Epilogue
Five Years Later
There's a sausage on fire in my backyard, and the man whose actual job is putting fires out is the one who lit it.
"It's caramelizing," Cole says.
"It's cremating." I lean past him and rescue what's left, which isn't much. "Five years married to a firefighter and I'm the one who knows where the water is."
He catches me round the waist before I can get away and pulls me back into him. He kisses the top of my head like that settles it.
It usually does.
Five years it’s been.
Our anniversary.
We do it like this every year now. A backyard barbecue, too much food, the whole loud crowd of them.
Ribs, because of course it's ribs. It was always going to be ribs.
There is nothing romantic about it. There's a paddling pool with a crack in it. Three kids who've ignored every word I've said since eight this morning. A water-pistol war in the side yard I'm choosing not to investigate.
I wouldn't change a single thing.
That's the part I still can't get used to. How much I mean that.
I had a plan once.
An actual folder, labeled Five Year Plan. And not one line in it said get pregnant by a man you met at work and marry him before the morning sickness stops. Which is roughly the order it went in.
Pregnant fast.
Married within a month of the blue line. Cole in a suit that didn't quite fit across the shoulders, Captain Brooks giving me away.
Too fast, I kept thinking back then. Everybody said it. Slow down.
Turns out it wasn't going fast enough. It hasn't slowed down for a single day since, and not once have I regretted it.
I tell people we met at work. Which is true. It's just not the whole sentence.
The whole sentence has a gearshift in it, and I will never tell my mother the specifics. It is not the most ceremonial way to begin the love of your life.
I'd do it again tomorrow, though. In a heart beat.
"Aunt Maya, Theo put a rib in the pool."
"Is it still in the pool?"
A pause. "...No."
And she's gone, shrieking, back into it. They are loud and feral and sticky, and they argue like it's an Olympic event. Some days I lock myself in the bathroom for ninety seconds just to remember my own name. And they are, without any competition at all, the most astonishing thing I have ever done.
I still work.
Cole was never going to let me give up the thing I'd wanted since I was twelve, and I'd have fought him if he tried.
I had a man walk last month for the first time since his accident and I cried in my car after, the good kind.
The job's still mine. It's just not the biggest thing anymore.
Across the yard Danny's holding court by the cooler. Fifteen now and far too cool for any of us.
He’s here with his mom and her new boyfriend and the baby that's made her tired and happy in equal measure.
He still calls Cole on his birthday. He'll do it for the rest of his life.
Ryder's got my youngest up on his shoulders and his own two circling his legs like sharks.
He's built like his brother.
Same shoulders, same way of going quiet in a loud room. And my kids climb him like he's playground equipment, which is the highest honor they hand out.
His wife leans in with a plate and says something low, and he laughs that big unhurried laugh of his.
Then one of the little ones tips too far off his shoulders, and his hand is just there.
Fast, before anyone else has drawn breath.
And of course it is. He's a Brennan.
Cut from the same cloth.
The kind of men who'd walk into a fire for somebody else's kid without breaking stride.
"You're staring," Cole says, handing me a beer.
"I'm admiring my life."
"Mm." He follows my look to his brother and the chaos. "He's good with them."
"He's a Brennan,” I say. “You're all unbearable about it."
Lilly catches my eye from across the yard, where she's refereeing some dispute between her husband and the grill. She raises her drink to me.
Happy anniversary.
I raise mine back.
Cole finds me in the kitchen when I come in for more cups.
His hands settle on my hips. His chest comes warm against my back. His mouth comes down by my ear.
"It's our anniversary," he says, low. "Been thinking about it all day."
"You've been thinking about it while you incinerated a packet of sausages?”
"I multitask,” he says.
And then he tells me, very quietly, very specifically, what he's been thinking about.
The cups stop.
"Cole,” I say. “There are a dozen people in our backyard. Some of them came out of my body."
"Five minutes."
"It has never once taken five minutes with you,” I say. “That's how we got the four-year-old."
"So we've got time."
Outside, somebody yells that the grill's on fire again. I turn in his arms, and there's the corner of his mouth doing the thing it does. The one I've spent five years keeping in practice.
"Five minutes," I tell him. "And I mean it."
I don't mean it. He knows I don't.
He's already got my hand, already pulling me toward the stairs, and I'm already laughing.
And the grill can burn.
Best thing I never planned.
The End