47. Epilogue—The Following October
EPILOGUE—THE FOLLOWING OCTOBER
Alba
The Butcher’s Den wasn’t open yet.
This was my favorite part: the before. The quiet that existed specifically because the chaos hadn’t arrived yet—no screaming teenagers, no fog machines choking the hallways, no ticket booth disasters or floors sticky with spilled soda and the brand of poor decision-making that came with cheap Halloween candy and unsupervised groups of sixteen-year-olds.
Just quiet.
Just the building, the people who loved it, and the slow, satisfying work of making something come back to life for another season.
You could always tell what kind of year it was going to be by how pre-season went.
Props going up without a fight meant a good year.
A fog machine acting possessed meant everyone was going to be miserable by the third weekend.
A mysterious smell in hallway three that no one could locate the source of meant Miles would spend two weeks convinced the building was haunted, which was both ironic and exhausting.
So far, this year has been smooth. Almost suspiciously so.
I was on a ladder near the entrance arch, stretching just far enough to staple black fabric into place, the material pulling taut between my fingers while the staple gun clicked satisfyingly with each press.
Below me, Miles was losing a deeply personal argument with a bundle of fake dead vines that refused to look convincingly dead despite being fake and therefore within his control to arrange however he wanted.
He had been fighting them for eleven minutes.
I’d been counting.
“Left,” I called down without looking.
“It is left.” He was already at the register of irritation, which meant we were about four minutes from him setting them down, walking away, and taking a time out.
“Other left.”
He said something under his breath that I chose not to hear, something about creative directors and the slow erosion of marital patience, which—fair. Completely fair. I had been told I was a lot to work with, and I’d never once disputed it.
I smiled to myself and pressed the last staple into place.
The arch looked good. It always looked good. That was the thing about doing something long enough—you stopped second-guessing it and started trusting your own hands.
I climbed down, my boots thudding against the concrete floor, and stepped back to look at it properly.
“Looking good?” Miles asked, having apparently reached a temporary truce with the vines.
“Yup!”
He nodded once. That was enough for both of us.
I wiped my hands on my jeans and glanced toward the corridor that led to the control room, the offices, and hallway six. “Camera Six working?”
Miles shrugged, not looking up from what he was doing. “I mean, sure.”
Hallway Six had history. Every year, it had something—a prop malfunction, a temporary wall that collapsed at the worst possible moment, a generator issue that plunged half the building into darkness twenty minutes before opening on a Saturday night.
Small disasters. The kind that became funny exactly one year after they happened.
Last year was different, and I was so grateful. I was never going to stop checking Camera Six. It felt like the least I could do to honor the universe from her as a best friend.
The control room smelled like it always did— setting spray and stage foundation, the ghost of a hundred nights spent turning volunteers into monsters under fluorescent light. The monitors flickered on one by one when I hit the switch, casting the room in a pale, shifting glow.
Empty corridors. Half-hung chains. People carrying props in and out of frame, laughing at something out of shot. They were entirely unaware they were being observed.
I pulled the chair out and sat. Miles leaned against the doorframe behind me, arms crossed, watching with patient energy.
The monitors cycled through the hallways. I watched each one the way I always did, methodically, checking for anything that needed attention before the season opened. A prop out of place. A light out. Something that would become a problem at the worst possible time if I didn’t catch it now.
Hallway Six came up on the rotation.
I leaned forward.
Salem stood in the middle of the corridor with her hands on her hips, scanning the walls.
She fit here now, like the Den had rearranged itself to make room for her.
A year ago, she’d been a stranger who’d gotten too deep into the building on opening night.
Now, she knew where every breaker box was and had opinions about the fog machine calibration that were, honestly, not wrong.
Although I anticipated her “hate” for Halloween talk, it never came.
Something quiet and satisfied settled in my chest.
Ethan walked into frame behind her, moving with ease.
His arms were full of replacement lantern cords.
He set the cords down slowly and stood there, looking at her the way he always looked at her.
That look had made their feelings obvious to everyone in a thirty-foot radius approximately four days after they met—except to them, which had been exhausting to witness.
This was different.
He looked nervous.
I could see it in the set of his shoulders, in the way he shifted his weight. He seemed to make a decision, and he went still.
On screen, Ethan reached back—slowly, carefully. The small box appeared. Dark. Tucked behind him like he’d been holding it for a while.
