Epilogue
Jesse
Three years later
“This one, Dada.” Ember holds up a onesie with an embroidered fox, one arm already halfway out of the polka-dot one I spent the last ninety seconds wrestling her into.
“You picked the polka-dot one. Two minutes ago. You cried because I said it’s getting smaller for you.”
“Fox one.” She points at the fox like I’m the one being unreasonable.
I’ve run reconnaissance on hostile compounds with less resistance than I’m getting from my two-and-a-half-year-old on this cold, February morning. I peel her back out, wrestle her into the fox instead.
She gives me a grin and I find myself smiling back as if I did something great.
Piper, meanwhile, has gotten her own zipper stuck two inches in and refuses help, red-faced and furious at the fabric like it personally betrayed her.
“I got it,” she informs me.
“Sure you do.”
“I’m big. I do zippers.”
“You’re two and a half.”
“Big two and a half.” She yanks harder, gets nowhere, and looks up at me with the exact same stubborn set to her jaw her mother gets when she’s decided something’s true by sheer force of will. “Help. But I did it mostly.”
I agree, and free the zipper without commenting on the mostly. I carry them down the stairs one on each hip, giggling the whole way like the staircase itself is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to them.
“Eggs?” Piper eyes her plate with deep suspicion once we’re at the table. “Not pancakes?”
“Eggs today. Pancakes Sunday.”
She accepts the eggs with a pout. I’m halfway through convincing Ember that syrup doesn’t belong on top of eggs when I hear Elsie on the stairs.
She comes down slow, hair mussed with sleep, wrapped in one of my old shirts, and something in my chest does the thing it’s done every single morning for three years, that low, warm pull, like my body still can’t quite believe it gets to have this.
“Morning.” She presses a kiss to the top of each girl’s head, then one to my mouth, soft and easy. “Something smells good.”
“Eggs. I wanted pancakes,” Piper says.
“Dada won’t let me have syrup,” Ember adds.
Elsie laughs, settling into the chair beside me.
“You’re up early for a Tuesday.” I don’t work on Tuesdays, she usually has a lie in.
“Rosie is sick today. Old man Jackson asked me to cover her shift.” She steals a piece of bacon off my plate before I can stop her.
“I miss the diner, especially the grown-up conversation that doesn’t involve negotiating sock diplomacy.
I’d like to do one or two days a week once these two start preschool in the fall. What do you think?”
“Sounds good. You’d be great at running your own coffee shop someday.
” Dealing with people all day is exhausting, I don’t get why she loves her job so much, even after she explained she enjoys making the folk who come through the door happy.
I simply accept it, grateful she’s like that, because she makes me happy too.
“Careful. I might hold you to that.”
Piper’s fork clatters against her plate. “Mama, look!” She’s built a small, teetering fortress out of egg.
“Very impressive, baby.” Elsie leans over to inspect it. I watch her giving the fortress her full attention, glad she’s my wife.
We had a small wedding two months after I proposed.
Her whole family attended. My old boss Vincenzo Greco came as Rosalie’s fiancé.
My team still jokes about how sentimental I became when Elsie’s dad called me son during his wedding speech.
He’s been calling me that for three years, during family video calls, the holidays that we spend in Michigan, yet, I still get a kick out of hearing it.
Our home, which I enlarged the year after the twins arrived, is full of pictures of our wedding day, the holidays, even the girls’ art pieces like Ember’s first attempt at a horse that looks more like a potato with legs and Piper’s hand-printed turkey from a Thanksgiving craft at the diner.
I work from here most mornings, security consulting mostly, the occasional call from Tucker when he needs a second set of eyes on something.
I still go on missions when the team needs me, but those occasions are rare.
“I need to tell you something,” Elsie says, once the girls are distracted enough with their plates, voice dropping just for us.
Something in her tone has my full attention.
“I’m pregnant.”
I pull her into me, and press my face into her hair, breathing her in, heart full with emotion.
She laughs against my chest, knowing without me saying anything, how much joy I’m feeling. “Found out yesterday. Wanted to tell you this morning, with the girls here. Felt right.”
“It’s exactly right.”