Epilogue #6
He remembers that I don’t like cantaloupe. He knows which takeout places deliver to our apartment without checking. He wakes up before me on weekends, makes coffee, brings it to bed. He listens when I talk, really listens, and he never tries to fix things that don’t need fixing.
He’s going to be an amazing father.
“You two hiding out over here?”
Dad appears beside us, a fresh glass of wine in his hand.
Brandon extends his hand. “Good to see you, Dr. Roussos. Sorry I’m late.”
Dad looks at Brandon’s outstretched hand, then at Brandon, and then he bypasses the hand entirely, pulling Brandon into a hug.
“You need to drag this one out to the house more often,” Dad says into Brandon’s shoulder. “I keep telling her. Sunday dinners. We have a whole table.”
“She’s very stubborn,” Brandon says, muffled.
“I know. I raised her.”
“You did a good job.”
“I know that, too.”
They pull apart and Dad’s eyes are bright. I lean into his side, just slightly. His arm comes up around my shoulders, automatic, like muscle memory.
“You know,” he says, not looking at me, “sometimes I miss it.”
“Miss what?”
“The old days.” He pauses. “Just you and me.”
I don’t say anything. I wait.
“I know that sounds—I don’t mean it the way it sounds.” His thumb keeps moving. “I wouldn’t trade any of this. Not Annie, not Mik, not Allie, not the messiness of it all. I love our life. I love all of them.”
“I know, Dad.”
“But sometimes I think about that little apartment.” He almost smiles. “You had that tiny bed with the rainbow sheets and you’d crawl into mine at three in the morning because you had a nightmare and I’d pretend to be asleep so you could feel like you snuck in without waking me up.”
“I knew you were pretending.”
“Of course you did. You were always too smart for your own good.”
I lean into him a little more.
“I didn’t realize how good I had it back then,” he says. “I was so busy trying to keep us afloat. Keep my research on track, keep you from—” He stops. “I don’t know. Falling apart. I was so busy keeping us from drowning that I never stopped to think that maybe we weren’t drowning all the time.”
“You were doing your best.”
“My best was a lot of frozen pizza and bedtime stories I made up on the fly because I’d read The Very Hungry Caterpillar so many times I wanted to throw it out the window.”
“I loved those stories. The ones about the squirrel who solved mysteries.”
“That squirrel had absolutely no internal logic.”
“He had heart.”
“He had plot holes you could drive a truck through.”
I shrug. “I was four. I wasn’t exactly a harsh critic.”
He laughs, soft and low. His arm tightens around me.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” he says. “I was thirty-two years old and completely convinced I was going to ruin you.”
“And yet here I am.”
“Yeah.” He finally looks at me. His eyes are wet, but he’s smiling. “Here you are.”
His hand moves from my shoulder to the side of my face. His palm is warm and slightly rough. It’s the same hand that held mine while we crossed streets, that helped me with math homework I pretended to need help with, that walked me down the aisle three years ago.
“I’m so proud of you,” he says. “I don’t say it enough, but I am. Every single day.”
I open my mouth to say something—you say it plenty, you don’t have to, I know—but the words get caught somewhere between my chest and my throat.
“I look at you,” he continues, “and I see this woman who is kind and smart and funny and patient and so much stronger than she gives herself credit for. And I think—I had something to do with that. Not everything. Annie had something to do with it, and Yiayia, and Cori, and Phoebe, and a thousand other people who showed up for you along the way. But I had a part.” His voice catches, just slightly.
“I had a small part in making you who you are. And that’s the thing I’m most proud of in my entire life. ”
I press my face into his shoulder. His sweater is soft. He’s worn it for as long as I can remember.
“You had more than a small part,” I say into the wool of his sweater.
“Maybe.”
“Definitely.”
He doesn’t argue. His hand moves to the back of my head, the way it did when I was little and scared of thunderstorms. The way it did when I was seven and crying over a hamster funeral.
The way it did when I was twenty-five and called him at midnight to say I’d found the person I wanted to spend my life with. His fingers thread through my hair.
“You’re going to be a wonderful mother,” he says quietly.
I go very still.
