Epilogue
Mallory
One Year Later
The coffee maker gurgled and hissed on the kitchen counter, filling the farmhouse with that deep, rich smell that had become a fixture in my life for the past year.
Today I was making two batches.
A dark, full-strength brew for Zane, and decaf for me.
I stood at the counter wearing his flannel shirt, the worn gray one with the frayed cuffs that he’d stopped claiming ownership of sometime around October, feeling completely and totally content.
This would be my first morning drinking decaf, and it was worth it.
In fact, I was buzzing with excitement about it.
Outside, the world was white.
A late-season snow had come in overnight and blanketed our hundred acres in that particular hush that only a heavy snowfall could produce.
Zane’s boots were missing from the back door, the big worn pair he kept for barn work. My winter boots sat next to the empty spot.
I pulled up my laptop while the coffee finished and fired off a quick reply to the Hendricks account. They were a mid-sized outdoor apparel brand out of Denver that had become one of my steadiest clients.
They needed approval of the Q1 campaign calendar before their internal meeting on Thursday. I hit send, closed the laptop, and poured myself a mug.
Quincy bounced into the room, his tiny nub tail quivering back and forth. He didn’t have enough tail to wag properly, so it often turned into a full butt wiggle.
“Baby, there you are!” I squealed in the high-pitched, sugary voice I reserved just for him. “Let’s get breakfast.”
He ran right over to his food bowl and sat, waiting patiently.
Zane really was my hero.
A few weeks after we made it official as a couple, he disappeared on a “work trip” with Amos.
Which everyone in town knew was a bald-faced lie, because they were loggers. Their work was right here on the mountain. And Amos didn’t even work for Zane anymore! He worked at the Harrison Brothers’ logging camp.
No one knew what trouble those men were getting into, and I was curious about it for sure.
Then, three days later, the two trouble-makers had reappeared holding one wiggly bundle of joy.
“How did you?” I’d asked.
But he’d just pulled me into his arms and said, “Happy wife, happy life.”
We hadn’t even talked about marriage at that point yet, but Zane putting my fur baby in my arms had been the perfect proposal.
To this day, neither of those men had spilled the beans on what they’d done to get my dog back.
What I did know is that Wade, the most aggressively litigious man I’d ever met in my life, never did a thing about it.
No police report.
No lawsuit.
No cuffs for either man.
Zane had already been my hero. After that day, he was my hero for life.
I set Quincy’s bowl down and watched him eat, then let my eyes drift to the corner of the kitchen where two dog beds sat side by side.
The second one was still empty, but not for much longer.
The animal shelter had called on Tuesday. A little French bulldog terrier mix, eight months old, was moving in. Her previous owner had to make an emergency move and couldn’t bring the puppy with them. But they were ecstatic to find out she’d be living in a Frenchie household.
Little Star would be coming home with us at the end of the week. Quincy was about to have a sister.
And she wasn’t the only new addition on the horizon.
I stroked my belly.
The doctor had called this morning, confirming what I’d already suspected.
I hadn’t said a word to anyone yet. Not Kelly, not Rose, not my parents, or even Zane’s mother, who had taken to calling me every Sunday afternoon. She had made it abundantly clear that she was ready to be a grandmother as soon as I was willing to cooperate.
They’d all find out in good time.
But first, it was time to tell Zane.
I pulled on my winter boots and threw on the heavy canvas work coat that I’d claimed from him.
The coat swallowed me whole, but it reminded me of him. I loved wearing his clothes for some reason. They made me feel like he was giving me an all-day hug.
Then I grabbed his coffee thermos and opened the back door.
Quincy shot past me immediately, bounding into the snow, already knowing where we were going.
I followed the trail of Zane’s boot prints across the yard toward the barn, as snow crunched underfoot.
I could hear him before I reached the barn door, the low clank of metal on metal, a wrench working at something stubborn.
It didn’t matter that it was Saturday morning. Zane was always hard at work.
I pushed the door open and found him crouched beside one of the skidders, his long dark hair pulled back, flannel sleeves pushed up to his elbows despite the cold.
He looked up when I came in, and he grinned at me with love in his eyes.
“Coffee?” he asked. “You’re the best wifey ever.”
“That and something even better,” I said.
I put his thermos down on the workbench as he stood.
I crossed the workshop floor, stopped in front of him, and reached into the pocket of his coat.
Then I held out the tiny pair of baby boots. They were pink and barely bigger than my palm.
“You ready to be a daddy?” I asked.
Zane went completely still.
He looked at the boots in my outstretched hand for a long moment, and then he looked at my face, and I watched the understanding move through him.
He didn’t say anything. He just reached out and took the boots very carefully from my hand, turning them over once, and then he straightened to his full height and lifted me clean off the ground.
I grabbed his shoulders and laughed, a surprised, breathless sound that echoed off the barn walls, and Quincy barked once from the doorway in solidarity.
Zane held me against his chest, his face pressed into my hair, caught up in the enormity of the moment.
When he finally set me down his hand moved to my stomach, resting there warm and steady, his palm spread wide.
“It’s time for you to dote on me for the next nine months, Mr. Thompson,” I told him.
A slow smile broke across his face, the rare, full kind that reached all the way to his eyes. “Yes, ma’am. Anything for you, Mrs. Thompson.”
He pulled me down onto his lap right there on the workshop stool, and rested his hand gently on my belly.
He pressed his lips to my hair.
“My mother is going to cry for a week,” he murmured against my temple, his voice low and rough and full of something that sounded a lot like joy. “And that baby is going to be so damn loved.”
I leaned back into his chest and looked out through the open barn door at the snow-covered land and our farmhouse with its warm, lit windows.
It was full of the life we’d been building together one quiet day at a time, and I thought about the penciled names on the hallway wall right outside the kitchen, and the name we’d be adding there soon.
The first of three.
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