My hand flew to my mouth, and I spun around in the chair. Behind me, Miles was looking at the monitor with the expression of a man who already knew what was happening.
I smacked his shoulder playfully. “Miles.”
“Mm.”
“Miles.”
“Mm.”
“You knew.”
The corner of his mouth moved in a way I recognized as him trying—and failing—not to look pleased with himself.
I elbowed him. Hard. “For how long?”
“Few weeks,” he said with great dignity.
“Weeks!”
“Shh.” He nodded at the monitor. “You’re going to miss it.”
I spun back around.
Salem had noticed him. She’d turned around, her expression shifting. She said something. He said something back, and she gestured toward the camera in the corner of the hallway.
Ethan followed her gaze and looked directly into the lens.
“He knows we’re watching,” I breathed.
“Of course, he knows. You made him install every camera in this building. The man could draw you a map of every angle.”
“Then he should have proposed somewhere without coverage. That’s on him, and that is absolutely on you for not telling me—”
“Watch the monitor, Alba.”
I did. On screen, Ethan looked back at Salem. He said something that made her roll her eyes, and then he brought his hand out from behind his back. He knelt down.
My lungs simply stopped.
The image on the monitor arranged itself into something I would remember for the rest of my life.
Salem froze.
Ethan started talking.
The microphone on Camera Six had never been exceptional—a fact I had complained about to Miles no fewer than six times. I couldn’t make out the words clearly, just the shape of them.
But I didn’t need to hear it.
I could see it in the way his shoulders were pulled tight, and his hands were steady. In the way he looked at her, like she was the only fixed point in the room.
“These tears,” I muttered, pressing the back of my hand against my eye. “Absolutely uninvited.”
“You’re crying.”
“I am reacting appropriately to stimuli. There’s a difference. Please focus on the monitor, and also we are going to talk about the ‘weeks’ thing later—”
“Later.”
Salem covered her mouth. Her shoulders shook once. She was laughing and crying at the same time, which was the only correct response to something like this.
She shook her head slowly, and her mouth formed the word.
Yes.
“I knew it,” I breathed. “I knew it the second she walked into this building. I knew it before either of them did.”
“It’s on the record,” he whispered.
My husband was soft where it counted, even when he didn’t want to admit it, even when he had been sitting on a proposal secret for three weeks and hadn’t said a word.
Ethan stood, pulled her into him, and spun her in the narrow hallway—a single, ridiculous, perfect spin. Her laughter carried faintly through the monitor’s speaker.
Right there in Hallway Six.
Right under the camera.
I thought of Rowan. The image of her arrived fully formed—the noise she would have made, the way she would have grabbed my arm, the running commentary she would have provided that would have somehow made the whole thing funnier and more emotional at the same time.
She was in Wisconsin now, building something for herself in the brave. I was proud of her.
Salem and I had a trip planned for Thanksgiving. It helped. The distance felt smaller when there was something on the calendar.
“Next up,” I said, mostly to myself, “Rowan and Paul.”
Miles laughed. “Rowan hates Paul.”
“You are so cute. Blind as a bat, but cute. Those two are desperately in love with each other. They just need a little shove.”
Miles looked at me for a long moment. “You’re a menace.”
“Mastermind.” I turned back to the monitor, already thinking.
Ethan kissed her again, slower this time. Like they had all the time in the world, which—in Hallway Six, in October, with the season about to open and the fog machines finally working and everything where it was supposed to be—they did.
I leaned back in my chair and looked at the screen for a long moment.
Then I turned to Miles. “Marketing gold.”
He closed his eyes. “Alba.”
“Miles.”
“You are not using their engagement as content.”
I turned back to the monitor. “I would never.”
He looked at me.
“I would never do it without asking,” I amended.
He made the sound. The laugh-cough. I had been married to that sound for long enough to find it genuinely endearing, which said everything about us that needed to be said.
On screen, Ethan kissed her one more time, and the camera kept rolling.
Salem
I looked down at my hand. The diamond ring surrounded by citrine gems couldn’t have been more perfect.
Still, this didn’t feel real.
“You know Alba is watching,” I said.
“I know,” he said without moving.
I laughed. He pulled me closer. Above us, a chain creaked in the draft. It was the soundtrack of our love.
I thought about the list. The broken arm. The chicken Caesar kiss. The first period in white jeans. Every bad thing October had ever taken from me, collected over the years like it was keeping score.
Turns out it was.
October was here.
I already knew it was going to be the best one yet.
THE END