Epilogue
This is happening. I’m actually marrying her today. When I saw this church on a trip to Italy a few years ago, I thought of her. I pictured her in a white dress walking down this aisle. And now she fucking is.
All those years of collecting photos, of thinking of the life Laura would have had if I hadn’t failed her. Even then, I knew she wasn’t Laura. I knew there was something different about this woman. There was a pull towards her that was never there with Laura.
We still need to have to have a lot of real conversations about what her mother told us. I honestly don’t know how Evie is able to go through with this, how she’s not trying to run from me. When I saw her with the pictures, I thought I’d lost her.
Thankfully, by some grace of God, I get to keep her. Forever. Not that I ever would have let her run far. But the fact she didn’t says a lot more than words ever will. I know she loves me in the same way I love her. It’s not something logic can explain; it’s deeper than anything I’ve ever felt.
“You doing okay?” Louie asks. He’s standing up with me, along with Carlo and Sammie and Paz.
“I’m good. Why the fuck wouldn’t I be?”
“Just checking.” He chuckles.
The doors to the church open and then she appears. Evie. In a long white dress, with a smile that reaches her eyes. And when those eyes connect with mine, that’s where they stay the entire time it takes for her to reach me.
“Hey.” I smile as I take Evie’s hands in mine.
“Hey.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her she’s beautiful, but I don’t think she needs to hear that word right now.
I didn’t realize just how desensitized she was.
It’s not that she didn’t know she was beautiful.
She did, because her mother never let her forget it.
It’s what her entire identity as a child was about.
“I love you,” I whisper instead, because I don’t think she’s heard that enough.
“I know,” she replies. “I love you.”
“I know.”