Epilogue
Six months later
Perched on the headland overlooking Loch a’ Ghlinne and Loch Eishort, Effie wiggled her toes in the grass, watching as the water lapped at the cliffside where the ruins of Dunscaith Castle, a place she’d once called home, stood.
A gleeful shriek made her grin. In the field, a few yards away, Bea took three wobbly steps before Finn snatched her up under the armpits and lifted her into the air.
They joined her, Finn setting Bea down in her travel booster seat that looked like a mini camping chair before he sprawled out on the plaid picnic blanket beside Effie.
“Moo!” Bea squealed in delight, pointing at the sheep grazing down the hillside.
Effie fished around inside the diaper bag for— There it was. She handed Bea her little lamb plushie. “Those are sheep, Bea. See?”
Bea took the stuffed lamb, looked at it for a moment, and said firmly, “Moo.”
“I tried it already.” Finn laughed. “It won’t work.”
“No, see, it’s a sheep. Not a cow.” Effie pointed at the stuffed lamb. “Baa, not moo, Bea. Baa.”
“Moo, moo, moo,” she babbled, tossing the lamb into the tall grass where Nessie—whom Effie, despite no longer being a demon, could still mysteriously understand, just like she could, for reasons unknown, still see the gnomes living in Martha’s garden—slithered nearby.
Moo was Bea’s favorite word, her first word.
Followed by dada, then mama, the latter of which Effie would be lying if she said she didn’t have complicated feelings about.
Finn, however, had made the argument that there was a way to honor Mark and Kaitlyn in Bea’s life while still giving her a childhood that included parents who loved her very much.
Having Bea refer to them by their names might’ve been something they’d considered had she been older when she’d lost her parents, but since she hadn’t, it made the most sense to not call attention to her loss by othering themselves in her life.
Even though Effie had never met Mark and Kaitlyn, she’d heard enough stories about them, courtesy of their friends, that sometimes it felt like she knew them, and she’d vowed to make sure Bea felt like she knew them, too.
Effie gave up on trying to teach Bea the difference between cows and sheep, leaving that lesson for another day. She leaned her head on Finn’s shoulder. “I’m glad we came back here.”
“Me, too,” he said. “And it confirms what I thought.”
“Hmm, what’s that?”
“Silver Springs, Isle of Skye…” He shrugged. “You’re my home.”
She lifted her head and smiled at him. “You’re a sap.” She cupped his cheek. “I love you.”
He laid his hand over hers, holding it against his face for a moment before turning and pressing his lips to the center of her palm.
“I proposed to you not far from here.”
She remembered it well, meeting with him down on the rocky shore just below the headland where they now sat. How Finn had made her feel seen and respected that night. How she hadn’t known it at the time, but that was the night she’d started to fall in love with him.
“It’s probably weird to say, considering how much time has passed, but being back here makes it feel like it was just yesterday.”
With the tip of his finger, Finn traced the scar that crossed her palm. As always, it made him smile when she shivered.
“You can say no. But I was thinking.” He looked up at her through his lashes. “We should get married.”
A laugh escaped her. “Um, Finn? News flash—we’re already married.”
If the marriage license weren’t enough, they’d gotten matching tattoos, a band of bluebells on each of their left ring fingers, a promise to always be honest and faithful and grateful to each other, a symbol of their everlasting love.
“See, I was thinking something a little more”—from somewhere in the depths of Bea’s diaper bag, Finn pulled out a pocketknife—“binding.”
Her breath caught, her heart fluttering wildly as she looked between the pocketknife in his hand and his hopeful face.
“We never actually got to find each other in the next life,” he said.
The silver lining of that tragic fact was that their love had lived on, in Effie’s heart and in the way Finn had searched for her without knowing, and in their daughter, too, her existence a testament that a love like theirs never really died.
“So, what do you say, Eithrig MacLeod? How’s forever sound? ”
She beamed at him. “It’s a start.”