Epilogue Three Years Later
ENOCH
Three years.
Three years of not dying of loneliness. Three years of not running, not hiding, not holding my breath for the next cataclysm. Three years since I started learning what it’s like to wake up with something to lose, and—slowly, stubbornly, hilariously—what it’s like to realize I want to keep it.
The lighthouse is never silent for long.
This morning, it’s the gulls outside, their calls insistent as drills on steel, and the low whistle of the tea kettle working out its existential crisis in the kitchen.
Dawn is only a pale rumor at the window, the sea dithering between slate and lavender, but I am awake and upright. Some habits can’t be unmade.
I pad barefoot down the spiral stairs, careful not to startle our dog, Lenore, asleep in front of the stove. She’s a rescue, courtesy of Daisy’s campaign, and she dreams so hard her paws paddle across the linoleum, chasing spectral tennis balls or the ghosts of old biscuits.
The counter is a war zone: flour dust, a cyclone of measuring spoons, unwashed mixing bowls piled into a sculptural testament to Daisy’s refusal to confine her experiments to the bakery.
A lopsided loaf cools on a wire rack, scored with what might be an arcane sigil or, possibly, Daisy’s initials.
I don’t touch it. Frenzied as her baking always looks, I know she catalogs every crumb.
I set about the sacred ritual of coffee.
Local beans, ground by hand—not because I’m a snob, but because the electric grinder scares the hell out of me before sunrise.
Pour-over, precisely timed. I even have a little timer shaped like a red devil.
Daisy got it for me as a joke, but I use it anyway.
These days, I seem to use everything Daisy brings into my life.
She’s in the loft, cocooned in blankets and the sort of sleep that only happens when you know no one will come kicking down your door.
I could watch her all morning—the way her hair tangles over her mouth, how she sometimes snores when she’s two dreams deep—but instead I let her rest. She’ll be up soon enough. She can’t help herself.
I’m arranging two mugs and a plate of toast—Daisy will want eggs, but she’ll pretend she doesn’t, and then eat all of mine—when the pounding starts.
At first, it’s so regular I mistake it for gulls slamming against the glass. But then Lenore looks up, ears pricked, and I know: someone’s at the door. Someone arrived early, knowing how much I hate surprises.
I open it. Of course, it’s Zadok.
He’s wearing a sweater so ugly it might be a dare and holding a half-empty thermos with CAUTION: TOXIC WASTE printed in block letters down the side. He looks as if he’s slept on the beach, which is entirely possible.
“Morning, brother,” he says, unrepentant. “Is there coffee?”
“There’s always coffee,” I say, stepping aside. His boots leave clumps of sand inside, but I sweep them up as he passes.
Zadok collapses onto a kitchen stool, grabs the extra mug, and watches as I pour. “I see Daisy’s been blessing the air,” he says, eyeing the flour.
“She promised not to bake before sunrise,” I say.
“She’s constitutionally incapable of that,” Zadok says, opening his thermos to pour something caramel-colored into his mug. “Clover’s on her ‘no sugar’ thing again. I’m not allowed home unless I bring back evidence of protein.”
Daisy appears at the top of the stairs, hair a corona around her face, and stops to take in the mess. She is utterly unembarrassed by her own chaos. She grins at Zadok, then at me.
“I thought I heard the end of times. Good morning, Z.”
Zadok raises his mug in salute. “Is that bread for sale, or is it yours?”
Daisy tilts her chin in negotiation. “Half for you. Half for Enoch. I get the heels.”
Lenore is already underfoot, tail wagging. Zadok tosses her a chunk of crust, which she inhales.
Daisy floats down, snags my coffee, and tips her head onto my shoulder as if she hasn’t slept beside me for years. Some days, it still takes me by surprise—the easy weight of her, the trust of it.
“We’re not opening a café here,” I warn, gently extricating my mug.
She pretends to pout, then winks at Zadok. “What’s the news?”
“The clammers' union is on strike again. Cassian has a big case he can’t stop talking about. Clover says the wind’s shifting, but she always says that.” He takes a sip, then adds, “Also, Atlas has been looking for you.”
“For me?” I ask, certain it’s a mistake.
Zadok grins, showing off a new gold crown on his molar. “He has a crisis, and he doesn’t care for your new hours.”
Daisy is already kneading dough, working it through its second rise. She hums as she works. “Think it’s about the baby?”
“I think it’s about his inability to understand Zelda’s strange cravings,” Zadok says.
I let the conversation pass over me and watch Daisy: the steady rhythm of her hands working the dough, the loose strands of hair escaping her braid, her bare feet dusted in flour.
I know, without doubt, she’s happiest like this—making something, sharing it, surrounded by people she trusts not to judge her.
