Epilogue #2
“Full.” Declan catches the cup she throws toward Bones and returns it without wiping the sticky side on anyone, though I can see the temptation.
“Two new men came in. One wanted the screen reader off before he’d let anybody near his forms. I showed him mine and minded my own fucking business until he turned his own back on. ”
Hutch nods because he knows the difference between leaving a man alone and abandoning him.
Declan meets his instructor every week and volunteers at the adult-learning center one Saturday each month, using the same reading strip he once hid from the club and the text reader he used on our second marriage agreement.
A year of lessons made him no expert, and expertise is not the point.
He sits beside men who have spent decades inventing reasons not to read in public and lets them watch an Enforcer ask what a page says.
“Did you read today?” I ask, taking the ruined melon from Nora before she paints her dress with it.
“The opening section from the motorcycle manual.” Declan takes a napkin from the stack and cleans our daughter’s hands one finger at a time while she fights him with great purpose. “The fucking author hates commas.”
“You hate commas.” I hand him a clean napkin after Nora wipes melon across the first one.
“Both things can be true.” Declan traps Nora’s hand before she reaches my plate and redirects her toward the cup she rejected.
Mara laughs across the table, and I introduce her to Hutch before June can claim the conversation.
Nadia and Mara came from the work I returned to after leaving Declan.
June belongs to every year before and after him, while Roxanne and Tessa stayed through the months when every glimpse of the club brought the safehouse hall back.
I no longer have to keep everyone apart.
Declan tried that. I watched what it cost us.
After lunch, we bring out the cake. Nora sits in her high chair beneath the crooked banner wearing a paper crown she removes faster than June can replace it.
Declan kneels on one side with a towel already in his hand.
I stand on the other and light the single candle while our daughter tries to reach directly through the flame.
“No!” Declan and I catch her wrists at the same time, and Nora looks between us with deep personal offense at our interference.
“You can’t fight fire on your birthday.” I move the cake beyond her fingers before she tests our reflexes again. “Your father already used the family allotment.”
Declan looks at the candle, then at me. I know what he is doing with that look. Our old house burned because Sasha reached it through him. A birthday candle is a birthday candle. “Listen to your mother. She has paperwork.”
Everyone sings. Nora stares at the people who have lost their minds in her yard, then slaps both hands into the cake after I blow out the candle for her.
Pink frosting reaches her hair, Declan’s shirt, and my wrist. She laughs until her face turns red while Declan uses the towel, fails, and accepts that our child intends to wear her dessert.
Mara helps me carry plates toward the kitchen while Declan takes Nora upstairs for a bath.
She stacks them beside the sink and looks at the photographs along the wall: Nora in the hospital, Nora asleep on Declan’s chest, Nora on my office floor surrounded by shredded sticky notes, and one of the three of us beneath the maple tree.
We have no pregnancy-announcement picture.
There was never anything to photograph after the two lines.
“How did you tell Declan you were pregnant?” Mara asks, smiling toward the ceiling when Nora shrieks through the bath. “Did you do one of those box things, or just hand him the test?”
The paper plate bends between my hands. Mara has never heard it.
Nadia never told her, and I’ve spent a year building a friendship that didn’t require me to introduce myself through the worst thing my husband did.
Mara sees the man who brings Nora to the office, reads the visitor form before signing it, and waits outside my door when I am not ready to leave.
She can’t see the safehouse bedroom unless I put it in front of her now.
“I drove to the safehouse to surprise him.” I set the plate on the counter before I ruin it. “I saw him with Sasha before I got the words out. I threw the pregnancy test at him in the hall.”
Mara’s smile disappears. “Avery, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I know.” I pick up the next plate because I don’t want her apology to become a job I have to complete for her. “That’s how he found out.”
Nadia calls Mara from the yard before the horror on her face can turn into another question.
Mara touches my arm once, thinks better of it when I don’t move toward her, and carries the clean cups outside.
I stay at the sink with pink frosting drying on my wrist and hear myself rehearsing four words to the windshield.
We’re having a baby. I never said them to Declan.
A year of hearing him tell Nora he loves her hasn’t put the words back into my mouth on that highway.
I wash the frosting away and return to the yard.
One question hurt, and the party stayed real anyway.
Nora, clean and furious about it, attacks the wrapping paper while June records everything.
Declan watches me once, sees something he doesn’t understand, and waits.
That gives me room to enjoy the gifts, laugh when Nora prefers the boxes, and talk to Mara about work until she stops looking at me as though I might break.
I hug her goodbye because the question was innocent and my answer wasn’t a punishment.
When the last guests have gone and June has taken the extra cake under terms that should qualify as theft, Declan finds the single candle beneath the kitchen table.
Nora sits on his hip, exhausted and furious about it, rubbing one fist against his collar while he turns the candle between his fingers.
“Mara asked how I broke the pregnancy news.” I stop beside the table before I can clean another plate and call the day over. “It hurt.”
Declan puts the candle on the table. He doesn’t blame Mara, because she couldn’t know what nobody told her.
He apologizes once instead of piling on apologies that would make me say we’re fine and promise I don’t regret marrying him.
He shifts Nora higher against his chest and keeps his attention on me.
“What did you tell her?” He rubs Nora’s back while she worries the edge of his collar between two fingers.
“That I drove to surprise you and saw Sasha before I could tell you. That I threw the pregnancy test in the hall.” I fold the dish towel over the chair back, then take it off.
I’ve spent too much of our marriage cleaning while the thing I should say waits.
“I almost gave her the pretty answer. I almost said the socks.”
“The socks were part of it.” Declan keeps his hand spread across Nora’s back while she settles against him. “They weren’t the answer.”