bus lumbers forward, revealing the row of buildings opposite and one woman in particular standing in front of a bookstore.
The collar of her coat is pulled up against the wind, and her gloved hands are cradling a cup of coffee.
She’s stuffed her hat into her pocket, the woolly beanie bulging out at her side, and as a result her hair has come loose from its pins, and is now flying around her face.
It’s longer than it was when I first met her, brushing her shoulders in a way she hates, but she wants to grow it out.
I suspect this is purely because she wants to dramatically cut it again, but I keep this to myself so she can have her moment.
I cross the street to join her and follow her gaze to the blown-up photo of Frank smack-bang in the middle of the window.
A few of his books surround it, and whoever set up the display made an effort, folding swaths of green velvet, the same color Maeve wears, alongside what looks like homemade miniature swords made of foil.
“That’s the first window I’ve seen,” Ciara says, sounding awed. “They’re early.”
“They’re excited. You want to go in?”
Her nose wrinkles, but it’s half-hearted. “Do we have time?”
I check my phone to see that it was a text from Lizzie, and they are indeed running late. “Plenty.”
A bell chimes overhead as I push the door open. It’s a small space made all the smaller by the dozens of boxes pushed up against the walls. They clearly just had a delivery, and an ill-timed one at that, judging by the stacks of books half–taken out and abandoned on the tables.
We’re barely a step inside when a harried voice calls from somewhere within the shelves.
“I’ll be with you in a minute!” they yell, before there’s a muttered curse followed by the sound of books tumbling. “Maybe two!”
I step over a small pile of travel guides as Ciara winds her way through the room, heading for the large table in the center. Like the window, it’s dedicated to Frank, with various editions of his novels arranged around a small blackboard that counts down the weeks until the next release.
The Last Mountain.
Even with the setback with the storm, she finished it on time as I knew she would. More than that, she handed in her final edit with three days to spare. Three days she spent watching movies in bed and emerging only when I enticed her with takeout.
She knocked it out of the park. A little over the word count, but each one of those words is earned.
She managed to put her own mark on the world while still honoring Frank’s legacy and storytelling.
The casual reader might not be able to tell the difference, but the stakes feel higher, the humor darker.
It’s a fitting finale to the series. I’d go so far as to say a perfect one.
Even if I did have to drag the more romantic scenes from her.
She grew more comfortable once she got going, though.
She just needed a bit of practice.
Casey was over the moon with how it turned out.
He wanted to sign her for her own series and spent months trying to convince her to write fantasy, but she was firm that she wanted to work on her own stuff for a while.
After all, her long-promised detective series wasn’t going to write itself.
Or at least, that’s what I think she’s writing.
She hasn’t let me read so much as a word, despite me waking up more than once to find her typing in the living room.
We’ve been living together for just over a year now.
Despite the rush of those last few days in Ireland, it wasn’t as simple as her just moving back with me when I left.
It took months to get everything sorted with the house, to tie up the loose ends not only in Frank’s life but in hers.
Not that anyone made it hard for her. They were all thrilled by the news.
Ronan threw a going-away party at Delaney’s, and, from what I heard, the place was packed.
Maddie even came back from Dublin for it.
And I know Ciara enjoyed it, because I received thirty-seven texts, photos, and voice notes over the course of the night and then absolutely nothing for forty-eight hours besides an I’m alive update.
I could practically smell the hangover from here.
I won’t lie and say I wasn’t nervous when it finally happened.
When she picked a date and booked her tickets.
Even if I did miss her so much it hurt, it was still a big decision.
We both knew that. But all those fears vanished as soon as she strode through the doors in the arrivals hall.
When one glimpse of her wiped out every doubt in my mind.
“I guess I’d better get used to this,” she says as I straighten the stacks on the table.
“Just wait until the billboards go up.” I take a step back and frown. They’ve got books six and seven in the wrong order.
“Sam.”
“Hmm?” I swap the piles and restraighten them before taking a picture.
“I thought you didn’t work on weekends anymore.”
“This is for personal use,” I say, and take one of her before she can stop me.
Two months after I returned to New York, Casey called me and Laura into his office and informed us that he was retiring after The Last Mountain’s publication. He wanted us to run Richardson Books together. Laura as president and me as vice.
The way he said it, I could tell he was expecting me to push back.
Maybe Laura was too. And maybe, a year ago, I would have.
But, if anything, I was relieved. I asked for Amy to be promoted to cover some of my list, logged on to our team’s leave spreadsheet for the first time in months, and booked two vacation days just for fun.
Or for the craic, as Ciara would say.
I thought it would be difficult putting the brakes on things when I’d been going so hard for so long, but it turns out it’s much easier leaving at five p.m. when there’s someone you want to go home to.
Easier not to check your email or reach for your phone when the love of your life is standing right in front of you.
