Epilogue
SADIE
The album drops one month later.
Our home studio has been a rotating door of sound engineers and a couple of producers. Even Carter Caldwell, the record company president, drops by.
He looks like a long-lost Rhodes brother, tall and handsome as all the others, though more debonair than rugged.
Walker gives him shit for his shiny designer shoes and Carter gives him shit for waiting two years to make a single song and then demanding to make the entire album in a couple of weeks.
Then they’re pulling out the whiskey and reminiscing about old times and arguing over the bass levels and I tune back out.
I’ve been looking for teaching jobs here and there, but mostly I’m writing songs.
Now I’m addicted to it. It’s like poetry, but with the additional fun puzzle of figuring out rhythm and repetition that suits a melody.
All my English-teacher skills are still being put to use, just in a different direction.
Walker pulls me in when he needs my help rewriting something on the fly and I listen to it come together.
One night, we’re in bed, his arms wrapped around me from behind while I read and he taps at his phone. Jonah is asleep. Outside the window the Montana sky is all stars.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand with a notification.
Walker Rhodes posted a new video.
I put my book down. Open my phone.
It's him, thirty seconds, just his face and his guitar in the low light of the studio. He looks relaxed. Happy. Like a man who has nothing to prove and knows it.
“New music,” he says on the screen. “The album is out now. It's called Heartstrings. Hope you like it.”
I lie there for a moment, thinking about it.
Heartstrings. Of course. A guitar has strings. So does a heart. Both are the kind that go slack and silent after enough neglect, that need coaxing back into tune.
The kind that once they start vibrating again, make beautiful music.
“I love the title,” I say softly.
His arms tighten around me. His lips find the back of my neck.
“Good,” he murmurs. “You're the one who gave it to me. It’s perfect. Just like you.”
I listen to the album over and over again.
Not just because I had a hand in shaping it, either. It’s Walker Rhodes at his best: sexy and raw, but smart and sensitive too.
And it’s our story. Our summer. The story of us, falling in love.
By morning, the record is everywhere.
By the end of the first week, it's platinum.
Walker takes it all with a shrug. He turns down every interview request, every promo opportunity, and all the mystery just feeds the frenzy.
By the end of the month, it’s gone double-platinum.
And we keep living our lives like a normal family. Pancakes and coffee. School runs. Weekend trail rides and dinners at Rosemont and every blissful, ordinary thing I didn’t ever dare let myself dream of.
On a random, blissful-but-ordinary Tuesday after that, while applying leather conditioner to all of our saddles, I wrinkle my nose as my phone buzzes. Normally I love the smell of leather, but today it’s making my stomach turn for some reason.
I step outside for fresh air and check my phone. It’s a notification from my bank, which always sends my pulse racing, and not in a good way.
At least this time it’s to tell me there’s a deposit, and not a low balance alert. I open up the app.
My heart drops.
I stare at the number. There has to be some mistake.
Still staring at the screen, I wander back into the barn where Walker is showing Jonah how to get a stone out his pony’s hoof with the pick.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Walker asks. He’s peering at me, instantly alert to something being off.
“There's been a mistake,” I say. “With my account.”
He wipes his hand on his jeans and comes over. “Let me take a look.”
When he glances at the screen, he says, “What’s the problem?”
“There’s an error with the balance. They must have misplaced the decimal point. Computer glitch maybe.”
“No, darlin’. Look. Direct deposit. That’s your earnings.”
“My what?”
“You’re a credited songwriter on a multi-platinum album. You co-wrote nine of the eleven tracks. That's your share.”
I stare at him. “But I was just helping for fun.”
“I told you you'd get credit for anything we wrote together.” He goes back to the pony’s hoof, easy and unhurried.
“This is…” I look at the number again, unable to wrap my head around it. “This is an enormous amount of money. And I didn’t earn it.”
He straightens up and looks at me. Whatever he sees on my face makes him hand the pony’s lead to Jonah and come over. He takes the phone from my hand and sets it on the barn rail and takes both my hands in his.
“You earned every fucking penny. Those songs wouldn’t exist without you. You tell me, right now, from memory, which lines are yours, and which are mine?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Exactly. Because we blended them all together. A little lyrical DNA milkshake.”
I laugh. And then look at the number again, and my stomach flip-flops. It’s starting to hit me now. “You mean… this is real?”
“It’s real. How does it feel to be a self-made millionaire?”
