Epilogue
Peyton and Jenny were having lunch on the patio at Mountain Mama’s later that summer, basking both in the warm weather and the happy sight of Finn and Kitty holding hands over the counter inside, then stealing kisses when they thought no one was looking.
Truly, Peyton thought, the best ending she could possibly have imagined for her firstborn son.
Finn and Kitty radiated happiness. To the point that it should have been obnoxious, but it wasn’t. It was cute.
It was so cute Peyton found herself wondering if maybe she needed to pay attention to the state of her own heart, too—though that was hard to imagine.
The kind of number Patrick had done on her wasn’t easily washed away.
But that wasn’t something Peyton cared to think about. Not on a day like this, with the Rocky Mountains showing off and that Montana big sky proving once again that it truly was the last, best place.
Kitty herself delivered their lunch, a shared small pizza piled high with an eclectic selection of fresh ingredients from the Farm & Craft Market, and that now common smile on Kitty’s face.
Because these days, it seemed she reserved her famous frowns for her husband, who seemed to have a different read on them than everyone else.
It was widely understood that Finn loved them.
“You seem to be in a happy sort of mood today,” Jenny said to Kitty.
Kitty laughed. “It’s the funniest thing,” she said.
“I talked to Izzy today—” She stopped and considered that, then clarified.
“The Milans are our landlords, but we’ve been working on a rent-to-own deal with them.
And today Izzy told me that we’re well on the path.
We should own the restaurant and the houses here by Christmas. ”
“That’s wonderful,” Jenny said, and Peyton actually applauded, and it wasn’t until Kitty went back inside the restaurant that the two women exchanged a knowing smile of their own.
“Izzy told me that Kitty completely forgot to tell her that she and Finn were married,” Jenny said after a few moments, when it was clear no one was wandering up to their table. “It apparently slipped her mind.”
“I can’t imagine what could have claimed her attention,” Peyton said with a laugh, and when she saw her son looking out at them from inside, she gave him a happy little wave. “You really knew what you were doing when you suggested we put that marriage idea in Izzy’s head.”
“You don’t know Izzy well enough yet,” Jenny told her. “But she was only too happy to help. She has daughters of her own, you see. All of them headstrong in much the same way, and none of them living here, either.”
Peyton laughed and clinked her glass to Jenny’s.
“Diabolical,” she said. Admiringly.
Then they spent their lunch happily discussing all the rest of their children, and everyone else in Cowboy Point, and it was more and more clear to Peyton that she’d never had a better friend than Jenny Lisle.
And likely never would.
No thanks to you, she thought, thinking of her ex. None of this is thanks to you, but I suppose it is because of you.
She was grateful, every day, that all of their adult children wanted nothing more than to live lives that were built in opposition to that man.
And they were actually doing it. First and foremost, they’d come here to meet the other half of their family, and the fact that they’d all become friends brought Peyton to tears. With regularity.
Finn bought what he called a little hobby farm, and he and his brothers spent a lot of time up there this summer, setting the property to rights.
Cat roped in Wilder and his brothers, and Matilda rounded up her brother and her cousins, so word was that the farm would be operational sooner rather than later.
Like it had been meant to be, Peyton thought.
When she and Jenny finished with yet another delicious meal at Mountain Mama, Jenny pulled a postcard out of her bag and told Peyton she needed to walk over to the post office drop box near the library to mail it.
“That looks like the lighthouse,” Peyton said, looking down at the glossy postcard in her friend’s hand.
“It is,” Jenny said serenely.
As they walked, they both looked up to the top of the hill, where the lighthouse in question stood.
“It’s a brochure,” Jenny said innocently. “More or less. I just want to make sure that it gets in the right hands before Dallas opens the place to the public.”
“I feel certain that it will,” Peyton said with a laugh, because she’d seen the name in the address field.
As her friend popped that postcard in the drop box, she looked up at that folly of a lighthouse up there on the top of the hill.
And thought, get ready, Dallas. It’s your turn next.
The End