Epilogue
TEN YEARS LATER
Lily
The thing about happiness is that it sneaks up on you. You spend so long chasing it, planning for it, sacrificing and compromising and hoping that one day you'll arrive somewhere that feels like enough.
And then one random Friday you're standing in your kitchen watching your father-in-law hang streamers while your six-year-old argues about balloon placement, and you realize you stopped chasing a long time ago.
Happiness caught you instead, somewhere between the sleepless nights and the chaos and the ordinary magic of building a life with people who love you.
Ten years have given me so much, I sometimes have to call Rome and ask if this is our life now.
I am in my final year of OB/GYN residency at Harbor Hill General, with a job offer to stay on after I finish.
Callahan is the chief of the fire department, a title he inherited when Chief Morales retired last year and Zuri had no wish to do it.
It's a title he wears with the same easy competence he brings to everything. And looking so hot while he does it.
The craziest part of our life is the fact that we have a six-year-old son named William Barack Holt.
Everything else is so perfectly mundane that Callahan's decision to honor his first love is the most exciting thing about our life.
My baby goes by Wick because that's how he said his own name when he was a baby and it stuck.
We also have a one-year-old daughter named Nova, who is turning one today, which is why our living room looks like a party supply store exploded inside it thanks to my husband and his father.
We never moved to Chicago. I think about that sometimes, how different everything could have been.
We were so close to leaving. Callahan and Will had already started the process, researching fire departments, pricing out workshops with southern exposure.
And then the acceptance letter from Brown arrived, and suddenly there was another path, one that let me keep everything instead of choosing between pieces of my life.
It was the right decision. Even Rome thought so, and Rome never thinks anything I do is the right decision on the first try.
I got to keep my career. I got to keep Callahan and Will, who had been ready to give it all up for me, but didn't have to.
I got to keep Rome and his growing family, Poppy and Ramsey and the chaos of children that followed.
I got to keep Harbor Hill, this town that had taken me in and refused to let me go.
I got to keep it all. I didn't have to sacrifice a single thing.
The past ten years haven't been simple. A grueling medical career and being a family with a first responder and a resident meant shift work and exhaustion and months where we passed each other like ships in the night.
During my third year at Brown, I started aching for a baby with a ferocity that surprised us both. Callahan wanted to wait until I finished school, wanted to make things easier for me, but I had gone half-mad with wanting and he has never been able to deny me anything.
Wick was born two weeks before I would have started my residency, setting me back another six months. I took six months of maternity leave with Wick, and then Callahan took the next six, and we traded off in a rhythm that became the blueprint for everything that followed.
We did the same thing with Nova when she came along. I have a six-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter and a husband who still looks at me like I'm the answer to every question he ever asked.
I am bursting with happiness in a way that should be illegal, but somehow is just right.
The old Holt house has seen changes over the years. Thanks to Rome, we used the big garden to add an annex for Will on the other side of the workshop, giving him privacy and independence while keeping him close.
The main house has been remodeled twice, walls knocked down and rooms added, the bones of the place expanding to fit our growing family.
Anna's presence is still everywhere, in the light that falls through the windows and the flowers that bloom in the garden and the way Will still talks to her every day.
We don't worry about that anymore. We know now that he's okay after he let himself be checked out and tested.
The decorations are absurd. Streamers hang from every available surface, balloons cluster in corners like they're planning something, and there's a banner that says HAPPY BIRTHDAY NOVA in letters so large they could probably be seen from space.
Dad and Grandpa have clearly lost their minds, and I love them for it.
"This might be excessive," I observe, standing in the doorway.
Will glances up from where he's tying ribbons to a chair.
At sixty-one, he's still handsome and strong, still younger than Brad Pitt, which is a detail he insists on.
The grief that used to sit so heavy on his shoulders has softened over the years, becoming gentler, making room for the joy that floods through this house every single day.
"There's no such thing as excessive for my granddaughter," he informs me with dignity. "She's one. This is important."
"She won't remember it."
"I'll remember it." He surveys his work with satisfaction. "That's what matters."
I can't argue with that. Soon this house will be bubbling with noise as everyone gathers.
Poppy still insists on calling us the Holy Trinity, and Erin still bears the title Anal Girl with resigned grace, and our children are growing up surrounded by more love than they know what to do with.
Poppy and Ramsey have three kids now, two boys and a girl. Little Clara is barely a year older than Nova, and watching them together makes me so happy.
Rome and Erin have three as well, one boy and two girls, and their youngest, Mila, is also just a year older than Nova. My children will grow up with cousins and friends and a family so big and loud that they'll never know what loneliness feels like.
That's all I ever wanted for them. That's all I ever wanted for myself.
After a much-needed shower after work, I hear voices drifting from the workshop, the low murmur of conversation, and I follow the sound across the yard.
The workshop door is open, afternoon light spilling across the worn wooden floor. I stop in the doorway and take them all in.
Will is at his workbench, the same one he's had for forty years, showing off the small toys he carved for the kids. His hands move with the ease of long practice, turning the little wooden shapes so they catch the light.
Wick is perched on his father's lap, watching with wide eyes, and Nova is nestled against Callahan's chest, her chubby fingers wrapped around a carved rabbit that she has already stuffed entirely into her mouth.
She's drooling on it. She's drooling on everything these days. Will and Callahan share a look over her head, pure love passing between them.