“I haven’t—” I start. “I didn’t—”
“You didn’t have to.” His voice is gentle. “I know my kid. I’ve always known my kid.”
I pull back and look at him. His face is open, steady. No judgment, no disappointment. Just…recognition.
“Was it that obvious?” I ask.
“Only to me. And maybe to Annie. She hasn’t said anything, but she has a sixth sense about these things.” He pauses. “Also Brandon keeps looking at your purse like it contains classified information.”
I glance over at Brandon, who is definitely looking at my purse. He’s talking to Michalis about something, nodding intently, and absolutely glancing at the corner where my bag is resting against the wall.
“He’s a terrible liar,” Dad says.
“The worst.”
“That’s why I like him.”
I laugh. Dad’s thumb catches a tear I didn’t realize was running down my cheek.
“Does your mother know?” he asks.
“Not yet. I wanted tonight to be about her.”
“She’s going to lose her mind.”
“I know.”
“She’s going to cry for a week.”
“I know.”
“She’s going to start knitting again. She hasn’t knit since 1998 and it’s going to be a disaster.”
I laugh again. “You’re supposed to pretend to be excited!”
“I am excited. I’m also realistic.” He wipes my cheek with his thumb. “A baby. Our family is having a baby.”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus.” He exhales slowly. “I’m going to be a grandfather.”
“The cool grandfather.”
He shakes his head, but he’s smiling and the corner of his eyes crinkle.
The thing about families is that they don’t start in one place. They don’t begin with a wedding or a birth or a single, definitive moment. They begin in pieces, scattered across years and cities and people who don’t even know each other yet.
A woman in Galway, teaching a little girl how to plant bulbs in autumn.
A twenty-nine-year-old neuroscientist, holding his four-year-old daughter’s hand in Central Park, having no idea what he’s doing.
A nanny in overalls, who once stared at a gas stove like it’s alien technology, determined to figure it out.
These pieces don’t look like a family. Not yet. Not from a distance.
But then the years pass. The pieces drift closer, overlap, interlock.
The woman in Galway becomes a voice on the phone every Sunday.
The neuroscientist becomes a father, then a husband, then a grandfather-in-waiting.
The nanny becomes a mother, then a matron, then the person everyone calls when they need someone to hold the center.
And the little girl becomes a woman. A woman who carries an ultrasound in her purse, who is learning how to be brave, who is standing in her mother’s living room surrounded by the people who made her.
“Hey, where’s Grandma Elaine? I thought she was coming tonight.”
Dad shakes his head. “She’s flying in on Tuesday. Wanted to give us space for the big party, she said. But also I think she has some charity thing this weekend. You know how she is.”
I do know. Elaine Collier—my grandmother, technically Annie’s mother, but she claimed me the minute Annie married my dad.
She swept into our lives like a perfumed hurricane, all silk scarves and silver bracelets.
She’s taken me to the Met more times than I can count.
She took me to the ballet every Christmas—the Nutcracker, always, because tradition mattered to her—and to the opera once, which I didn’t understand but pretended to because she was so excited to share it.
Grandpa Graham died when I was eleven. Prostate cancer. I didn’t get to know him well enough. That’s one of those regrets that sits quietly in the background, not loud enough to demand attention but present nonetheless. I wish I’d asked him more questions. I wish I’d sat with him longer.
“She’ll be happy to see you all,” Dad says. “She’s missed you kiddos.”
“I’ve missed her too.” I smile. “Tell her I’m taking her to the Met next time she’s here. Just the two of us.”
“She’ll like that.”
“She always does.”
Mom finally hangs up the phone and then crosses the room towards us. She kisses my cheek and her lips are warm, slightly damp. She smells like the same perfume she’s worn since I was a kid.
“Come with me for a second?” she says quietly.
“Where?”
“Just outside. I need some air.”
We slip out the back door onto the small patio Dad built years ago. It’s chilly, but not unbearable. The sounds of the party are muffled out here, just the hum of conversation and laughter filtering through the walls.
Mom sits on one of the patio chairs and I take the one next to her.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. Just overwhelmed in the best way.” She smiles. “I love them all. But it’s a lot of people.”
