Epilogue #2
“Then you’re overdue. As a matter of fact, buy the stretchy kind.
They’re a revelation.” I hook my thumb under the waistband of my own maternity jeans and pull, demonstrating the elastic with the enthusiasm of an infomercial host. “See this? Pregnancy pants. No zipper, no button, just faith and elastic. These jeans have changed my relationship with food, with sitting, and with the entire concept of waistlines. I may never go back.”
Eleanor stares at the elastic waistband with an expression that suggests I’ve shown her something medically concerning. “That’s not fashion, Celeste. That’s surrender.”
“It’s comfort. And comfort is the ultimate luxury. I should embroider that on a throw pillow.”
“Well, don’t put that pillow in my house.”
“You sure? The furniture in your ice castle is so stiff. A pillow could help.”
“Ha. Ha.” There’s not even the ghost of a smile on her face.
She closes the folio, which is her version of a white flag, and folds her hands in her lap.
The combative energy softens. She looks at my belly, and the look that crosses her face is the one I’ve come to recognize as the other Eleanor.
The human one who lives underneath the blazers and the bullet points and the relentless opinions about party menus.
The one who is, against all odds and against her own expectations, becoming a grandmother for the second time.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, and her voice has dropped the boardroom register. It’s quieter. Almost careful.
“Nothing remotely worth complaining about,” I say. “The nausea is persistent and creative in its timing, and I’ve developed a relationship with saltines that borders on romantic. But Wren is getting a sister, and I’m thrilled.”
“Me too,” Eleanor says. Two words. No elaboration.
But her eyes stay on my belly for a beat longer than necessary, and I can see the math she’s doing.
It’s the same math she did standing in front of Whit’s grave a year ago, recalculating what family means and where she fits inside it.
She fits. It took us both a while to build the door, but she walked through it, and she’s not leaving.
She stands, smooths her trousers, and begins a slow tour of my office that I’ve come to recognize as her post-meeting wind-down ritual.
She straightens a frame on the credenza.
Adjusts the angle of a vase on the windowsill.
Runs her finger along the edge of my bookshelf and inspects it for dust, which she finds, and addresses with a look of personal betrayal directed at my cleaning service.
“You know,” she says, pausing at Patrice, “this gown is extraordinary.”
“Thank you.”
“The color is exceptional.”
“It’s Regal Plum.”
Eleanor tilts her head, considering. “That’s not bad. I might have gone with Imperial Amethyst, but Regal Plum has a certain accessibility.”
“Imperial Amethyst? Damn, Eleanor.” I hand over nothing but air. “Here’s the crown. Consider me humbled. That’s a great name. But no, we’re going with Regal Plum.”
“Why?”
“Because I want this to feel approachable. I want women to feel like they can wear it, not like the dress is going to wear them.”
“Is it all finished?”
“Yes, except for pockets. We’re working that into the final production.”
“Pockets?”
I look at her very seriously. “Yes, pockets. Like Target dresses.”
Eleanor nods like I just insulted her religion. She touches the sleeve of the gown the way I’ve seen her touch Whitney’s headstone—with reverence, with grief, with the quiet understanding that beautiful things are worth protecting even when they can’t protect you back.
She finally bores of the gown and continues through my office to investigate the imperfections. I have a conversation with my best friend that takes place entirely inside my chest.
You planned this, didn’t you, Whit? You absolute menace. You knew leaving me with Wren would shackle me to your mother until the end of time.
I can almost hear her laughing. That big, room-filling laugh that made strangers turn and stare and waiters bring extra bread because they wanted to be near whatever was making someone that happy.
I love her, Whit. She drives me insane, but I love her. And she loves Wren in a way that would make you cry, the good kind, the kind where you’re not sad but your body needs to do something with all that feeling so it picks crying because it’s the only release valve big enough.
I hope you can see this. I hope wherever you are, you can see that the people you loved figured it out.
It took a cemetery, a bankruptcy, a fake engagement, a real one, a marker ring, an Australian, a puppy, a caseworker named Janet, a check written in a cemetery, and one deeply unfortunate conversation about mozzarella sticks, but we figured it out.
I miss you. Every day. But I’m not sad anymore. I’m just grateful. For the trust. For the time we had. For the little girl with your red hair who is about to come through that door any second now because I can hear her father’s boots in the hallway and she’s probably chewing on his collar.
Right on cue, the office door opens and Saylor walks in with Wren on his hip.
She’s gotten so big. A year of growing has transformed her from the scrunched, fist-clenching bundle I held in the hospital into a bright-eyed, copper-haired tornado of opinions and motion.
She’s wearing a yellow dress that Ada picked out and tiny white shoes that she’s already kicked off, because Wren has inherited her mother’s hair, her godmother’s stubbornness, and apparently Whit’s feelings about uncomfortable footwear.
“Look who it is, sweetie,” Saylor coos, bouncing her gently on his hip. “Mummy and Grandma.”
Wren’s face splits into a grin that takes up her entire head. She reaches for me with both arms, fingers opening and closing in the universal toddler signal for give me to that person immediately or face consequences.
Saylor sets her in my lap, careful to protect my belly.
She settles against my belly with a comfort reserved only for mama.
I’ve been her pillow, couch, and bed for so long, this little girl has a permanent butt print in my lap.
I never thought I was a cuddly person. When I met Saylor, I realized I was wrong.
When we met Wren, I realized I was very wrong.
She pats the bump twice with her palm, which she’s been doing for weeks, not because she understands what’s inside but because she’s noticed the bump is new and she’s conducting an ongoing investigation.
Saylor leans down and kisses my temple, and the warmth of his mouth lingers on my skin the way it always does—not fading so much as settling in, becoming part of the ambient temperature of my life.