My children are my everything. Two easy pregnancies and two easy births, thank God. Both of them inherited their father's sea-green eyes and my darker hair, and both of them are so beautiful it makes me ache.
Then I find my husband, and my breath catches. If Callahan was drop-dead gorgeous at thirty, he's striking at forty. The years have been absurdly kind to him, adding depth to his features and silver to his temples and a gravity to his presence that makes everyone turn when he walks into a room.
He's especially hard to resist with a baby in his arms. One child is bad enough. Two is a full-scale emergency for my poor system.
Wick sees me first. His face goes bright and he scrambles down from his father's lap and runs to me, his sneakers slapping against the wooden floor.
"Mommy, see what Grandpa made me!"
He's holding up a car, one of dozens his grandfather has carved for him over the years. His eyes are big and beautiful, fringed with lashes that are completely wasted on a six-year-old boy. He's missing one of his lower baby teeth, and the gap in his smile is the sweetest thing I've ever seen.
"Wow," I say, crouching down to examine it with appropriate gravity. "This is the coolest car I have ever seen."
He beams at me, his whole face lighting up. "Nova is eating hers again.”
I glance over at my daughter, who is indeed chomping down on her wooden rabbit with single-minded determination, drool running down her chin and onto Callahan's shirt. He doesn't seem to notice or care.
"Your sister appreciates art in her own way," I tell Wick solemnly.
Callahan stands, lifting Nova high above his head, and she squeals with delight.
A long line of drool narrowly misses his face as he brings her back down, and he doesn't even flinch.
He never does. When Callahan loves you, he loves you with everything he has.
Everything you are, mess and chaos and all.
He crosses to me and settles Nova into my arms, and I bury my face in her chubby neck and breathe her in. She smells like baby shampoo and drool and the particular sweetness that belongs only to her. My daughter. My miracle. My heart walking around outside my body.
"Dad, can you take the kids for a while?" Callahan is already steering Wick toward Will. "Lily and I need to check on the last of things before the party."
Before Will can answer, Wick tips his face up to his father with an expression of pure disgust.
"Is that secret speak for making out?"
All three adults freeze. I bury my face deeper into Nova's neck, my shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.
"What do you know about making out?" Callahan asks, his voice carefully neutral.
"I know kissing is when you go like this with your mouth." Wick purses his lips and makes exaggerated smooching noises, turning his head from side to side like he's seen it done in movies.
"And making out is when you put your tongue in Mommy's mouth."
He opens his mouth wide to demonstrate, and Callahan moves fast, clamping one hand over Wick's mouth and the other behind his head.
Will is absolutely loving this, his eyes bright with joy at his son's suffering.
"How do you know this?" Callahan demands, trying for stern and landing somewhere closer to horrified.
Wick wiggles free enough to talk. "I heard Wells and Eli talking. They said their parents do it too and it's disgusting."
Callahan and I lock eyes over our son's head, both of us fighting desperately not to crack up.
"Those two boys together are always bad news," Callahan mutters as he releases Wick. "And no, we are not going to make out. I promise."
"Good." Wick nods with satisfaction. "Because it looks yucky when you do it."
"Alright, buddy." Will swoops in, lifting Nova from my arms with practiced ease. She goes happily to her grandfather, one hand still clutching her soggy rabbit. "Leave your mother and father to their yucky plans and come play with me and your sister."
He herds both children toward the door of the workshop, shooting us a knowing look over his shoulder that makes Callahan groan.
We close the door to the shop and Callahan has me pressed against the wall before I can draw my next breath, his mouth on mine, hungry and wet and full of tongue. This is in fact a full-blown make-out session, the kind our six-year-old has apparently been educated about by his cousins.
"I thought you promised your son we wouldn't make out," I manage between kisses.
"When it comes to you," kiss, "I will always," tongue traces my lower lip, "always," catches it between his teeth and tugs, "break my promises."
Then we're stumbling toward the house, kissing and laughing, crashing through the back door and up the stairs. We tumble onto our bed in a tangle of limbs, and I'm giggling against his mouth because this man makes me so happy.
"We have no time to change sheets again," I warn him, pushing halfheartedly at his chest. "My only demand is you keep your fingers and your mouth away from me."
He pulls back, wounded. "But I love it when you…"
"I love it too, but you get so smug every time I squirt that you're impossible, and we're expecting company in forty-five minutes."
"How am I impossible?" He props himself up on his elbows, genuinely offended. "You're the one who's always being inappropriate just for the hell of it."
"Because you get so intense after, and look all hot and I get all tingly and horny."
He chuckles. "So this is more of a you problem."
I swat at him. "This is an us problem because it's our cute daughter's birthday and this house is about to be full real soon."
His expression softens, all the teasing fading into something tender. "She is really cute, isn't she?"
"She is." I smile up at him, unable to resist the love in his eyes.
"I'm so happy, baby," he tells me.
"Because of me?"
"Yes."
"I'm not a pain in the ass?"
"Sometimes." He grins, that rare full grin that still makes my stomach flip after all these years. "But I'm never unhappy about it."
We kiss and kiss until we run out of breath, until the urgency becomes something sweeter, until I'm just lying here in the arms of my husband thinking about how impossible this all seemed once.
He gets up, crossing to our closet, and comes back with a fresh set of sheets. He tosses them onto the chair by the window.
"Forty-five minutes is more time than I need."
I giggle, bright and happy and full. Then I open my arms to the love of my life.