Epilogue
“F amily and friends of the bride and groom,” the minister’s booming voice proclaimed to the guests assembled in the great room, “it is now my distinct pleasure to introduce to you for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Everett and Jeannie McCarthy!”
The guests watched and cheered as Jeannie dipped back in Everett’s arms. He took a moment to look deeply into her eyes before kissing her reverently. The room filled with the sound of both applause and Everett’s band, accompanied by the jazz trio, from the stage at the back of the great room. When Jeannie’s and Everett’s lips parted and they pulled away, opening their eyes, they were both grinning like fools.
Jeannie gazed out at the sea of faces, taking in the sight of family, her friends, colleagues from the law firm, and members of the Keystone Ridge community. In the front row, next to Jeannie’s parents and grandparents, were Everett’s mother, bursting with pride in a red satin dress, and his sister, Jessie, who Everett was amazed and overjoyed had been able to drive up with Everett’s mom for the occasion.
At the back of the room, three Aussies, who were now living in a rented house close to Banff but were thrilled to have something to do on Christmas Eve, stood with trays of champagne ready to pass out to the guests.
As much as Jeannie loved them, she hoped they didn’t have any plans to break into song this year.
She turned to her groom. Everett was more handsome than ever, wearing a navy suit with a green tie that looked formal and classic from afar but upon closer inspection had little leaves embroidered into it. His hair was combed back from his face, highlighting his cheekbones, and his brown eyes held her in the most loving of gazes.
They’d gotten engaged on a hike of the Grotto Mountain Trail over Thanksgiving weekend. Everett had packed a bottle of champagne for the hike, suggesting they could celebrate his new book contract which, Jeannie knew, her grandparents would proudly display beside the copies of his books they were delighted to find they already owned even before meeting him, hence Duke’s unexplained name recognition of Everett. Instead, Everett had dropped to a knee before a large rock wall with a gentle waterfall cascading down its face.
They’d immediately set out on a campaign to convince her grandparents to hold one final event at the Butterfly Lake Lodge: their Christmas Eve wedding. It hadn’t been hard to convince Duke and Sue, who were taking their time with the sale, citing a down market with the possibility of an upswing in the coming summer.
While the notion of getting married at the lodge had never crossed Jeannie’s mind before she’d met Everett (if anyone had asked her she would have had some vague notion of a historic estate or country club with hundreds of guests and black tie), the day was turning out to be even dreamier than she’d ever imagined. It was elegant but unpretentious, with their closest family and friends and people from the community where they felt most at home, where Jeannie’s most treasured life memories had been made, and where Everett had recently found some of his.
Once the champagne flutes were distributed, there was a toast to the bride and groom, and then passed hors d’oeuvres and music. The evening itself wasn’t terribly different from the Carmichaels’ usual Christmas Eve parties, but there were a few elegant but cheeky upgrades: a giant ice sculpture of an elk sparkled in the middle of the room, while a canoe filled with snow hosted a sea of shucked oysters, and just when everyone thought Sue couldn’t be outdone, she wheeled out a giant pretzel cart that Duke had constructed to look like it came right out of a Bavarian market, with dipping sauces ranging from honey mustard to spinach-and-artichoke to dill pickle. Between that and Everett surprising Jeannie with a dance to “I Feel Love” under a disco ball she hadn’t even noticed he’d hung from the rafters, she couldn’t have hoped for a better night.
Later that evening as the reception was winding down and Jeannie had long since kicked off her high heels, Duke and Sue called Everett and Jeannie into the office and asked them to sit down. “This won’t take long,” Duke said, closing the door. “I know you’ll want to get out there and say goodbye to the rest of your guests. But we can’t stay up any longer.”
Jeannie’s heart swelled. Her grandfather especially had aged quite a bit over the past year, and she was so grateful that Everett loved coming to the lodge so much that they’d visited almost every weekend and she’d been able to spend so much quality time with her grandparents.
“We wanted to give you your gift,” Sue said, sliding a manila envelope across the table. “And before you open it, we want to make it clear that you can do with it whatever you’d like. But we insist that it’s something that will make you happy. Not something you think you should do.”
“What is it?” Jeannie asked.
“Just open it,” Duke said, a twinkle in his eye.
With Everett and her grandparents looking on, Jeannie unsealed the envelope and pulled out a document. It took her a moment to realise what she was holding in her hand. “Grandpa, Grandma, you can’t—” She sat, her mouth gaping.
“We can. And we have,” Sue said, beaming. “Sweetheart, we’ve had so many great years here. But we’re moving, and we really can’t bear to think of the place in someone else’s hands.”
“But what about the trip to Tahiti? The Orient Express? Paris at New Year’s? The sale was going to fund your retirement.”
“Pff!” said Duke, waving his hand in the air. “You think we really want to do anything other than read on the front porch and play Tuesday night bingo at the Legion? And God willing”—he looked pointedly at Everett—“hold a great-grandbaby one day?”
