Epilogue
The cabin felt different with Zoey’s things in it.
It finally felt like a home.
Her books had taken over one wall in the living room and looked like a rainbow.
Apparently, color was a system, and I had been overruled.
Her mug with the chipped handle lived beside the sink.
Markie’s travel perch sat by the window, currently unoccupied because he had spent the last twenty minutes screaming at Bobbi when she arrived, then demanded to be included on her walk to the main lodge.
Zoey’s coat hung beside mine by the door.
Her boots were lined up crooked. I had fixed them twice.
The place finally looked lived in.
It looked like ours.
I locked the back door, checked it once, then looked over and caught her watching me with that expression she used when she was deciding whether to tease me, or let me have my peace.
“You know, everyone coming to my birthday dinner would probably understand if a murderer somehow fought through your extremely thorough security measures,” she said.
“I don’t like to leave variables unchecked.”
“You don’t like to leave anything unchecked.”
“That’s also true.”
Her lips curved. She stepped closer and fixed my scarf where it had shifted under my coat collar, fingers quick and certain.
She had gotten comfortable touching me in small, thoughtless ways over the last few months—straightening my shirt or tugging me by the sleeve.
I especially liked it when she trailed her hand over my back when she passed.
Every time it happened, something in me still lit up.
It hadn’t worn off.
Nothing about her had worn off.
“We really didn’t need a party,” she said.
I took her hand and opened the porch door for her. “We did.”
“We didn’t.”
“We absolutely did.”
She stepped out onto the front porch with me and pulled the door shut.
The late afternoon had gone gold around the edges.
The trees ringing Pine Hollow were half turned now.
Leaves covered the ground in layers of copper, rust, and yellow.
The lake beyond the main lodge was dark.
Nearby, somebody had a woodstove going. The cold had sharpened over the last week, enough that Zoey had started stealing my heavier sweaters and saying they were temporarily borrowed.
Ahead of us, the path to the main building cut through the trees in a line I could walk blindfolded.
I tightened my hand around hers as we started down the path.
“You’re suspiciously cheerful,” she said.
“It’s your birthday.”
“That doesn’t explain why you look like you won the lottery.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you look pleased with yourself.”
“I am pleased with myself.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Because you forced a birthday gathering on a woman who specifically said she didn’t require one?”
“I didn’t force anything. I organized.”
“Somehow, that makes it more sinister.”
I grinned.
“There it is,” she said. “That face. You’re unbearable.”
I leaned down and kissed her forehead, just because she was right there and I wanted to.
“No,” I said. “I’m right.”
She made a sound under her breath that meant she disagreed but was too cold to fight about it properly. “Birthdays weren’t really a big thing for me,” she said softly.
I looked at her.
She kept her attention on the path ahead. Leaves crunched under our boots.
“They always turned weird,” she said. “Or bad. My mom had a gift for making them about whatever crisis was happening with her that week. Or she’d promise things and then forget.
Or there would be some dramatic emotional spiral and I’d spend half the day managing it.
” Her lips flattened into a thin line. “By the time I got older, I mostly stopped trying. It felt easier to act like I didn’t care. ”
The words landed hard inside me. Not because I hadn’t understood pieces of that already, but because I could hear the version of her that had learned to lower expectations before they could be taken from her.
I slowed our pace and brought her hand to my mouth. “That’s over.”
She glanced up at me.
“Birthdays will be different from now on,” I said. “No surprises that aren’t good ones. No emotional hostage situations. No one forgetting what the day is. You get fed properly. You get celebrated properly. That’s the arrangement.”
Her expression changed in that way it did when something reached deeper than she had prepared for. Softer around the edges. More vulnerable than she liked to leave visible for long.
“You say things like that very casually for someone restructuring my nervous system.”
“I’m very efficient.”
She huffed a laugh.
We came around the bend where the main building appeared through the trees. Pine Hollow sat warm and lit against the falling evening. The porch glowed. Music drifted faintly through the open door. Someone inside shouted, followed by laughter.
Zoey’s shoulders shifted, tension and anticipation both there.
I brushed my thumb over her knuckles. “You okay?”
“Yes,” she said. Then, because she was Zoey, “Annoyingly.”
“That’s fine.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It is for you.”
She looked at me and some of the nerves in her expression gave way to fond exasperation.
I loved that look more than I had language for.
I’d had people here before her. Nora. Pete. Even Mr. Harlan, who had somehow become a regular part of my life through the usual route of repeated irritation and eventual loyalty. They were mine in the way that mattered. Chosen. Relationships built over time.
But standing there with Zoey’s hand in mine, heading toward a room full of people who would cheer when they saw her, I felt the shape of it more fully than I ever had.
My pack.
Not the old kind, the one that had been ruled by fear or rank or silence.
Mine because I loved them. Mine because they stayed. Mine because she was walking into the center of it with me.
I had never felt so whole.
We stepped onto the porch and through the open door.
The main room lit up immediately.
“Hey!”
The shout came from three directions at once.
Zoey stopped short as everyone turned toward us and broke into cheers.
Nora was behind the bar, grinning like she had personally arranged the sunset.
Pete raised both hands in triumph from the dartboard area.
Mei clapped once, sharp and satisfied. Cris, Jamie, Morgan, and Alex were gathered around one of the long tables with drinks in hand, and all four of them looked delighted by Zoey’s discomfort.
Mr. Harlan sat in an armchair near the fireplace with a mug and the expression of a man who would deny enjoying any of this if asked directly.
Bobbi was crouched on the floor near the hearth with Markie.
Markie was wearing a tiny felt birthday hat balanced at a precarious angle.
