Epilogue
ONE YEAR AND ONE MONTH LATER
Josie
I’m sitting on the edge of the dock, feet dangling over the side, when Ian drops down beside me.
“I’m happy to find you out here,” he says. “But you forgot this.” He holds out my sketchpad.
The scent of coconut sunscreen and the ocean breeze drifts over to me, and I turn to admire his muscular chest glistening with sweat in the morning sun.
“Don’t you ever wear a shirt?” I tease. I know he just got back from a run and will probably meet Garrett at the beach on 76th Street to surf before the lifeguards set up their stands and the vacation crowds descend.
“Why live at the beach if you can’t go shirtless?” he says. “In fact, now that you live here full time, you should try it.” He reaches over to slide a hand under the hem of my T-shirt, and even though we’ve been together for more than a year, my skin still tingles from his touch.
I shift my weight so I can face him, running my hands up his bare arms, behind his neck, pulling his mouth to mine, savoring this lazy morning together.
For the first time, Ian and I aren’t squeezing our time into weekend visits in Berkeley or a few weeks at Christmas when my family gathered on Sandy Harbor. I moved to the island and into Ian’s house a month ago, and we have all the time in the world, at least until my classes begin this fall.
Starting in September, I’ll be commuting to a university on the mainland to take graduate classes in Marriage and Family Therapy.
Leaving the Bay Area meant leaving my gallery job behind, and along with all the other changes in my life, I was ready to do something different with my career. Something meaningful.
I’ve decided to go back to school to become an art therapist. Working with my own therapist to come to terms with last year’s revelations about Christopher’s death, I’ve realized how much art has played a part in my healing, and how I can use it to help other people.
When I visited the island this past year, I made sure to take Ellery for special drawing dates where we’d sketch ballerinas and chat.
Sometimes we’d just talk about school or her favorite TV show, but other times she’d draw pictures of what she imagines her dad to look like and where he is now.
Chloe says it’s helping her to open up more about her feelings.
And I’ve been working a series of drawings that I hope to put together in an exhibit where the proceeds will go toward the local sexual assault crisis center.
I take the sketchpad from Ian’s hands. “Do you want to see what I’ve been working on?”
Ian is still my biggest fan, and a part of me worries he’s going to buy all the paintings in the exhibit so he can have them for himself.
He nods eagerly, and as I flip through my latest drawings, he comments on the colors, the shadows, the emotions they evoke in him.
When I get to the final sketch, I set the pad on the dock next to me.
“Wait,” Ian says, leaning over to pick it up. “I think there’s one more.”
I shake my head, waving at the last sketch in the pad. “No, this is the one I finished yesterday.”
He hands the sketchpad back to me. “Are you sure? Maybe you should check.”
I know there aren’t any more but to humor him, I flip the page. And then I gasp. Because there on a blank page in my sketchpad, Ian has written the words: Josie, will you marry me?
My gaze flies to his, tears welling in my eyes.
“This past year with you has been the happiest of my life…” He gives me a crooked smile. “Except for a couple of weeks one summer when I was eighteen years old.”
I give a watery laugh, remembering the feeling of hope and anticipation of that time. The sense that Ian and I had so much ahead of us. It was a feeling pretty much like the one that’s welling up in my chest right now.
“So?” Ian says, hitching his chin at the sketchpad. “Will you marry me?”
It took us a long time to get here, but we finally made it. This time it will be forever.