More pounding on the door. This time, a chorus.
Zadok has already anticipated the next guest. “That’ll be Cassian. Or the wind. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.”
I open the door before the fist can connect again. It’s Cassian and Liza, their dog, Morticia, draped across Cassian’s shoulders. His arms are both full: one holding onto Morticia, the other carrying a brown paper sack already beginning to leak at the bottom.
“Emergency,” he says, deadpan. “The co-op’s out of eggs, and Liza’s got a hankering.”
“That’s not an emergency,” Liza says from behind him, hands tucked into her pockets. “He just needed a reason to leave the house.”
Morticia slides down and sprints for Lenore. The two of them disappear into the entryway, barking and howling.
“Come in,” I say, and they do, tracking cold air and lakeweed in with them. Cassian hands me the sack.
“It’s for you,” he says.
I open it. Inside are three pounds of butter, a mason jar of pickles, and a wedge of cheese labeled EXTREMELY SHARP—MAY BITE BACK. Daisy, at my elbow, makes an approving little noise.
“We’re using the lighthouse as a community refrigerator now?” I ask.
“It’s tradition,” Liza says. “Besides, you’re the only one with reliable refrigeration.”
They settle around the table. The place is too small for so many people, but no one seems to care.
Daisy slices the fresh bread, piles it with cheese and slivers of pickle, and passes the pieces around.
Cassian and Liza argue about whose turn it is to take Morticia to obedience school, while Morticia and Lenore wolf down their snacks before immediately begging for more.
Zadok starts retelling a "haunted" incident from last winter, and even though I was there, I let him embellish. No one tells a story better.
By now the sun has risen, soft orange light spilling through the salt-scarred panes.
Daisy is in her element, playing host, streaked with flour like war paint.
I stand back, hands in my pockets, trying not to smile too much.
It’s an odd, full feeling. Like the lighthouse was always meant for this—wholly, unironically alive, pulsing with voices and the mingled smells of fresh bread and wet dogs.
More knocking.
This time it’s Atlas, who claims to have made too much soup.
“It’s a medical condition,” he explains. “The pots keep getting bigger.”
Zelda trails behind him, windblown and wired, asking for cinnamon in her coffee before she’s even fully inside. I don’t bother pretending annoyance. The lighthouse isn’t mine anymore—not really.
Or maybe, for the first time, it is.
This is what it looks like to belong.
We cram ourselves onto stools and every available surface, eating with spoons, hands, or nothing at all. Atlas ladles out soup. Zelda collects her cinnamon, then stays to taste-test everything else. Daisy shoves another loaf into the oven, cackling at how quickly the last one disappeared.
Zadok tells his story again, this time adding ghosts and a pie-eating contest. Cassian offers Liza the last slice of bread, and she takes it, rolling her eyes fondly at him.
I lose track of the conversations and simply let the noise wash over me. I don’t try to control it. I don’t mediate, analyze, or catalog my own feelings. I don’t brace for disaster.
Instead, I pour coffee for Daisy and let her kiss my cheek on her way to rescue the next batch from burning. She wipes flour across my sleeve and says, “You’re grinning like a maniac.”
“You’re hallucinating,” I tell her, but it’s no use. She has always seen through me.
She drapes her arms around my neck. Her lips are cool from orange juice and warm from laughter.
“You can’t scare me off with domestic bliss, you know.”
I rest my forehead against hers.
“It’s not scary. It just feels…”
“Like what?”
“Permanent.”
Daisy laughs and flashes the gold band on her finger.
“Good thing we’re married.”
Once, silence was all that waited for me in the morning: a graveyard hush broken only by the memory of footsteps and the tick of my own jaw. I was always the first to wake—always the first to leave.
Now there is coffee.
There is Daisy’s humming drifting down from the loft.
There are dogs barking somewhere down the hill.
There is a loaf of bread cooling on the rack, cinnamon on the windowsill, and the faint, eternal sigh of the sea just outside.
There is a table that keeps growing to fit the people who find their way here. Friends who don’t knock. Friends who expect a place set for them. Friends who expect me.
There is laughter. There is the smell of burnt toast and nearly burnt feelings, and the way Daisy keeps inventing new ways to surprise me, even after all this time.
There is a life I never believed I deserved.
It turned out forever wasn’t nearly as frightening once you had someone to share it with.
Forever, it turns out, isn’t measured in centuries.
It’s measured in mornings like this.
“Enoch!” Daisy calls over the din. “Stop philosophizing and come eat before the cinnamon rolls get cold!”
I shake my head, catch Zadok’s wink, and head for the table.
“Coming,” I say.
And I mean it.
THE END