Epilogue One
a few weeks later…
LOGAN
The lake catches the late afternoon sun like scattered diamonds, and I’m surrounded by more people than I’ve ever voluntarily spent time with in my life.
It should be overwhelming. A year ago, it would have been. But watching Audrey’s brothers attempt to out-cannonball each other off the dock while her father shakes his head from a deck chair, I feel something I’m still learning to name.
Belonging. Maybe. Or just... peace.
“Uncle Logan!” Michaela appears at my elbow, clutching a sparkler that isn’t lit yet because David has forbidden any fireworks until after sunset.
“Did you know that the Fourth of July isn’t actually the day we declared independence?
The Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2nd.
July 4th is just when they approved the wording of the document. ”
“I did know that.”
“Most people don’t. It’s a common misconception.” She looks up at me with an expression that suggests she’s been waiting to share this fact all day. “Also, John Adams thought we should celebrate on July 2nd. He was really mad about the whole thing.”
“History is full of people being mad about things.”
“That’s basically what my dad says about the law.” She peers past me toward where Audrey is helping Layla set up the dessert table. “Are you going to marry her?”
I nearly choke on my drink. “What?”
“Audrey. Are you going to marry her? Because I call flower girl if you do, and I need to know if I should start planning my outfit. I don’t want to be wearing the same dress for your wedding as I wear for Layla and Bennett’s.”
“You don’t think you should wait to be asked before you plan your outfit?”
Her hands go to her hips. “It’s implied. Do you see any other little girls around here?” She makes a show of looking around at the party full of adults.
“You may have a point.”
“Exactly. And I like to be proactive, Uncle Logan. There’s a market for flower girl dresses in my size, but it’s niche.” Michaela shrugs, as if she’s tired of waiting for the world to catch up with her.
There’s no reasonable response, so I nod. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
She tilts her head. “So? Are you going to marry her?”
I glance toward Audrey, who’s laughing at something Serena said, the sunset painting gold streaks through her hair. The curls are fully back now—the blonde dyed back to her usual brown. She looks like herself. She looks like home.
“Yes,” I tell Michaela. “I am.”
Her face transforms into pure smugness. “I knew it. I’m very good at predictions. It’s a skill.”
“Don’t tell anyone. It’s supposed to be a surprise.”
“My lips are sealed.” She mimes zipping them shut, then immediately unzips them. “But you should do it during the fireworks. That’s romantic. I saw it in a movie once.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.”
She nods seriously and runs off to interrogate someone else, sparkler still unlit and waving like a conductor’s baton.
David appears beside me, two beers in hand. He passes one over without comment.
“Your daughter just extracted my proposal plans in under thirty seconds.”
“She’s terrifyingly efficient. I blame the debate camp I let Caleb talk me into.” He takes a long drink. “For what it’s worth, I think you should do it. The proposal. Tonight.”
“Because of the fireworks?”
“Because you look at her like she’s the answer to a question you’ve been asking your whole life.” He shrugs. “That’s not something you wait on.”
I turn the bottle in my hands, watching the condensation drip. “I have a ring. I’ve had it for three weeks. I keep taking it out of the drawer and putting it back.”
“Why?”
“Because what if she says no?”
David laughs. “Logan. That woman wants to be with you. She sat through a PowerPoint presentation about cohabitation timelines. She’s looked at fourteen houses with you in the past two weeks without once complaining about your ranking system.”
“Seventeen houses. We saw three more yesterday.” I take a drink. “We made an offer on a brownstone in Lincoln Park. Four bedrooms, a garden, a kitchen that made Audrey gasp out loud. It’s not as big as my current place, but it’s—”
“Yours.”
“Ours. That’s the point. These giant estates…” I look around at the giant lakeside monstrosity I barely even use and shrug. “They were never my thing.” I turn the bottle in my hands. “And the brownstone feels just right.”
“That’s great. I hope it works out for you.”
“Oh, it has. The sellers accepted this morning. We close in thirty days.”
David’s eyebrows rise. “And you’re just mentioning this now?”
“I was going to announce it tonight. After—” I gesture vaguely toward my pocket, where the ring box is currently burning a hole through the fabric.
“After you propose.”
“If she says yes.”
“Logan.” David fixes me with a look. “The woman just bought a house with you. A house with four bedrooms, which, for the record, suggests she’s thinking about more than just the two of you. She’s not going to say no.”