Jeannie, speechless, passed the document to Everett, who blinked a few times as he scanned it. “You’re giving us the lodge?” he asked. Jeannie watched as his expression went from confused to awestruck. “I—wow—I can’t even—”
“It’s yours as soon as we find the right place,” Duke said. “We’re going to take our time finding a good spot, something small that’s close to town so we don’t have to drive a lot. We just wanted to know that you’d accept first. You will, right? You can do what you want with the place. Live here. Weekend here. Just—” He paused and looked over at one of the photos on the wall. It was a young Duke and Sue standing in front of the F OR S ALE sign the day they’d purchased the lodge. “Just don’t sell it right away,” he said. “Something tells me you’ll come to love the lodge even more once it’s yours.”
Tears brimmed in Jeannie’s eyes, and she almost leapt across the desk to hug her grandparents. “Why would we ever sell this place?” she said, still struck with disbelief at the enormity of the gift. It had always felt like home. And now it was theirs.
Everett’s expression was still one of pure shock. Jeannie knew how much he’d come to love the lodge, and they’d recently been talking about the idea of buying a small cottage in the area with the advance from the sale of his new nature guide series, or even building one of their own. But waterfront property was at a major premium, so in their minds the idea had been something in the woods that would at least allow them to walk to the water to swim. Now they’d be the stewards of a place that occupied what might be one of the most magical locations in the whole country. It defied belief.
“You promise you’re going to keep living close to here though, right?” Jeannie asked. The idea of Keystone Ridge without her grandparents wasn’t something she could ever imagine.
“The furthest we’d go is Canmore,” Sue said. “So, we’ll be close by. With a property manager to take care of the shovelling! Now, you get back out there,” Sue said. “Your guests are waiting.”
They hugged her grandparents again, and, hand-in-hand, went back to the wedding reception in the beautiful lodge they would now call home.
*
After everyone had gone to bed, Jeannie and Everett changed out of their wedding attire, bundled up, and went outside the way they had only one year earlier.
The snow was deep and thick, but with their snowshoes on they stayed close to the top layer, the stars bright in the clear sky overhead.
“I still can’t believe your grandparents,” Everett said. “Do you think that was their plan all along?”
“Not sure,” Jeannie said. “Although I wouldn’t be surprised.” It still hadn’t sunk in. The lodge would be theirs . “Do you think they have any expectations for how we use it?”
“They don’t strike me as that kind of people. I think they just want you to be happy. And I guess they don’t need the money.”
They’d reached the edge of the lake where the path led through the forest into town. “Do you remember what we were talking about last year, right here?”
“What part?” Everett asked. “About making a quinzhee and having a hot sleepover?”
Jeannie laughed and swatted him. “No! You know what I’m talking about.”
“Okay, okay. You mean what we’d do if money weren’t a consideration?”
Jeannie nodded.
“You’d bake all day, and I’d walk in the woods?”
Jeannie grabbed his hand. “But what if we could actually do that? You know how I’ve been feeling about my job. And you can write anywhere.”
“I suppose we could. But that’s a lot of house for two people.”
“No, I mean—what if we turn it into a hotel or something? We could redo the bedrooms, add some bathrooms. I can serve breakfast and happy hour snacks. You could organise wilderness tours. Share your love of the area with guests. What do you think?”
For a moment, she was terrified that he’d say no. That it was a stupid idea. Because the truth was as soon as the words escaped her mouth, there was nothing in the world Jeannie wanted to do more. But there was something else she needed to spill. “We should at least talk about it. Is it midnight yet?” she asked Everett.
He checked his watch and nodded. “Merry Christmas, Wife,” he said. He stopped in a snowy clearing and leaned over to kiss her.
Jeannie sighed contentedly. Wife. She loved being his wife. And there was another title she’d be taking on soon. “I’ve been waiting until it’s officially Christmas to give you your gift,” she said.
He looked down at her gloved hands, which were empty.
“We’re having a baby,” she whispered, choking up over the sight of absolute glee that washed over Everett’s face in the faint light of the moon.
“What? I can’t—” He shook his head. “I feel like I’m dreaming.”
“It’s early. But I took a test and…” She grinned. “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment booked for the twenty-ninth.”
She’d woken up a week earlier with a terrible sense of nausea, breasts tender, and the slightest bit of brain fog, and had felt under the weather ever since. She’d initially attributed it to the business of working and planning the wedding and being just plain exhausted, until she realised she was late and had gone down to the drugstore at lunch to buy a pregnancy test. Despite the shock, she’d laughed to herself when she realised that a year earlier to the day she’d left at lunch to buy a lipstick. “And I feel like it’s a girl. I can sense it.”
Everett picked her up and twirled her. “I didn’t know it was possible to be this happy,” he said, pulling her in close. “The Butterfly Lake Lodge. Will people come?”
“I guess we’ll see,” Jeannie said, laying her head on Everett’s shoulder and picking the biggest and brightest star in the sky to make a wish.
But her dream, she realised, had already come true the moment Everett McCarthy had walked into her life.
If this wasn’t perfect, she didn’t know what was.
The End