Bobbi had a second hat in her lap and was apparently trying to convince him there should be more glitter involved.
Zoey slowly turned her head, looking from face to face.
The cheering got louder.
“Oh, absolutely not,” she said.
Morgan nearly folded over laughing. “That face means she loves it.”
“I do not,” Zoey said.
“You do,” Jamie called.
Alex lifted her glass. “You look hot and offended. It’s very on brand.”
Pete pointed dramatically toward the bar. “Birthday woman. I made you something.”
“That sentence has never once ended well,” Zoey said.
“It’s a cocktail,” he said. “Have some faith.”
“She doesn’t have that,” Cris said. “It’s one of her more charming defects.”
Bobbi spotted us at last and jumped up so fast Markie nearly lost his hat.
“Zoey!” she shouted. “Markie already had half a pretzel and one tiny crisis, but I handled it.”
“DOG,” Markie screeched when he saw me, which had everyone laughing.
Bobbi ran over and wrapped herself around Zoey’s side with the unselfconscious force of a child who had decided affection was happening. Zoey caught herself against me with her free hand, then automatically rested that same hand at the top of Bobbi’s back.
It was one of my favorite things about her. Care lived inside her even when she acted like it didn’t.
“Happy birthday,” Bobbi said.
“Thank you.”
“I told everyone you hate attention.”
“Doesn’t seem like your warning worked.”
“It was helpful context.”
Markie climbed onto the back of the nearest chair, puffed up his chest, and yelled, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY ASS.”
Pete slapped the bar and laughed. He probably enjoyed Markie more than any of us.
Mr. Harlan shook his head and grinned into his mug. “Bird’s got timing.”
“Bird has range,” Pete said.
I took Zoey’s coat from her while Bobbi kept hold of her arm and towed her farther inside. She let it happen because she was outnumbered and because, whether she admitted it or not, she was already smiling.
I hung the coat and joined her near the dartboard.
Pete set a glass in front of her with theatrical seriousness. “This is called The Emergency Contact.”
Zoey stared at him.
He looked pleased. “Dark cherry. Bourbon. Orange. A little smoky. Mildly threatening.”
“That is excellent branding,” Alex said.
Zoey picked up the drink and eyed it. “This feels targeted.”
“Celebratory,” Pete corrected.
“Same thing,” she said, then took a sip.
Everyone watched her.
Her eyes closed for one second.
“There it is,” Pete said. “That’s the face.”
She opened them again and pointed at him. “Do not get smug. I don’t want to encourage you.”
“It’s good,” Nora said to the room. “He’s been polishing the concept for two weeks. Based it off a traditional old-fashioned.”
I stepped up behind Zoey and rested my hand at her waist. She leaned back into me.
Darts started again two minutes later. Apparently, nothing brought people together like the chance to insult each other competitively.
Bobbi demanded to keep score even though her math was openly biased.
Markie shouted “DOG” every time I threw.
Pete declared that he was leaving if I won.
Zoey stood with her birthday drink in one hand, fully on form now, and every time she laughed, I felt the same warm pull through my chest that hadn’t let up since I first met her.
At one point, she tilted her head back against my shoulder and said, quietly enough that no one else heard, “This is a lot.”
I slid my arm around her middle. “Yes,” I said.
She turned slightly, just enough to look at me.
“But,” I added, “you’re doing great.”
Her mouth twitched. “That is a ridiculous thing to say to someone who is doing nothing but standing here.”
“Yes,” I said. “And yet.”
She looked at me seriously, then. “Thank you,” she mouthed.
I kissed her forehead.
Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her cardigan.
I felt her go still for half a second before she pulled it out.
Her expression changed the moment she saw the screen. Just a tiny pause in her whole body that told me exactly who it was before I ever saw the name.
Mom.
Zoey looked at the phone for a second like she was deciding whether this birthday was allowed to remain peaceful. Then she opened the message.
I stayed quiet and kept my arm around her.
Her eyes moved once across the screen.
Then again, slower.
Surprise came over her first, then caution. Then a strange softness I didn’t know how to read.
“You okay?” I asked quietly.
She let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh, if laughter had edges.
“My mother got a job,” she said.
I looked at her.
“She says it pays well.” Zoey’s gaze dropped back to the phone. Her thumb hovered over the screen. “She thanked me for all my support over the years. And that she can take it from here.”
For a second, the noise in the room seemed to pull back around us.
Zoey read the message one more time. Her face did something small and complicated. Relief, maybe. Grief. Suspicion. Hope. I didn’t try to sort it for her.
I kissed her temple. “That’s good.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “It is.”
Her mouth curved, but only a little.
“I know.”
She stared at the screen for one more beat, then typed something quickly and locked her phone.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“Congratulations,” she said. “And thank you.”
I nodded.
That seemed right.
She looked around us.
Bobbi trying to steal Jamie’s darts.
Nora taking away Pete’s lighter before he could overcommit to the smoky garnish demonstration.
Mr. Harlan pretending not to laugh while Markie screamed “WEAK FORM!” at everyone in turn.
Her friends from the beginning of all this, loud and alive and still here.
She looked at all of it.
And when she looked back at me again, something in her face had gone open and quiet in a way I would always answer if she offered it.
“You were right,” she said.
“I know.”
“I hate that.”
I brushed a soft kiss over her lips. “No, you don’t.”
She took another sip of her drink and settled more firmly against me while everyone kept moving around us.
Outside, the leaves kept falling.
Inside, her party went on without crisis, without damage, without anyone asking her to hold the whole thing together.
She didn’t have to manage a single part of it.
She only had to be there.
And when she reached back and found my hand without even looking for it, I thought that maybe this was my favorite version of forever.