Epilogue
One year and several months later…
Eve’s shift was over.
Having changed out of her scrubs into a pink sundress, she walked out of the hospital into the hot summer sun, feeling the stress of the day in the emergency room melt away. But the exhaustion… The exhaustion remained.
“Mama!” Katie leaned out the back window of Hayden’s truck and waved madly. “We’re here!”
Eve ran to the truck, smiling joyfully. She was staying with a friend in Missoula this summer while she completed her nursing internship requirement. Hayden and Katie came out every weekend to visit, although Katie split those weekends between staying with them and staying with Steven.
Slowly, Steven was coming to accept the situation on the ranch.
It probably helped that they’d gone to co-parenting counseling at the judge’s request and that Steven was dating a family law attorney.
Whatever the reason, Eve was grateful for his growing empathy toward her marriage to Hayden, the way they were raising Katie, and Eve’s desire to become a registered nurse.
Eve opened the passenger door and climbed in.
“Look what I got.” Katie cradled a yellow baby chick in her lap in the back seat. She wore a long, red sequined skirt and a bright blue tank top. “Her name is Bo Peep. Wait until I show Daddy. He and I are going to have so much fun with her this weekend.”
“Your father is going to love that.” And if there was a bit of sarcasm in Eve’s voice, it didn’t seem that Katie picked up on it. Eve fixed Hayden with a questioning look. “Did you forget one of the rules of parenting?”
“She picked up the chick while my back was turned,” Hayden admitted with a smile. He’d learned a lot in the past year about being a good parent and husband. He collected Eve’s hand and pressed a kiss on her palm. And then he reached into the center console and gave her a pink kitty cat cake pop.
“Thank you. I’m starving.” Eve dutifully bit off the ears. “Chomp, chomp.”
Katie giggled and echoed, “Chomp, chomp.”
“We missed you, honey,” Hayden told her. “How was your day?”
“Long.” Twelve hours nonstop. She leaned back in her seat, resting one hand over her midsection and finding Hayden’s hand with the other. “I missed you too. Terribly. Now Katie, you need to put Bo Peep back in her carrier. She can’t be out while Hay-Hay drives.”
“Bye for now.” Katie deposited the chick into a cardboard box. “Mama, there’s a new princess movie out. Daddy says I can get the princess dress if we see it at the store this weekend and you say it’s okay.”
“Of course.” Lately, Eve had wondered when Katie was going to grow out of the princess phase. She didn’t want that to happen just yet. It was still too cute. “How are your riding lessons going?”
“I’m a superstar!” Katie raised her hands triumphantly as Hayden drove out of the hospital parking lot. “Do you know what I saw at the feed store?”
“Nope. Tell me.” Eve’s heart panged. But it was a familiar pang she suffered every week while catching up with her little girl.
“I saw a riding skirt.” Katie sounded awestruck. “Who knew you could ride in a dress?”
Eve gave Hayden a questioning look.
“It’s really pants but it looks like a skirt,” he explained, turning to head toward Steven’s place.
“Oh…culottes or a skort?” Eve chuckled.
“A skort,” Katie repeated the word as if filing it into her ever-growing vocabulary. “I bet Gran has one at the back of her closet.”
Gran was back to her usual self, which meant she was still full of piss and vinegar, always on the lookout for fun. But now, she had almost all of her memories back.
After they dropped Katie and Bo Peep off at Steven’s, Hayden took Eve to dinner at a fancy white tablecloth restaurant. He wore his Saturday night going out clothes, which for him meant newer blue jeans, a checkered shirt with pearl buttons, and his black cowboy hat.
“What’s the occasion?” Eve asked, smiling with great expectations at her man.
“The last of the taxes and debt we inherited is finally all paid off,” Hayden began.
The more he’d dug into the ranch finances, the more debt he’d found.
As he’d suspected, his grandfather was in debt ten years ago and had merely kicked the can down the road.
“And the ranches are all officially and legally separated.”
“I thought you were going to tell me we had a bun in the oven.” It was a running joke between them, based on folks’ reaction to their unexpected wedding last year.
“Now-now-now. Don’t joke this time.” Hayden shook his head, reaching across the white tablecloth for her hand. “Katie and I stopped by your apartment in town because we arrived early. I saw the pregnancy test in the bathroom trash can. Yours, I assume.” His smile turned hopeful.
“Yes, love.” Eve beamed at him. “You know my secret. Pretty soon, it’s going to be more than a rumor.”
“Don’t forget, we have no secrets, honey.
No lies either.” They’d told their families the truth about their marriage and after the chastising was over, it turned into a great source of teasing fodder.
Hayden held her hand with just the right amount of strength.
He’d never cling too tight. He was her rock, the place from which she could reach for her dreams.
“We have no secrets or lies,” Eve agreed, so full of love for this man and the family they were building that she was certain she was smiling like a lovestruck fool. But that was okay. “We only have love.”
“Only love,” Hayden repeated, rubbing his thumbs over the backs of her hands. “That’s all anyone really needs to be happy.”
“Amen to that.”
The End