“How’d the run go?” I ask.
“Sixteen-minute mile, but Mum ran the whole time.” He grins, and the pride in his face is luminous, the kind that can’t be performed or manufactured.
“The whole thing, Celeste. Start to finish. No cane, no stops. Doc Yassa said her mobility has improved forty percent since the surgery. She cried after. I cried after. Ruby cried after, but I think that’s because she wanted a treat. ”
Ruby, our red heeler, who has grown from a five-pound bundle of chaos into a thirty-pound bundle of slightly more organized chaos, probably ran the mile twice, because heelers don’t understand pacing and Ruby in particular doesn’t understand the concept of “enough.” Ada named her Ruby in the second week much to Saylor’s protest who wanted Roxanne.
Ada calmly explained that she loved him, but this was her puppy, and Saylor could suck it.
“Forty percent,” I repeat. “Saylor, that’s incredible.”
“She’s incredible. I just drive her to the appointments.
” He’s being modest, which is his default setting when it comes to anything he’s done for Ada.
The truth is that Saylor has attended every session, every follow-up, every grueling hour of physical therapy where his mother gritted her teeth and pushed through pain that would flatten most people.
He built a set of parallel bars in the backyard so she could practice walking between them, and he lined the path with flat stones so she wouldn’t trip, and he never once told her to slow down or be careful, because he learned, finally, that managing her was never the same as loving her.
“Are you ready for lunch?” Saylor asks. “What are you craving?”
I know the answer before the question is finished. The craving has been building since ten this morning, escalating through the board meeting, reaching its peak during Eleanor’s truffle brie offensive, and now sitting in my chest like a neon sign that will not be dimmed or reasoned with.
“Flamin’ Hot Cheetos,” I say.
Saylor and Eleanor produce identical eye-rolls in perfect synchronization, which is the only thing I’ve ever seen them agree on without negotiation.
“Those aren’t food,” Eleanor says.
“Those are chemical warfare in a bag,” Saylor adds.
“Those are what this baby wants, and this baby gets what this baby wants, and if either of you has a problem with that, you can take it up with my uterus, which is currently running this operation and has overruled both of you.”
Wren, sensing the energy shift, slaps my belly again and says something that sounds like “chee,” which I’m choosing to interpret as solidarity.
“See?” I say. “Wren agrees.”
“Wren agrees with everything that involves food,” Saylor points out. “She agreed with Ruby’s breakfast this morning. Literally. She tried to eat it.”
He scoops Wren off my lap, hoists her onto his hip, and extends his free hand to help me out of the chair, which I accept because I’ve reached the stage of pregnancy where standing up from a seated position requires either assistance or a small crane.
He pulls me to my feet and keeps holding my hand, his thumb running across the diamond on my ring finger with the absent, habitual tenderness of someone who touches it every time our hands connect, not because he’s checking if it’s still there but because the feel of it reminds him of a promise he made on the floor of an empty nursery with a Sharpie and a lopsided heart.
He wants to get married before the baby comes.
I say, what does it matter? We’ve been destiny since the beginning. Time doesn’t need to rush us now.
Eleanor is already at the door, folio tucked under her arm, prepared to lead us to lunch, clearly considering herself in charge of all outings regardless of whether she’s been appointed to the role.
“I’ll drive,” I say.
“You will not,” they argue in unison.
“Celeste, you drive like you’re being chased,” Eleanor adds.
“I’ve gotten better,” I protest.
“Yeah, but…not by that much, baby.” Saylor grimaces.
We file out of the office, past Patrice in her Regal Plum, past the corkboard where new fabric swatches hang in clusters that make sense only to me, past the window where I once watched Greg leave the building for the last time and felt a splinter slide free.
Saylor walks ahead with Wren on his hip, pointing out things through the hallway windows—birds, cars, a cloud that looks like a dog—and Wren responds to each one with the wide-eyed amazement of someone who has been alive for twelve months and is still not over the fact that the world exists.
Eleanor walks beside me, matching my slower pace without comment, which is her way of accommodating my pregnancy without acknowledging it as a limitation.
Eleanor does not believe in limitations, not for herself and not for the women she’s chosen to invest in.
The elevator arrives. We step in, all four of us—five, if you count the bump, and I do.
Saylor presses the lobby button. Wren grabs for the panel and manages to hit three additional floors before anyone can stop her, which means we’ll be making scenic stops on nine, five, and two, and Saylor will apologize to every confused person who watches the doors open on an elevator containing a laughing toddler, a pregnant woman, an impeccably dressed grandmother, and a man in work boots who is clearly outnumbered and wouldn’t have it any other way.
The doors close. The elevator begins its descent.
I catch my reflection in the polished metal wall—blurred, imprecise, more impression than portrait.
I can see the shape of my belly and the fall of my hair and the ring on my finger and the people standing beside me, and the image is distorted but the feeling is clear.
This is my life. Not the one I planned. Not the one I designed on a mood board or pitched to investors or sketched on a napkin at twenty-two with a girl in overalls who believed I could build an empire out of thread and nerve.
This life is better. It’s messier and louder and full of mozzarella sticks and elastic waistbands and a toddler who just pressed buttons willy-nilly in the elevator.
It’s full of people I didn’t expect and couldn’t have predicted and wouldn’t trade for any version of the future I once thought I wanted.
Not too old. Not too late. Just right on time.
The elevator stops at the second floor. The doors open. A man in a suit looks at our full, chaotic car with visible confusion.
“Going down?” he asks.
“Eventually,” Saylor says, grinning. “We’re taking the scenic route.”
The doors close. Wren laughs. Eleanor sighs. And I ride down with my family, floor by unnecessary floor, in no rush to arrive, because the destination was never the point.
The point was always the people in the car.