Epilogue
Spring
Bridger
A lot can happen in eight months.
Most of it really good.
All of it is part of one good life.
After the leases on our separate places lapsed, Loren and I moved into her childhood home.
Temporarily. At the time, I told her I’d be happy to make the place ours, and her father agreed, if that’s what Loren wanted.
The truth is, I’d do anything to make Loren Elise Cane Adams happy.
And if there’s anyone else on this earth who wants her happiness as much as I do, it’s Harlan Cane.
But Loren listened to her heart, which told her we should renovate the house and sell it to a new young family.
She’d already made her memories there. She figured it was time for someone else to have that joy.
We did some of the reno ourselves. She played a lot of Indigo Girls while we painted walls and tore up carpet.
We learned how to lay tile and how to put up a backsplash.
In the end, the place was lovely.
For someone else.
Now, if you’re dreaming about a fairytale ending where some distant relative unexpectedly leaves us the castle-mansion-estate in their will, I’m sorry to disappoint.
This is real life, not a Hallmark movie.
And Loren and I had to hire realtors and deal with mortgages and interest rates just like everybody else.
Luckily, neither of us really wanted to live in a house that big anyway. Way too many dust bunnies under the beds.
Terrible to heat and cool, depending on the season.
Instead, when a three-bed, two-and-a-half bath rancher came up for sale down the street from Sayla and Dex’s, we snapped it right up. Moved our stuff in. Made it home.
Our combined credit score is excellent these days, so we scored a low interest rate on a fixed thirty-year loan.
If that makes me sound old and settled, well, then perfect.
I’m living the life I always aspired to.
Settled with my wife in a sprawling house with a spacious yard and a white picket fence.
We’ll grow old here together, rocking on the porch side by side.
The future is looking bright.
As it turns out, somebody—or two somebodies, I speculate—visited the Harvest Hollow Central Bank and paid off all the Cane family’s medical debts.
One lump sum. An anonymous donor, if you will.
Our bets are on Hadley and Lincoln James finally making the rumors about them from last year true after all.
Oh.
And we finally adopted that cat. And another cat too. They’re bonded littermates. Between them, they’ve got eight white paws, which we call boots. Their fur is light gray with dark gray striping. Loren says their coloring reminds her of the ombre shading of my irises.
Poetic, huh?
Being married to an English teacher comes with plenty of unexpected perks.
One cat’s a female, and one’s a male. We named them Gali and Leo. Not Garfield. They sleep curled up together, lumped into a heart shape on the window seat. On lazy mornings, they stretch and purr and remind us of last summer, and the ridiculousness of our hasty wedding plans.
We love them so much it’s silly.
As for my mother, we sent her a formal letter apprising her of our intention to remain married.
Blah blah blah. Legal stuff, legal stuff, legal stuff.
At Loren’s insistence, we wished her a long life—we’re not monsters, after all.
We also said we were sorry that same long life would be without her son, her wonderful daughter-in-law, and any grandchildren that may be forthcoming.
About the fiftieth time she called, I finally picked up.
She didn’t apologize, exactly. And as far as we can tell, she still has that ridiculous Fig & Apple napkin. But also? We couldn’t care less.
Toward the end of the call, she promised to put everything she owns in a trust for our kids, if we just agreed to coopera—
I hung up.
Two months later, she shocked us all by marrying Lyle Winthrop. Guess she decided to cut out the middle man in the merger of their empires. But when it comes to them, we limit the talk of mergers for obvious reasons.
Rosalind’s my stepsister now.
Weird. But also kind of cool.
In March, we officially announced the establishment of our endowment.
Except instead of calling it The Barrington Endowment, the legal name is Barrington-Cane.
I probably don’t have to explain all the reasons behind this decision.
Let’s just say no family deserves a legacy more than Harlan, Elise, and Loren.
Our current mission is to contribute to causes focusing on regional health and wellness. Like the Blue Ridge Heritage Foundation. This year, their goal is to increase funding for medical innovations, specifically in the area of memory care.
Not a coincidence.
Over at Stony Peak, Mr. Wilford announced he’s retiring this year, and Nina Bennett will be taking his place as our principal next fall.
A former math teacher coming to Stony Peak from our rivals at Harvest High should be interesting.
The fact that she’s best friends with Lincoln James and Hadley Morgan has everyone excited about being fame-adjacent.
Mostly Sayla.
Speaking of the fall, Sayla’s theater kids will be putting on As You Like It in September, and Rosalind already committed to dropping in to volunteer as a stage makeup artist. She worked the spring play already.
And apparently she’s got a gift for stuff like contouring and liners, of both the eye and lip variety.
Also apparently, she likes excuses to visit Harvest Hollow.
Loren and I don’t ask. But I’m pretty sure she’s got a crush on man-bun Noah. In my opinion, a guy could do a whole lot worse than catch the eye of Rosalind Winthrop Barrington.
And I’m not just saying that because she’s my stepsister.
As for Loren’s dad, he’s enjoying a bit of fame-adjacent celebrity himself, ever since the biggest movie star in the world began stopping by Havenwood to see him and Noah.
The entire staff swoons whenever Lincoln James is there. Harlan calls Link one of his fellas. And I’m not saying he gets special treatment because of the connection, but the female employees are awfully attentive, on the off-chance Harlan has a special visitor.
Concerning Loren’s test results, let’s just say the news was as good as possible, considering there are no guarantees in this life. Tomorrow isn’t promised, so we choose to make the most of what we’re given each day, and we go to bed counting our blessings.
On our one-year wedding anniversary, we added a stone to her ring, but we started our own tradition and chose a sapphire instead of a diamond. Loren likes that the blue matches her mom’s choker. I say the color matches her eyes. Either way, we’re forging our own path. And that feels right.
She still catches me singing in the shower, sometimes, but my playlist has expanded these days.
We’ve even done a couple of duets at the karaoke nights down at Tequila Mockingbird.
We have fun, but I don’t think the contestants on America’s Hidden Talent, or whatever it’s called, have much to worry about.
Meanwhile, we’ve been campaigning for Nina Bennett, Rosalind, and Dexter’s sister JoJo to audition for Surprise Bride. And by we, I mean Loren’s trying to convince them.
She says this isn’t because they can’t find partners on their own. She just has such fond memories of watching the show with me, and she selfishly wants to see someone she cares about find her happily-ever-after.
Every once in a while, I’ll still sit down and watch an episode with her. The room always gets a little dusty when the groom says, “I marry you today, and I’ll love you later.”
Mushy, man.
But I can’t help it.
Because these things happen, you know. Sometimes love pops up when and where you least expect it. Other times, the love of your life was right there all along, waiting patiently for the exact moment to finally raise its hopeful hand.
Right now, my love is perched on the edge of the bathtub, a redheaded bundle of fidgets, waiting for a plus or minus sign to show up in the little plastic window.
In one more minute, we’ll discover whether our future’s about to tumble headlong into the unknown, or if we’ll be continuing our current trajectory a while longer, just the two of us.
Either way, we’ve got the rocking chairs.
She aims a shaky smile at me, and those big, beautiful blue eyes of hers go wide. The timer buzzes, and my heart does little somersaults and backflips around my ribs.
“I can’t look,” she squeals, her legs jiggling. The stick’s face down on her lap.
I make a try for it. “I will.”
“No!” she shrieks with nervous joy.
My best friend. My wife.
The surprise bride, who was meant to be mine all along.
“Well, all right then,” I say. “Go on and look.”
She slowly turns the stick over, peering at the little window. Then her gaze lifts to mine. And she smiles.
“Pivot.”
The End