My sister was thrilled with my new worldview, and she showed it by filling my calendar with babysitting duties. She and Ciara got on like a house on fire, too, the book leak forgiven and forgotten as Lizzie became Ciara’s first friend in New York.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing. It couldn’t be. Some days are stressful. Some days, we snap at each other. Some days, I don’t see her at all because we’re busy or moody or both. But it’s important to have those moments. Important to be human, and be there for each other’s lows as well as the highs.
Because some days, I wake up and see her head on the pillow next to mine, and it’s as though I’ve forgotten how to breathe. Some days, when I do, I let her sleep, content just to lie there with her. Other days, I wake her up, making sure to do it in a way that I know she’ll be grateful for.
She’s become such a part of my life that it makes me wonder how I ever spent a day without her.
“Look.” Ciara pulls off her glove and points to a set of framed photos hanging above the cash register.
They’re like the kind you see in restaurants sometimes, famous people who dined there, except instead of actors and singers these are authors.
Some newer and some many decades old, black and white or faded with time.
Including one Polaroid of Frank Sheridan and a little girl by his side.
“I thought this place looked familiar,” Ciara murmurs as I move closer to it.
She can’t be more than ten or eleven in it. Dressed in a green sparkly dress and missing a tooth. She doesn’t care about that, though, not yet grown into self-consciousness, and she grins with her whole mouth, thrilled to be standing next to her father.
“Stop looking at it,” she says when I smile. “You’re not allowed to see any more pictures of me before the age of twenty-two.”
“Was that your glow-up?”
“That was my haircut. Something you wouldn’t know about.”
I laugh, catching sight of myself in a nearby mirror. I haven’t shaved in a few days. “Message received.”
“I’m only kidding,” she says, reaching up to touch my jaw.
“You like me scruffy?”
“I like you all ways.” She drops her arm, looking decisive. “You can kiss me now.”
“Oh, I can, can I?”
“Not if you’re going to have an attitude about—”
I press my lips to hers, and she grabs the front of my jacket with one hand, holding me there as if I might try to move away. The syrup from her coffee makes her mouth taste sweet, and when she breaks the kiss she just laughs when I protest.
“I love you,” I tell her.
“You’d better.”
“Hi there!” A voice chimes. “Sorry about that.”
Ciara’s hair tickles my nose as she turns her head before I do, and we glance up to find the mysterious bookseller emerging from the shelves. She looks as if she’s still in college, with bleached blond hair and a septum piercing. A pile of poetry books is balanced in her hands.
“Just browsing, or need some help?”
“Where’s your crime section?” Ciara asks, and I wander after them as she takes her time choosing two for me and two for her, using me as her own personal book butler as she stacks them in my arms.
“I feel like if you’re spending this much money, you should at least get a bookmark,” the shop assistant says when we finally make it to the sales counter.
She grabs two from beside the register, both Ravian themed.
“Are you fans?” she asks, catching our look.
“The author loved this spot. My boss said he used to come in here all the time. We’ve got some signed books if you want to take a look. ”
“We’re good,” Ciara says. “Thank you.” And the assistant’s professionalism falters as she hands over the bag. I don’t know if she picked up on her accent or just guessed, but her eyes go wide as the penny drops.
“Are you— Sorry,” she says, her cheeks going bright pink. “It’s just you look so much like…are you Ciara Sheridan?”
“I am.” Ciara smiles, and I step back, leaving them to it.
A little while later, we leave the store and I reach into my pocket out of pure habit, one I’ve developed in the past two weeks, ever since I snuck away during one of her writing days. But instead of finding what I should, my hand meets nothing but my keys and air.
Ciara pauses, noticing my sudden panic. “You okay?”
“I’m grand.” The words slip out before I can stop myself and she latches on to them as she always does when it happens.
“It’s so cute when you say that.”
“Words are for everyone, Ciara.”
“Not when you can’t pull them off.”
“I can pull them off.”
“Grand,” she says in a terrible American accent, and I let her make fun of me because at least she’s distracted. “Which way are we—”
“Left,” I say, and she spins on her heel, striding off.
I follow a step behind, still having a mini heart attack as I riffle through the bags and double-check my front pockets, my anxiety mounting until I shove a receipt aside and my fingers close around a small velvet box.
Relief surges through me so strongly that, when I jog to catch up with her, I’m grinning like an idiot.
“Now what?” she asks, exasperated.
“Nothing. Just thought I’d lost something.”
“Besides your sense of direction?”
I’m confused for an instant before she tugs me sharply to the left and down the block we’re supposed to be on.
“Did you find it, then?” she asks, slipping her hand into mine.
“Yeah.” I duck down to kiss her temple, and she pretends to dig her elbow into my side even as she looks up with a smile. “I did.”