“You can leave whenever you want. It’s your party.”
“I know. I will. I just needed a minute.” She looks at me, really looks at me. “With you.”
“Big day,” I say finally.
“Huge day.” She laughs. “I still can’t believe it’s happening.”
“How do you feel?”
“Relieved. Excited. A little terrified.” She looks at me. “Is that weird?”
“Not at all. Change is scary.”
“Says the woman who quit a stable job to start her own photography business.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“Because I was young and stupid and didn’t know any better.”
She laughs. “You were brave. You still are.”
I shrug. “I learned from the best.”
“Your dad?”
“You.”
She goes quiet, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry.
“Emma—”
“I’m pregnant,” I blurt out.
Her eyes go wide. “What?”
“I’m pregnant. Almost twelve weeks. Due in March.” The words tumble out now that I’ve started. “I found out a few weeks ago and I wanted to tell you in person and I know I should have called but I wanted to see your face when I told you and—”
She pulls me into a hug so tight I can barely breathe. When she pulls back, she’s crying and laughing at the same time. “You’re pregnant?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“I’m going to be a grandmother!”
“You’re going to be a grandmother.”
“Oh my god.” She covers her mouth with both hands. “Oh my god. Does your dad know?”
“He does, actually.”
She laughs and swipes at her eyes. “I can’t believe this. I—when did you—how did—”
“The normal way, Mom.”
“I know that. I just—” She takes a breath. “I’m in shock. Good shock.”
“I have the ultrasound in my purse if you want to see it.”
“Are you kidding? Of course I want to see it.”
I run inside and grab my purse, pulling out the small black-and-white photo. When I hand it to her, she stares at it like it’s the most precious thing she’s ever seen.
“Look at that,” she whispers. “That’s my grandchild.”
“Weird, right?”
“The best kind of weird.” She looks up at me. “How are you feeling?”
“Nauseous. Exhausted. Terrified.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Did you feel like this? With Michalis or Allie?”
“Worse. I threw up for four months straight with them both.” She hands the photo back carefully. “But it was worth it. Every second.”
We sit there for a moment, both of us staring at the ultrasound.
“I’m scared,” I admit quietly.
“Of what?”
“Everything. Being a bad mom. Messing them up. Not knowing what I’m doing.”
She takes my hand. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Always.”
“I was terrified when I became your mom.”
I look up at her. “You were?”
“Absolutely terrified. You were six years old. You’d already lost one mother. And here I was, this twenty-six-year-old who had no idea what she was doing, trying to figure out how to be what you needed.”
“You were exactly what I needed.”
“But I didn’t know that then. I just knew I loved you. And I showed up.” She squeezes my hand. “That’s all parenting is, really. Loving them and showing up.”
“What if I’m not good at it?”
“You will be. You know how I know?”
“How?”
“Because you already are. You’ve been practicing your whole life—watching, learning, figuring out what kind of person you want to be. And Emma?” She cups my face. “You’re going to be extraordinary.”
I let myself cry then. Big, ugly, happy tears.
And Mom holds me, the way she’s held me a thousand times before.
The way she held me when I scraped my knee at seven.
When I didn’t get into my first-choice college.
When I was nervous before my wedding. When life got hard and I needed someone to tell me it would be okay.
When we finally pull apart, we’re both laughing and crying and wiping our faces.
“We should get back inside,” she says. “Before people think we abandoned the party.”
“In a minute.”
We sit there a bit longer, just the two of us in the cold September air.
And I think about beginnings, about how Mom started out as someone else entirely—Annemarie Collier, the girl who ran away from a wedding in a desperate bid for freedom.
How Dad was just a grumpy professor who happened to be in the right place at the right time.
How I was just a sad, angry five-year-old who needed someone to stay.
None of us knew what we were doing, but we figured it out together.
We built this. This family. This life. This love.
And now I get to do the same thing. Build something with Brandon. Create a family. Pass down everything Mom taught me about showing up and staying and choosing love even when it’s hard.
The circle continues. The story goes on.
“Ready?” Mom asks, standing and offering me her hand.
I smile and take it. “Ready.”