Epilogue
The father plays with a little girl with light, soft curls and the boy with dark tousled hair in the waves of an island in the Atlantic. They laugh when the water comes in, dancing around their feet as the first few weeks of warm summer weather arrive.
The mother’s heart fills with warmth as she watches them from a blanket on the beach, cradling the little girl in her arms who sleeps peacefully, unaware of the horrors that live in the world outside this island.
I would give my dying breath to protect them. Shield them until they can’t feel the harsh pain this world can bring, but . . . I also know that if I do that, they’ll never get to experience the complete joy you can find if you just let life take its course.
They have no idea there was another man before their father. They don’t need to. Not until they’re older and they can understand. They don’t know what the scars mean on their daddy’s back, nor that Mommy used to be terrified of the exact ocean they now play in.
They don’t know that in the very house they call home, their stories would be born from a broken fisherman and a lonely widow who found comfort in the abandoned house that sat empty for so long, the town below forgot it was there.
They don’t know it’s where we sorted through our broken pieces to mold something whole and perfect of our own. They’ll never meet Pap, Gran, Al . . . They’ll never know how a simple bag of overpriced cat food started it all or that the inn that is their legacy was once in a crumbling state of disrepair.
They’ll never know why Daddy is Mommy’s hero, who pulled her from the dark depths of the Mississippi when everything faded to black.
I suppose it’s no different than any other love story that’s been told, but in the end, maybe two supporting characters can get that famed, romance novel ending. Maybe Romeo and Juliet didn’t have to die. Maybe Peter didn’t have to lose Wendy . . . And maybe, just maybe, the mysterious fisherman who washed up in a little unsuspecting town found love with the broken girl he’d met for only a fleeting moment in another lifetime.
“Don’t chase the dog.” Reid watches as the little girl runs after the black lab— Rock, as the kids named him. Toast trots along behind them, old and gray now, but so in love with the kids, he’d follow them to the ends of the earth.
Reid shakes his head, looking up the beach at me, still cradling our baby in my arms and winks. My stomach fills with butterflies and that same, dangerous heat winds through my veins.
Even after ten years . . . the man can still break me.
I love him more than the day I lost him.
Even more than the day I got him back.
Like Pappap said, God rest his soul, we’re two people who share the same heart. The wind and the water, meeting in the middle to form the waves that carry ships home. To rebuild an inn. To make an abandoned house a home, complete with secret wardrobe hideouts and magical rose gardens.
We were born of pain, but somewhere along the way, we morphed into something beautiful.
Pain is inevitable. Heartbreak is a promise. Death is forever. It can force you to give up completely. Or it can make you start over again.
I know there will be times when I’ll be catapulted back into that river where I feel like I’m drowning all over again. I know I’ll still think about the boy with the blue eyes and the hair like nutmeg and grow sad that his life didn’t end up the way it should have. I can still remember how it felt to be trapped in those memories.
But . . . as I watch my husband hold tight to our kids, an arm around each as he kneels in the wet sand to point out a little crab scuttling across, I also know that for them, I’d do anything. Including drag myself back from that dark place.
Because I’m loved. I’m in love.
And I’m fucking free.