Epilogue
Do not skip this part.
I mean it.
“Now that you’re my fiancé, you have to help me move heavy things,” Willow said.
She had hold of Jeremiah’s hand and was leading him through her parents’ large home. She hadn’t given him the tour but instead had dragged him straight up the stairs to the back hall, and up a steeper, narrower flight to the attic.
“I’ll carry anything you want, long as we’re together.”
“You learn that line from my sappy newlywed cousin Ethan? Guy’s so in love it’s sickening.
” She turned, smiling as she said it, and he leaned up and kissed her thoroughly.
Even before their lips parted, Willow was pulling an overhead chain to turn on a dangling lightbulb.
“It’s the only part of the house they haven’t made nice.
” She waved some cobwebs aside as she reached the top of the stairs and opened the rickety red door there.
Then she stepped into the attic and turned a switch. Two attic lights came on, while the third flickered and died.
“It has a floor,” Jeremiah observed. “We won’t fall through the ceiling like Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation.”
The attic was filled with discarded joys of the past, discarded furniture too worn out to pass on, broken toys too bound up with precious memories to throw away. Sheets were over some items, and she said, “Look for one shaped like a cradle. You take the left; I’ll take the right.”
They used their phone’s flashlights. After only a few steps, Willow spotted a cradle shape beneath an old quilt. She pulled the quilt away, and yes, there was her wooden cradle, handmade by an old shaman friend of her parents. Her name was carved on the headboard. She ran her hand over the letters.
W I L L O W
“Found it,” called Jeremiah.
“What?” Willow asked. “No, you didn’t. It’s over here.”
“Um, beg to differ. I am definitely looking at a cradle.”
Willow crossed the attic to where Jeremiah was. He had pulled the old sheet halfway off, revealing what looked just like her cradle’s headboard. Frowning, she yanked the cover the rest of the way off and gasped at what she saw. “What is this?” she whispered.
Reaching out a hand, she ran her fingers over the name carved into the cradle’s headboard.
W O L F