Chapter 30
Epilogue
The first time the baby kicked hard enough for Lucas to feel it, Sia had laughed and cried at the same time. The sensation was so startling and intimate and impossibly full of promise that it seemed to ripple through her bones.
Lucas had taken to rising before dawn to take care of the girls so she could sleep another hour.
He pressed kisses to her temple every time he passed her, and she had never seen him so openly joyful.
He was unguarded in his anticipation, because he would pause mid-sentence just to feel her belly and murmur plans into the curve of her neck about fishing trips and bedtime stories.
The girls had transformed in their own fierce, astonishing ways, circling Sia with the intensity of small knights sworn to a queen they loved more than their own comfort.
They would read aloud to the baby in the evenings and if a stranger in town forgot etiquette and reached toward Sia’s belly without asking, the girls’ shoulders squared in such synchronized indignation that Sia sometimes had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at the ferocity of their devotion.
Even Spirit, who had grown broader but no less chaotic, seemed to sense the shift in the household’s rhythm.
She still knocked over buckets and attempted to nibble the hems of freshly washed dresses with unwavering enthusiasm, but she developed the peculiar habit of stationing herself near Sia’s chair in the afternoons.
She eyed anyone who approached as if she, too, had accepted a solemn charge to guard what was coming.
More than one bleat meant someone was getting headbutted.
Lucas and the girls argued playfully about names for the baby, but they had decided together that they would wait until the birth to find out if they were welcoming a son or a daughter.
Some surprises deserved to bloom in their own time, untouched by speculation or preference. They were all excited for either.
There were nights when she woke to the vastness of the responsibility ahead and the knowledge that love, however fierce, did not grant immunity from loss or pain.
In those moments, Lucas would gather her close without asking questions, his breath steady against her hair, and his hand splayed protectively across the life they had made.
He would remind her that their home had never been built on the certainty of outcome but on the decision to choose one another despite it all.
They had all stood as a family in front of Dian’s portrait and thanked her for watching over them. No longer was she a ghost in their midst. She was now a beloved memory who had created the foundation of the family they were now.
They knew with a certainty that settled deep and unshakable that this child would enter a world already knit tight with devotion, already defended by laughter and tenderness and the simple, daily courage of people who chose love as their governing law.
And as the last light slipped over the mountains, Lucas pressed a lingering kiss to her shoulder, Sia closed her eyes and felt the baby shift within her, a small, insistent reminder that the future was a living presence growing stronger by the day.
They understood more fully than ever before that whatever storms might rise, their family would hold.
And that was enough.
THE END