Epilogue
Jo
Six Months Later
The wedding is small.
After everything, the scandal, the custody battle, the circus of the Anderson family collapse, small feels right. Intimate. Real. Just us, just the people who matter, no society photographers or obligation guests or anyone who doesn’t genuinely want to see us happy.
The garden is perfect in late spring, flowers blooming in wild profusion, the kind of controlled chaos that looks effortless and probably required months of planning.
Grace found the venue, a friend of a friend’s estate, private and beautiful and exactly what I described when she asked what I wanted.
“Something simple,” I told her. “Something that feels like us.”
This feels like us.
Grace stands beside me in a dress the color of champagne, tears already streaming despite her waterproof mascara.
My parents are in the front row, my mother dabbing at her eyes, my father looking proud and slightly bewildered by how his daughter’s life turned out.
It took me years to let them this close.
I spent the worst of it an ocean away and too proud to tell them how hard I was drowning, and by the time I came home with Rory on my hip I half expected to hear I told you so.
It never came. My mother packed two suitcases and moved into my cramped second bedroom and stayed three years, long enough to get us standing on our own, before she went back to my father and the house two states away.
They’re still two states away. They’re also, now, the first call I make when anything happens, good or bad. That’s its own kind of homecoming.
Rory takes his ring bearer duties extremely seriously. He practiced his walk down the aisle for days, Grace timing him with a stopwatch, adjusting his pace until it was perfect. Now he stands at the altar in his tiny suit, holding the pillow with white-knuckled concentration, waiting for his cue.
Nick’s parents aren’t here. He didn’t invite them. Some wounds take longer to heal than others. Some never do. When I asked if he was sure, if he wanted to try one more time, he just shook his head.
“They made their choices,” he said. “I’ve made mine.”
Matthias is in prison. The night he broke into our home, what he did to Nick, the fake papers he forged to try to take Rory, the years of money he stole, all of it landed on him at once, and this time there was no version of the Anderson name big enough to make it go away.
He will be inside for a long time. I don’t visit.
I don’t write. Rory hasn’t asked about him once.
I don’t know where he is. I don’t care.
Brittany sent a card last month. I’m sorry, it said. I knew exactly what he was by the end, the same way you did. Burning him down with you was the closest thing to an apology I had. A pause in the careful handwriting. I hope you find the happiness I spent years thinking I was stealing from you.
The card sits in a drawer. What to do with it remains unclear. Forgiveness feels too big, but hatred feels exhausting, and maybe someday there will be room for something in between.
The music shifts. Everyone rises.
Nick is waiting at the altar in a suit that fits him like it was made for him, because it was, Grace insisted, no off-the-rack for this wedding. His face when he sees me coming down the aisle, in the white dress I wore despite tradition saying I shouldn’t, makes every struggle worth it.
The ceremony is simple. Traditional vows, nothing elaborate. But when the officiant asks if Nick takes me to be his wife, something unexpected happens.
“I do,” he says. Then he drops to one knee.
Murmurs ripple through the small crowd. This isn’t part of the program.
“I also take you,” he says, looking at Rory, who’s abandoned his ring bearer post to see what’s happening. “For the rest of my life. Both of you. Package deal.”
Rory’s face lights up. “Really? Like, officially?”
“The adoption paperwork is already filed. If that’s okay with you.”
“MOM!” Rory is bouncing, all ceremony decorum forgotten. “Can I call him Dad now? Can I? Please?”
The tears are instant and unstoppable. “Yeah, baby. You can call him Dad.”
Rory launches himself at Nick, and suddenly the groom is holding a seven-year-old in the middle of his own wedding, and the officiant is laughing, and Grace is sobbing into her bouquet, and this is perfect. This is exactly what it should be.
“I love you,” Nick says, Rory still in his arms.
“I love you too.” Looking at both of them, the two most important people in my world, choosing each other, becoming a family in front of everyone who matters. “Both of you. So much.”
The reception is a backyard barbecue at our new house. Nick bought it three months ago, big enough for Rory to run wild, with a yard for the dog we’re planning to get, with extra bedrooms for the siblings Rory keeps requesting with increasing frequency.
“I never thought I’d have this,” I tell Nick as we watch the party from the edge of the yard. “A home. A family. Someone who stayed.”
“You okay?” He appears at my elbow, champagne in hand.
“I’m perfect.”
“You are.” He kisses my temple. “Have I told you today how much I love you?”
“Only about twelve times.”
“Thirteen, then. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Rory runs past, chased by Grace’s girlfriend, shrieking with laughter loud enough to scare birds from the trees. The sun is setting gold and pink over the yard, painting everything in colors that look like happiness feels.
“Hey,” Nick says. “I want to show you something.”
He leads me to the edge of the yard, where a young tree has been planted. The earth around it’s still fresh, the stake that supports it still new, but the leaves are green and reaching toward the light.
“It’s for Rory,” he says. “I thought he could watch it grow. We could hang a swing from it someday. Build a treehouse when he’s older.”
The tree is small now. But someday it’ll be tall and strong, roots reaching deep into the earth, branches spreading wide enough to shelter generations.
“Thank you,” I say, and the words feel inadequate for everything they’re trying to carry. “For everything. For not giving up on me.”
“Never.” He pulls me close, and I fit against him like I was made to be there. “You and Rory are the best thing that ever walked into my life, Jo. I would fight a thousand custody battles. Face down my family a thousand times. Whatever it takes to keep you.”
“You don’t have to fight anymore.”
“No?”
“No.” The smile that spreads across my face is the easy kind, the kind that doesn’t have fear hiding underneath. “We won.”
He kisses me as the last light fades and the first stars appear, and the thought that rises is simple and certain: We won. After everything, we won.
We walk back to the house hand in hand, toward the warmth and noise of our family. Grace’s laughter carries across the yard. Rory is explaining something to my father with elaborate hand gestures. Someone has started music, something soft and happy, and people are dancing on the patio.
The story isn’t over. There will be challenges ahead, years of ordinary struggles and extraordinary joys, the beautiful mundane reality of building a life together. School plays and skinned knees and teenage rebellions. Career changes and health scares and all the things that happen to everyone.
But the hard part is done.
We found each other. We chose each other. Against all odds, against his family, against my fears, against everything the world threw at us.
And that’s enough.
That’s everything.
THE END