Epilogue. Alex
Epilogue
ALEX
FOUR YEARS LATER
One of my favorite things about Ophelia is how red she goes when I sing her “Happy Birthday” each year.
This year is no exception, her face buried in her hands as I sing the final line, lighting shitty gas station candles haphazardly stuck into shortbread cookies and Jelly Babies. “Twenty-five. How does it feel?”
Her cheeks turn even pinker when she leans forward to blow them both out.
Her floral dress—a birthday present from me—clings to her in a way that makes me wish so badly that we didn’t have evening plans.
“It feels …” She lies back against the grass, staring up at the copper leaves of the tree above us with a contented sigh. “It feels so peaceful.”
Our weekend away to celebrate her twenty-fifth birthday always had to be to Scotland. We’ve missed it since we left after our graduation two years ago.
The first threads of autumn are beginning to stitch their way across the landscape. The sun paints her hair in shades of red and gold, the leaves fading from yellow to orange.
Orange is my favorite color.
It’s Ophelia. It’s my mood on so many days, lately.
It’s the shade of the small diamond that looks so pretty on her ring finger.
It’s the sunset where I married her last year, the flowers tucked into Vincenzo’s pocket as he walked her down the aisle.
It’s the fire that crackles in the hearth of our crumbly, badly insulated, money trap of a cottage in the English countryside.
It’s the stupid beans on toast that Josie, Charlotte, and élé eat before school.
It’s the robin that sat on my mother’s windowsill during her final weeks.
I survived my mother’s death. Somehow, we all survived it.
I thought I wouldn’t, but here I am. Alive and grateful.
If I thought I knew grief after my dad went to jail, I was so wrong. This grief felt inescapable, unsurvivable, completely and utterly overwhelming. It drowned the delicate tissue of my lungs in tar, filled my skull with lead, shackled my limbs to the bed.
I couldn’t breathe most nights, couldn’t work, couldn’t talk as I desperately tried to make sense of a world where my mother would die and my father would live.
It was Ophelia who forced us to eat, Ophelia who explained it to Josie over and over with the patience of a saint, Ophelia who stood at my side at her wake and finished the speech that I could not.
It was Ophelia who told me the world would never make sense, and the sooner I accept it, the better.
When the girls went to bed each night and I fell apart, it was Ophelia who pieced me back together again like I was a puzzle she knew so well that she could do it upside down and blindfolded.
On those days where we miss her so painfully that it feels insurmountable, it’s still Ophelia who leads us through.
All her patients at the clinic where she works as a childhood grief counselor couldn’t be in better hands.
Somewhere, at some point, I must’ve done something right.
“Fucking candles. Absolute waste of time,” she grumbles, as she passes me a shortbread splattered in orange candle wax.
“World’s gone to shit,” I mutter, echoing the favorite phrase of Mabel, who lives in the tiny cabin at the end of our garden. Only Ophelia would befriend an elderly woman on a plane and get so attached that she adopted her as a grandmother for all of us.
She wraps her lips around the shortbread, torturing me without meaning to. I’ve really fucked up by making plans for us tonight. I’d rather recreate last night. “It really has.”
I lie back beside her, the early September sun a warm, soft blanket on my skin. This feels surreal. Every day feels surreal with her.
I trace my finger over her clear phone case, over the torn-out crossword page that lives inside. I run it over all the letters that sit in the shaded gray boxes, hastily written on one of the best days of my life. Except Ophelia got a clue wrong, so the shaded letters spell MARAY ME.
Had the same effect, though.
“Cheers,” she says, knocking her shortbread against mine as if it were a flute of champagne.
“To you turning twenty-five.”
“And to Raven Architecture landing its first big project!”
That feels surreal, too. A university building in London felt like a ridiculous project to pitch for in our third year of business, but I poached some of the best architects out there, took the time to build the company up carefully, and after a slow first year and then two more years of trying to prove myself, it’s starting to pay off.
If my father’s surname had to be attached to the company that rotted his brain, rotted our family life, rotted my own childhood, then it had to be my mother’s name on the company that represents the final domino falling in my father’s vision for his firstborn child.