I look at our joined hands. At the cushion-cut engagement ring on my finger, a replacement for the cherry ring pop. At the barn we're standing in with the mountains visible through the open doors and our son talking to his pony ten feet away.
I think about a ten year old girl in an empty house making a promise to herself. Staring down a future that looked like her mother's and deciding it wouldn't be.
I think about every summer job, every tutoring session, every book I read instead of going to parties, every choice I made.
Everything it took to get from that doorway to this one.
Not that far if you had to walk it.
But a whole world away.
I did it, I think. I actually did it.
Not quite the way I planned. Better.
And then I throw up all over Walker’s boots.
He blinks up at me. “Well. That’s one way to take the news.”
I clap a hand over my mouth. “Oh God. I’m so sorry. I’m just…”
I run to the grass outside and throw up again.
Walker is immediately by my side, pulling my hair away from my face, rubbing my back. “Baby? Are you sick?” His green eyes are filled with worry now.
“Must be.”
After kicking off his poor, wrecked cowboy boots, Walker helps me to the bedroom and gets me set up with ginger ale and the saltines we keep around for when Jonah is sick.
For the next twenty four hours, I alternate between getting sick and sleeping, trying to get over this crazy stomach bug.
Then, at five in the morning, I wake up with a ravenous craving for beef tacos with spicy salsa, which I rarely eat but now inexplicably want for breakfast, of all meals, with the passion of a thousand fiery suns.
Walker is already up, just coming out of the bathroom and getting ready to head out on the ranch when he sees I’m awake.
He pushes my hair back from my forehead and drops a kiss there. “Still no fever. That’s good. Anything I can get you, darlin’?”
“Yes,” I say, and then explain my taco craving in great detail, telling him exactly how I want the shredded lettuce and sour cream and extra spicy salsa.
He listens calmly. “Okay. You sit tight. I’ll be right back.”
Thirty minutes later, he’s returned with the tacos of my dreams. He sits by my side, watching me devour them in bed like an animal.
“Feeling better?” he asks.
“Much.”
“Good.” He smiles, then goes to the little plastic bag he got from the pharmacy and pulls out a small cardboard box. He presses it into my hands. “Given your symptoms, we might want to see what this has to say.”
I stare at the box. It’s a pregnancy test kit.
“Oh,” I say softly.
My mind races. When was my last period? I can’t remember.
Am I a week late? Two?
I've been so deep inside the album, inside the writing, inside this new life we've been building that I haven't been paying attention to my own body. I've been so busy being happy.
“Oh shit,” I whisper.
Two minutes later, we’re both in the bathroom. Waiting.
Two minutes has never lasted longer in my entire life.
I sit on the edge of the bathtub and Walker sits beside me and neither of us looks at the test. We look at each other instead. His green eyes steady on mine.
And then we’re staring at two pink lines on the test kit.
I look up at him with huge eyes. “There’s a baby inside me.”
Walker’s arms come around my waist. His gaze is searching my face, but I can tell he’s trying really hard not to smile. “There’s a baby inside you. My baby.”
“Our baby,” I remind him. So bossy.
The smile breaks through. “Our baby.”
I start crying and laughing at the same time and then he’s holding me tight, kissing me everywhere. I can’t believe there’s a person inside me. Half Walker. Half me. A whole new soul.
I think about the summer. The fireworks. The music and lyrics. His hands on me. We made something beautiful that night together. And now we’ve made something else.
Someone else.
I can barely comprehend the weight of it.
The magic of it.
“Hey.” Walker touches my face. “You okay?”
“I'm so okay,” I say. “I'm the most okay I've ever been in my life. I don’t know how you managed to defeat the pill, though.”
“Super swimmers,” he says, eyes twinkling with joy and not a little male arrogance.
More like I probably wasn’t taking it at exactly the same time of day, but I let him have his moment.
His arms come around me and he holds on and I feel him laugh into my hair. He kisses me, then pulls back again to look at the test one more time like he needs to confirm it's still true.
“When do we tell Jonah?” I ask.
“Soon.”
I bite my lip. “What about the wedding?”
We’d been planning to get married in the spring. But, doing the math in my head, I’m either going to be extremely pregnant or literally giving birth.
“I guess we have to postpone,” I say.
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “Absolutely not.”
“Walker, I do not want my water to break at the altar.”
He laughs. “We’re not postponing. We’re moving it up. How’s this Saturday?”