Epilogue One Year Later #2
I’d never seen the man smile so wide. “I thought she’d never ask.”
Isobel gave us ten minutes, during which Eva did indeed haul me back into the privacy of the trees, but only to change. From our overnight pack, she dug out a slightly wrinkled sundress.
I warmed. This was the pink one. With the pockets.
“Am I clear?” she asked, already peeling off her T-shirt.
“You’re good.”
She tugged the dress over her biking shorts. This was one of my favorites. It was loose and pretty, perfect for summer. Best of all, it fell slightly off her shoulders. I loved that.
Eva tossed me a look. “Are you staring?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
She laughed, a little self-conscious.
I watched her freckles disappear beneath a layer of cotton. “When you blush,” I said as she tossed me a shirt of my own, “you match your dress.”
Her reaction only proved my point.
At Isobel’s request, there was no apparel in our party finer than a dusty pair of tennis shoes and a pair of suspenders Jack wore over his flannel shirt.
As officiant, he stood at the edge of the overlook, his back to the sky.
Affection swelled within me as I watched him pull a notecard from his pocket and mouth a few words.
It had been nine years since Dane Walker’s first wedding.
That day had transformed all our lives. For a long time, I’d thought the only thing I would remember was the pain of how it had ended.
Looking at the honeyman before me, however, what came to mind were the words Jack had spoken just before we’d left the chapel that day.
You can take up space.
And I was, now.
I’d taken a job as a freelance photographer for a local wildlife magazine.
It paid very little, but I loved every part of it.
Sometimes I traveled for an assignment, but mostly I stayed in Audrey and did what the court had instructed: helping Jack and his family clear out the debris on their property and rebuild, stone by stone.
I’d spoiled my kitten rotten.
I’d even found myself a therapist, by which I meant that Isobel had done a deep dive into therapists in Cumberland Valley and found me someone she swore I would like. I’d shown up, for her, and to my surprise, she was right.
We’d faced the hard things too. Jack had let me read through my mother’s old letters. Dane had grieved a brother whose body they never found. We’d all touched the darkness.
But there was still light. The best things in life, after all, often find their beginning in the smallest seeds.
I still held hope that one day my grief would find a shape that I could better hold.
Maybe it would even grow to be as beautiful as the gardens Eva grew under our feet now, moss and chamomile forming a circle around the bride and groom’s hiking shoes.
Jack cleared his throat. He had gotten ordained for this and was clearly excited, if a little nervous, rubbing the spot on his chest where the stump of his tree still extended.
Eva held Esther’s hand as songbirds filled the air with music.
“My Isobel,” Jack started, then promptly stopped, his voice already shaking. “Shoot, I promised you I wouldn’t cry.”
“It’s okay, Dad,” she said.
Jack took a breath and started again. “You’re better at this kind of thing than I am anyway, so I’ll keep this brief.
” He kept his eyes on her, his expression soft and serious.
“When I met your mother, I had no idea that I’d met two of the greatest loves of my life.
Her, of course,” he said with a smile. “And you.”
Isobel let out a weak laugh.
“My girl,” Jack said. “You snuck into my heart. There’s no one who knows better how to choose the ones we love, but the truth is, I never needed to choose you. From the moment you first asked if you could call me Dad, I knew—” He choked on the words. “I knew you were mine.”
Looking around, I saw not a dry eye in our circle.
“Now.” Jack cleared his throat and smoothed out the paper he held. “You never know how vast a heart can be until you crack it open,” he read.
“If you compare me to a seed, Dad, I swear…” Isobel cut in.
“It’s a perfect metaphor!” Jack countered.
All of us laughed then. My cheeks ached from smiling so much. When we settled, Jack took Dane’s and Isobel’s hands in each of his. “You never know what will grow when you let the light in.”
Their vows were brief, unscripted, and perfect. When Esther rushed her father for a hug, I wrapped an arm around Eva’s shoulders and rested my chin on her head. She leaned back against my chest with a sigh.
For a moment, the future stretched out as vast and endless as the overlook before us, begging me to fly, to leap toward the light and let love fill every crack in my heart.
Eva craned her neck up and grinned. “Hey,” she whispered, just for me.
Light. Hope. Home. Autumn was coming, but with her by my side, the promise of summer spread its wings in me. I would hold on to that and fight for this life I wanted until I had no more breath inside me.
I pressed a kiss to Eva’s nose and grinned.
“Hey, bee girl.”