I haven’t gone back to visit him. Not once. I accept his call at Christmas each year, listen to his apologies. I wish him merry Christmas and hang up, and just like the day I walked out of the visitation room the last time I saw him, I feel nothing.
“And to Robert marrying Jacqueline!” Ophelia chimes, bringing me back into the here and now. Fucking Robert. Poached my assistant and then married her.
“And to Mia getting her first restaurant job.”
I cried for so long when Mia moved out two months ago that Ophelia thought someone had died.
“And Evie getting in a show on the fucking West End,” she says, like she can’t believe we haven’t covered that one yet.
We’ve had a lot of wins this year. I wish my mom was here to see them.
“I’ve booked the whole front row for us.” I let my most exasperated sigh drift up into the cloudless sky. “And cheers to Fleur, I guess.”
She presses her lips together to suppress a laugh. Fleur is engaged. The whole ordeal knocked ten years off my life. I’m going to go gray by thirty, at this rate. I do not approve, but Ophelia does, and I suppose that’s vaguely comforting.
She props herself up on an elbow, gazing down at me in the meadow.
Her hair is longer, nails longer, freckles darker from time outside.
A tiny fine-line tattoo decorates her collarbone, identical to the one on my ring finger.
A small circle with a line extending from the center to the top. A clock pointing to midnight.
She’s still that pessimistic, grumpy girl I almost ran over outside Sorrowsong’s twisted gates. Sunshine makes her hot and annoyed, paper straws turn her murderous. Musicals and festive cheer make her never want to leave the house again.
But there’s a confidence about her now, a healthy glow beneath the pale skin that used to be tinged with a bluish hue. The shadows beneath her eyes are put there by our love of late-night showers together, and not by the nightmares that used to plague her dreams.
Raising the girls is so much easier with such a perfect role model for them at home.
She sweeps my messy hair from my forehead, her mouth twisting into a small smile. “What’s on your mind?”
I lean up to place a soft kiss on her lips. “That I’d like you to live to one hundred and twenty-five.”
“I’d be as wrinkly as a prune.”
“I’d love that.”
She snorts, her head landing in the space between my biceps and my chest. “No, you would not.”
I can hardly squash my smile long enough to kiss her. “Mmhmm. I’d take that prune home. Kiss it. Get it a blanket. Butter it some toast.”
Her laughter makes the sun look dull as she playfully shoves me away. “You’re full of shit, Corbeau.”
But I’m not. I watched my mother die without a wrinkle, and Ophelia’s parents died before their hair had gone gray, so the ability to watch time carve lines in her lovely face is my every birthday wish.
She sits up, muttering something about how gingers aren’t built for the sun. It gives me the perfect opportunity to check my phone. I have a whole load of unread messages in the group chat for her surprise party tonight.
Party might be a stretch. But we’re all going to sit down with music at a reasonable volume around large bowls of chips in varying flavors, just the way she likes it.
Still at Sorrowsong completing her medicine degree, Divya hasn’t traveled far, but for the others—for Colette, Fleur, the twins, Vin, Belladonna, Magda, Mabel, Jack, all of her friends from work—coming to Scotland is a long day of travel.
I hope it’ll help Ophelia realize just how important she is to so many people.
That families don’t have to be tied by blood.
That she has put her little thread of copper through the hearts of so many people, a web that extends around the globe.
Colette sends a picture of the living room of the house we’re renting for the weekend, decorated with pillows and balloons and raspberry cupcakes that look so good that they could only be the work of Mia.
Alex
Don’t let Vincenzo eat them all.
Vincenzo
Well, that’s rude.
Fleur
He’s literally got one in his mouth while he’s typing.
Divya
Alex, come back. Everyone is driving me crazy.
Evie
We’re hungry.
Mia
Mabel is four sherrys deep. She wants to know if there is a karaoke machine.
Alex
If there was a karaoke machine, Ophelia would flee her own party.
Vincenzo
Because I’m such a great singer?
Jack
If Vinnie was on the mic, I’d be fleeing right beside her.
Belladonna
If Vinnie was on the mic, we’d all bleed out of our ears and die.
I bite down my smile, shutting my phone off on the onslaught of messages in the group chat. “Do you want to head off?”
