Epilogue #2
Mel led her to the sofa and sat her down.
There were presents under the tree for each of them—they’d both tucked something under there occasionally from the day they’d put it up.
Abigail had knitted him a hooded sweater, and made him three new flannel shirts.
She’d put together a gift box of his favorite soap, and she’d added a bar of beard soap (a new thing in her catalog of wares), and a boar-bristle brush she’d found in Me Day’s small collection of men’s products.
Though his beard was thick and gorgeous, the sable streaked almost artistically with white, he shaved his throat and the tops of his cheeks every day.
There were several gifts for her as well.
She couldn’t imagine what they might be, and she hadn’t tried. She wanted to savor the surprise.
Mel ignored those gifts and went straight for the stockings. As he lifted hers from its hook, he noticed the new lump in his and turned to her with a bright smile and raised eyebrows. She returned a sly grin.
Taking up the seat beside her, he handed the green stocking to her and set his on his lap.
“You have to open yours, too,” she prodded, but he shook his head.
“Uh-uh. You first.”
Relenting, she reached into her stocking and got hold of a small box, clearly wood. She wasn’t surprised to see a rose etched into the top of a hinged wooden box, but this one was slightly larger and more oblong than the box that had held her ring.
She lifted the lid and gasped. Bedded in creamy satin lay an oval labradorite cabochon.
Labradorite was her favorite stone; richly blue and deeply iridescent, it seemed to hold whole worlds among its floating layers of shine.
It was a powerful stone in wiccan and other ancient traditions, said to draw positive energies into the spirit and quell or repel negative forces around the wearer.
But this cabochon, an oval about an inch and a half long, meant much more than that, because it had been engraved. Etched into its face were the initials M and A in a classic calligraphy script, the lower serif of the M stretching out to form the crossbar of the A. Two becoming one.
The stone was set in a plain silver bezel, threaded with a black silk cord. When Abigail lifted it from its box, she felt engraving on the back and flipped it to look.
A simple statement: the current year, a dash, and an infinity symbol. Now until forever.
“Oh, love,” she whispered, awe throttling the volume of her voice. “Oh, love.”
“Exactly,” he said quietly, brushing his fingertips across her cheek. “Love. Forever.”
He held out his hand, and she placed the gift in his palm. Then she scooted so her back was to him and lifted her hair while he fastened it around her neck.
“It’s too fancy for my fluffy robe,” she said, smiling down at the stone in her hand, “but I don’t know how I’ll ever take it off.”
“Nothing’s ever too fancy for you, babe.”
Of course that wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter. She loved her man’s love-addled eyes.
Directing those eyes to his lap, she said, “Your turn.”
As he reached into his stocking, a flash of worry that the watch was no match for the pendant almost struck her, but she brushed it away. The importance of a gift was the feeling it carried. It truly was the thought that counted.
As he pulled out the box and began to tear the paper away, she realized something even greater: they had both been thinking of the time they had together, the life they would share, as a new life. A fresh start, something to be measured only as itself.
He opened the box. For a moment, he only stared at the watch inside it. Abigail waited, studying him, worry trying again to catch hold.
“You know,” Mel began, still focused on the watch, “my grandfather had a wooden pocket watch. His grandfather made it. I was fascinated by it when I was a kid. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
He kept it in a box on his bureau, and he used to take it out and let me hold it and sort of .
.. study it, I guess, while he told me about his own dad and grandpa.
He promised to leave it to me when he died.
But ... you know, I got older and busier, and I pretty much forgot about that watch for a long time.
He left me just about everything when he went, and I looked for it when I packed up their stuff, but I never found it.
I don’t know if he lost it or sold it or it got caught up in their stuff and I accidentally gave it away.
” A soft chuckle slipped from his lips. “I never told anybody about that watch before.”
Abigail stayed quiet. She wasn’t sure if she’d made a terrible mistake or done something good with this gift.
Then he turned to her, and she saw deep, bright emotion swirling in his eyes. “This is beautiful, Abs. It’s perfect. Feels like my grampa’s watch found me again.”
She remembered the day she’d seen the watch in the display case, how she’d felt so sure it was Mel’s. Now she understood.
He was working the watch from its box. When he had it free, he studied it deeply, examining the variations of color in the wood, watching the way light played on the cobalt complications. Abigail said nothing, waiting for him to see the other part of the gift.
Finally he turned it over and read the sentiment engraved there.
Time began when I found you. Forever, Abs
He looked up. When Abigail saw the way his eyes sparkled, her throat closed with her own incipient tears.
“For me, too, Abs,” he whispered, setting the watch aside and pulling her into his arms. “For me, too.”
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THE END