Epilogue
Three Years Later
Noah
God , she gets more and more beautiful every day.
“What are you looking at?” She says to me, big, blue eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Oh, nothing. You just have something on your shirt.”
She looks down and rolls her eyes. “Ha-Ha, good one, smart ass.” She throws a potato chip at my face, which makes me choke on my drink.
Jane is the best thing that has ever happened to me. These past three years have been the craziest and most alive years I’ve ever had in my entire life. So many things have changed since we left Hawaii, and I’m happier than I ever could have imagined.
Here we sit in the backyard of our home in Fort Collins, Colorado. The town where we grew up. The town where we met. The town that holds all of our past hurts and desires. The town where we went to school, where I broke her heart, where we fell in love, where I proposed, where we had our first child.
Jane sits under the large tree, shading herself as she feeds our daughter, Bird, who just turned four months old yesterday. The ease at which this mothering thing came to her is something I will forever admire.
This little girl is one lucky lady, because she’s surrounded by people who love her more and more every day. Jordyn and Daniel are over basically every day, already teaching her questionable things, and Jordyn has single-handedly provided Bird with an entire wardrobe of clothes to last her until she goes to college.
Jane’s mom, Carol, has really stepped into her grandmother role and is a completely different person than she was when Jane was little. She came to us when Jane was newly pregnant and told us that she was going to therapy and had since come to the realization that the immense pressure she had put Jane through had actually done a lot of damage. She apologized for everything, and they’ve been working on their relationship since.
Jane was so close with her Nan, and I’m so happy our daughter will get to have that special relationship with her grandma as well. Since Carol has been working so hard, she has been pushing Jane's dad, Dan, to go to therapy and start making changes too. Things are looking good for our little family, and honestly, it feels amazing.
Tyler still lives in Fort Collins, and our relationship has also started to mend. We still have a long way to go, but I can feel the positive changes starting to take shape.
I coach my nephew’s soccer team, and they all come over after games for big family dinners. He’s a great uncle to Bird, and I’m excited to see where our lives take us.
I sit in the shade and look up at the house, the life we have built together. This life that feels like it’s only just beginning. I’ve opened my own firm now, and Jane was working with me right up until she gave birth.
She’s giving herself some time to stay at home, but I know she’s not going to stay away for long. She’s going to take on clients here and there until Bird gets a bit older, and then I’m sure she will come back full time. We both love what we do, and we feel so lucky we can do it together.
Everything with the firm happened so fast. When I finally moved back from New York and settled fully into Fort Collins, I found the business card Justin had given me the night of the luau in Hawaii.
Little did I know, he was a partner at a medium-scale immigration firm in Alabama. I gave him a call, told him my proposal about us opening a firm here in Colorado, and he agreed.
He and Lauren were already pregnant by that point, a honeymoon baby nonetheless, and the three of them moved here the following summer. Our firm opened that fall, and we’ve been steadily growing our clientele ever since.
Their son, Jedd, is the wildest little monster I’ve ever encountered. They have their hands full with him, and they couldn’t be any happier.
I often think about what would have happened if I would have let Jane run away in her fear of the unknown. We would have missed out on this wonderful life we have created.
This life where she does the laundry, and I do the dishes. Where we dance together in the kitchen and sing off-key during parties. Where we argue like cats and dogs but lay with our bodies and limbs tangled together each night.
We would have missed out on this life of joy, this life of laughter, this life of love.
I watch as she smiles brightly at our daughter. The light in her eyes shining so strong and vibrant, I feel like they could light the world on a dark night.
She rocks Bird back and forth, singing a song, and kisses her softly on the forehead.
She looks at me and catches me staring. “I know I don’t have anything on my shirt, so seriously, what are you looking at?”
“You, Jane. It’s always been you.”