She turns to face me where she sits, the hair at her nape glowing, lit from behind by the sun. The most unruly strands are set alight, a warm glow catching her dress. I wish I had my paints with me, but I settle for a quick photo of her on my phone instead.
She slips her hand into mine when we stand, brushing the leaves from the skirt of her dress. “We’d better. I’m hungry.”
THE CLOCK IN the kitchen seems to tick so loud in the silent house, the hands some way past two in the morning.
Everyone is asleep but us, haphazardly crammed into the guest rooms and on the sofas in the sitting rooms. This house is so full of love and laughter that I’m surprised the walls aren’t sagging, bending under the sheer weight of it all.
I do miss the little ones, though.
She sighs wistfully. “Is it sad that I miss Jo, élé, and Charlotte?”
I laugh, setting a cup of tea in front of her. “I was thinking the same.”
Ophelia gives me a sleepy, tipsy smile from where she’s sitting at the kitchen table. Her mascara is smudged, and there’s pizza sauce on the strap of her dress, somehow.
Falling in love isn’t the right description. I’ve been plummeting since I met her, haven’t stopped since. Each day when I think I might find the bottom, that my feelings for her couldn’t intensify any more, she does something else that sends the ground flying away from me again.
“That was one of the best evenings of my life,” she says, voice so soft that it hardly breaks the silence.
“And mine.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
Her eyes crinkle at the edges, filling with warmth. “We deserve each other.”
I’m not sure I’ll ever deserve her, but I agree anyway. “That we do.”
I lean against the oak countertop, eyes bouncing around the kitchen.
The sink is overflowing with plates, bowls, cutlery, wine bottles, glasses, tumblers.
The mess spills onto the draining board and onto the counter.
A pile of wrapping paper and opened envelopes surrounds the overflowing trash can.
There are so many shoes and coats at the front door that I couldn’t open it even if I wanted to.
I’m always wary of complaining about mess these days, of wishing it away or rushing to clear it up.
I’ll never forget Ophelia’s parents’ house that first Christmas. The lack of mess, the lack of things, the lack of bowls in the sink. I know from the way she’s staring, eyes glassy, at the dishes on the counter that she’s thinking the same.
I promised her once that she’d never know that awful, bone-eating, soul-crushing silence again, and it’s a promise I’ll never break.
I wander over to the table, stand behind her, and snake my arms around her waist. My chin rests on the top of her head. “You were beautiful, tonight.”
“If I was, it’s your doing.”
I drop a kiss to her hair in the peaceful quiet, my hands tracing the curve of her waist. “I want to marry you.”
She tilts her head to the side, allowing me access to her neck. “You already did.”
My hands sink into the soft skin at her hips, lips planting a delicate kiss below her ear. I’m greedy when it comes to her, selfish and hungry. “I want to do it again.”
I know she’s smiling from the way her neck moves.
I know her body as well as my own, could sculpt her in clay from memory.
She’s a road I’ve been walking for five years, each twist and turn more enticing than the last. Every birthday, I wish for more time to walk it.
“Keep bringing me toast each morning and maybe I’ll let you. ”
I spin the chair to face me, the legs scraping against uneven terra-cotta tile. I lift her onto the table effortlessly, sliding my hands up her thighs to bunch the dress at her waist.
Fucking hell.
She must see my desperation in my expression, because a drunken laugh bubbles up out of her. “I’m the same as I was yesterday. And the day before.”
I shake my head, running my finger over the crease where her thighs and hips meet. “You’re even better. Again. I thought we agreed you’d stop this whole getting more beautiful thing. It’s not fair on me.”
Her laughter is louder, and so sweet that I wouldn’t really care if she woke everyone else. Her fingers curl into the belt loops of my jeans, pulling me closer. “Three words. One, four, and three. I could say it a hundred times, and it wouldn’t be enough.”
I tug her dress back down and lift her into my arms, carrying her quietly up the old, rickety stairs and into the bedroom. She’s asleep by the time I finish wiping the mascara from her eyes.
My lips brush hers as I turn out the lamp, precariously balanced on her puzzle books and my sketchbooks. The room is plunged into darkness, but the world around me is bursting with colors so vibrant I can almost taste them. “I love you so much more.”