Epilogue #3
She pulled off the top sheet with a grin and wrote Brennan-Matthews on one line and Matthews-Brennan on the next, and held it up.
"Brennan-Matthews. The rhythm is better."
Catherine looked at the paper with the expression of someone conducting a fair assessment against their will.
"The rhythm is better," she said after a lengthy pause, as though the words cost her something.
"Sorry?"
"Don't make me say it again."
“Mrs. Catherine Anne Brennan-Matthews," Theo said. "You're agreeing with me."
"I'm agreeing with the typography," Catherine said, smiling. "It's not the same thing."
"Brennan-Matthews on the buzzer downstairs," Theo said. “Agreed.”
Catherine looked at her with a patience that was also entirely delighted. "You're going to be completely insufferable about this, aren't you?”
"For the rest of our lives," Theo said. "Yes. Probably."
Catherine kissed her. Warm and unhurried, the kind of kiss that had nowhere to be and knew it, and Theo held on and thought about the fourteenth floor and the note on the door and the piano through the wall and the woman who had stood in her doorway with such careful composure and given nothing away.
She also thought about the ring that was tucked between her folded sweaters in the top drawer of the bedroom dresser, wrapped in a square of velvet, waiting.
She had been waiting too, if she was honest, not for certainty, she had been certain of Catherine for longer than she could honestly account for, but for the right moment.
The perfect evening, the perfect setting, the perfect words.
She looked at Catherine, nestled beside her. At their apartment around them. At the ordinary, extraordinary Wednesday evening that had somehow become the truest version of her life.
She realized, with a clarity that arrived easily and stayed, that this was it. That the perfect moment had been here all along, in the accumulated significance of all the ordinary ones.
* * *
The last dish was placed into the rack when Catherine heard the shower start.
She dried her hands and moved through the apartment in the way she did at the end of good days, without purpose, just existing in the space of it. She straightened the throw on the couch. Turned off the kitchen light and headed to bed.
It was only when she reached the bedroom doorway that something tugged her out of that easy drift.
Her copy of Persuasion sat in the middle of the bed, dead center on the comforter. Last she'd seen it, it had been in her keepsake box in the wardrobe. She quirked an eyebrow at it, which it didn’t acknowledge. Obviously.
She picked it up, and it fell open the way it always did, somewhere in the middle where the pages had given up resisting years ago, where dozens of sticky notes pressed flat between them had worked the spine loose over time.
Something slid from the crease and landed on the bed with a sound so small she almost missed it.
She looked down. A ring sat there, quiet and deliberate, waiting.
Then she saw the lavender note tucked in the crease of the page. A new one that said:
Marry me?
Catherine covered her mouth with her hand.
From the threshold to their ensuite came the squeak of a floorboard.
She turned.
Theodora was standing in the bathroom doorway, fully dressed, the shower running pointlessly behind her, tears tracking down her face, and a smile so wide it looked like it might actually hurt.
Theodora took a step towards her and said, "So?"
Catherine looked at her. At the ring on the comforter. At the book in her hands, all their notes still pressed between its pages in neon green, pale blue, and hot pink, and the first one that had threatened to stitch her up.
Catherine picked up the ring. Then she crossed the room, book in one hand, ring in the other.
"So what?” she asked, the words coming out softer than she intended, her mouth giving her away.
Theodora watched her come, still smiling, still crying, making no effort to do anything about either.
Catherine stopped in front of her and held out the ring, a single diamond, classic, understated, and exactly what she would have chosen for herself.
Theodora took it, then looked up. "Your answer? To my proposal?" She paused, her voice catching on the laughter underneath it. "I thought I was being romantic."
The smile broke across Catherine's face all at once. She'd once said the exact same thing on a piano bench when she'd accidentally taught her Canon in D.
"Yes," she said. Then, quieter, her hand coming up to rest against Theodora’s cheek: "Every time you ask. For the rest of my life. Yes."
Theodora kissed her, one hand cupping her jaw, and Catherine felt the cool slide of the ring onto her finger without either of them breaking apart to watch it happen.
When they finally did pull back, they both looked down at it at the same moment, the way you look at something you want to make sure is real.
Neither of them spoke. Catherine turned her hand, watching the diamond catch the light, and felt Theodora's thumb trace slowly over her knuckle, back and forth, like she was learning the new geography of it.
Then Theodora looked up, and Catherine looked back, and whatever she saw on Theodora's face made her lean in and kiss her again, slow this time, her free hand coming up to cup her jaw.
When they finally broke apart, Theodora was still holding her hand. She glanced down at it once more, then back up, her mouth curving into something that was trying very hard to be dignified and failing completely.
"We should change the buzzer."
"Now?"
"Obviously now."
Catherine laughed and let Theodora tug her toward the door.
She was still laughing when Theodora caught her by the waist and kissed her again, there in the hallway, barefoot on the hardwood, the shower still running in the other room, and the whole apartment holding the shape of their life around them.
They were flushed and breathless by the time they made it into the elevator, Theodora having located a pen in the kitchen drawer and announced it with a noise entirely disproportionate to the task.
The lobby was quiet at this hour, the marble floors catching the low light, the building settled into its late-night stillness.
The buzzer panel was beside the main entrance, a neat column of names and numbers behind a small glass panel. Theodora found their floor, uncapped the pen, and crossed out the old card with two clean strokes.
Then she hesitated. Looked over.
"Ready, Mrs. Brennan-Matthews?"
Catherine took her free hand, the ring catching the light between them, and squeezed.
"Very."