The statistical probability of acceptance is high, but—
“Stop calculating.” David’s voice is firm but kind. “Just ask her. The rest will take care of itself.”
Easy for him to say. He’s not the one whose brain runs probability matrices on every possible outcome, including several that involve public humiliation and emergency evacuation protocols.
But he’s also not wrong.
This is happening. I’m proposing.
Tonight.
By the time we’re all crowded around the long table on the deck, I’m a bundle of nerves.
Audrey’s family on one end, loud and overlapping, passing dishes without asking and arguing about whether the Cubs have a chance this year.
Bennett and Layla are debating weekend getaway venues with Serena, while Dominic attempts to engage Jenna in conversation and receives monosyllabic responses for his trouble.
Caleb stands, tapping his glass, and the table gradually quiets.
“Before we get to the fireworks and the inevitable sugar coma from Layla’s pie—”
“It’s award-winning pie,” Layla interjects.
“—award-winning pie, David and I have an announcement.”
David rises to join him, and something in their matching expressions makes the table go still.
“As most of you know, we’ve been talking for a while about making a change,” David says. “Doing something that actually matters, instead of just billing hours for corporations that don’t give a damn about anything except the bottom line.”
“So we’re doing it.” Caleb grins. “Kingsley & Kingsley. We’re opening a law firm together.”
The table erupts. Bennett is on his feet immediately, pulling both brothers into a hug that looks more like a tackle. Serena is crying—happy tears, she insists, wiping them away. Michaela pumps her fist and shouts something about ‘neep-o-sheep-em’.
“What’s neep-o-sheep-em?” Audrey asks me, and I shrug.
“Nepotism.” Serena leans in. “Michaela’s version. It’s a long story.”
Audrey sighs happily and rests her head on my shoulder. “I love this great big crazy family of ours.”
“They’re not technically—”
“They’re family.” She squeezes my hand under the table. “Yours and mine. That’s how it works.”
I look around the table—at Bennett raising a toast, at Dominic pretending he’s not watching Jenna, at Audrey’s brothers who’ve already started arguing about whether lawyers are more or less useful than mechanics.
At David and Caleb, side by side, finally doing the thing they’ve talked about for years.
Family isn’t DNA. It’s showing up. It’s choosing each other, again and again, even when it’s complicated. Even when it’s hard.
I reach into my pocket and feel the ring box.
Tonight.
I wait until the sun has fully set and the first fireworks are being set up on the dock. Audrey is standing at the railing, wrapped in a blanket I brought from the house, watching her brothers attempt to organize the launch sequence while her father supervises with increasing exasperation.
“They’re going to blow something up,” she says as I join her. “Not the fireworks. Themselves.”
“Mike seems confident.”
“Mike thought he could fix a garbage disposal with a butter knife last Thanksgiving. Confidence is not the issue.”
I laugh, and she leans into me, her head finding its familiar spot against my shoulder. The lake is dark now, reflecting the first stars, and somewhere across the water another family’s fireworks are already popping in bursts of red and gold.
“Hey, Audrey?”
“Hmm?”
“I need to tell you something.”
She tilts her head up, her expression shifting to concern. “That sounds serious.”
“It is. Kind of.” I take a breath. My heart is doing something erratic that would concern a cardiologist. “I had a plan for tonight. A very detailed plan. I wanted to make sure I covered all the relevant variables.”
“Logan, what—”
“But the thing is, plans don’t really work with you. You’re too unpredictable. Too extraordinary. Every time I think I’ve figured out the optimal approach, you do something that rewrites all my calculations.”
She’s staring at me now, her eyes wide.
“So I’m throwing out the plan.” I reach into my pocket and pull out the box. “And I’m just going to ask.”
“Oh my god.”
I drop to one knee. Behind us, I’m vaguely aware that the deck has gone quiet—that everyone is watching, that Michaela is probably already composing her flower girl acceptance speech—but all I can see is Audrey. Her face in the starlight. The tears already forming in her eyes.
“I spent thirty-four years thinking I was broken. That my brain worked wrong, that I’d never fit anywhere, that love was something that happened to other people—normal people—and I’d just have to watch from the outside.
” My voice cracks, but I keep going. “Then you walked into my world with your wild hair and your glasses falling down your nose, and you argued with my code, and you laughed at my terrible jokes, and you made me feel like maybe I wasn’t broken after all.
Maybe I was just waiting for the right person to see me. ”
“Logan—”