EPILOGUE
Two Months Later
For everyone else, though, we needed a story. We needed something to tell Ana and Grier, and my parents, and his family and friends. So, we decided to invent one and make it happen for real.
The Saturday morning rush at Needles Coffee and Tea was the logical choice. As planned, I arrived first and ordered a decaf iced latte and a cranberry muffin (minus the cascara extract) and slid into the last remaining two-top table.
I checked the time on a stainless-steel watch, my pulse skittering. When the door creaked open and he strolled in wearing faded jeans and a black sweater, my heart threatened all kinds of plan-ruining things.
The white-hot flash of recognition and want he lobbed before strolling to the counter wasn’t scripted either.
I couldn’t blame him. It had been three weeks since our last visit, in LA for a long weekend where I played sick to the rest of the world and sneaked us out to private Malibu beach corners and Orange County haunts where no one knew my name.
“Um, hey,” I called a few minutes later to that beautiful boy with piercing blue eyes and dark, slightly windblown hair. He held a latte and a croissant. I gestured to the opposite chair. “You can share my table.”
“Oh.” Two steps forward. A slightly nervous flit around the packed café—nice touch. “Thanks.”
Stealth electricity buzzed between us. I pulled out a notebook, pretending to journal. He produced his phone and scrolled, slipping out too many weighted looks from underneath his lashes.
We let this stretch for a reasonable amount of time, sipping coffees and nibbling corners of our baked goods.
“Sylvie,” I said to his unasked question. Let’s do this, my expression said as I pushed my journal aside.
He shut off his phone. “I’m Patrick. Some people call me Penn.”
This person. “Hey, Penn,” I said, and cracked a friendly smile.
His was full of cheat codes and I love yous.
“New around here?” He swallowed a bite of flaky dough.
“Sort of. I got in last night. I’m from LA, but my, er, family has a cabin on Bearberry Creek.”
And I finally had my parents’ blessing to be regular eighteen and move away for school.
We had just buried Tía Vivian, and we were talking more and more.
We weren’t completely healed, but we were trying.
Mom and Dad were reaching and bending, out of love, and out of the understanding that I needed to be where my tía had last been. Where her legacy and love lived on.
“I’m going to a community college near Eugene,” I said as emotion seared the back of my throat. “Starts up next week. Not sure what I’ll be studying, though. Like, after.”
Penn broke character and slid his hand forward until our pinkie fingers grazed, and my stomach flipped, and my memory reeled. “You don’t have to be sure right now. You will when it’s time.”
I nodded, my insides twirling at the fact that he already knew me, soul-deep.
That he more than listened and always made it feel okay that I hadn’t picked a career path yet.
Or that I hadn’t found my perfect element.
That big, big day, after the workshop, he’d told me I was magic and a miracle, and that those were things some people wished for lifetimes to become but never quite figured it out.
“You said you go to Oregon,” I supplied, forgetting that no, he hadn’t said that yet.
“Go, Ducks. We start next week too.” He gave a wink that made me forget the world. “I’m studying bio on the premed track. Thinking about anesthesiology someday.”
“Amazing.” And true in a thousand ways.
His shoulders compressed, and he bent toward me a little more. “Anything still left on your Oregon bucket list? I was born here, could help you out.”
“I want to learn to ride a horse.”
“Nice. Check out this ranch called Sacred and True. But I’d wait until next summer.”
A hidden smile crossed my heart at the thought of meeting Del and becoming her friend again. “There’s one more thing.” Green eyes found blue. “I would like to see a woodpecker.”
His brows dipped.
“I mean, I have seen one. The most common kind with the red head. But I’ve heard there are way more varieties.”
He sipped his coffee. “Oh, so many. You’ve got the Northern Flicker and the Downy. Hmm, there’s the Hairy Woodpecker. And who could forget the Red-Breasted Sapsucker?”
Not him. Now I leaned in. “I could make a list. Check them off one by one.”
And he leaned in. “Maybe even keep some kind of notebook.”
And that was simply it and done and enough. Cedar Street patrons and farmers market–goers might recall seeing a young college-aged couple leaving Needles together and strolling down the block, hand in hand.
Not soon enough, we would return to my creek-side cabin where two wooden boxes sit on the mantel.
Cherrywood and cascara. We decided to do a test during my last visit.
Along with the secret we both shared, we placed a single wildflower inside the cascara box that was decorated with three mosaic trees.
After a few days, we were finally sure that the box was just a box now.
Ready to hold our dreams, and hopes, and the bright, new wishes we made from a different sort of magic.
When we lifted the lid, we knew the enchantment had left us.
Inside, the flower had dried and withered, dying just as it should. When it was time.