Epilogue
Five Months Later
“Wake up, Rory. Today is the day.”
“Really, Rene. You think I don’t know that?”
“You know she’s going to say yes, so why are you so nervous?”
He shrugged. “You don’t understand. It’s only been six months. Maybe she’s not ready.”
“She’s ready for you,” Rene said, sitting on the side of the bed. “Don’t let the fact that Dad was a jerk stick in your mind.”
“I thought for sure he’d want to come for the sentencing,” he said. “That he’d want to look your killer in the eye.”
“Dad wiped his hands of everything fifteen years ago,” Rene said. “You need to do the same. You told him you caught Rocco, he said good and that was it. Let him live his life how he chooses; you and Mom need to do the same.”
“Why aren’t you mad he wasn’t happier over this?” he asked.
“Because he’s who he is and won’t change,” Rene said. “Did you ever stop to think maybe he felt guilty for years too because he went to dinner that night and could have stayed home? We don’t know what is in his mind any more than he knows what is in yours.”
“And he never will because he doesn’t care to talk to me.”
“Let that toxic crap go,” Rene said, grinning.
“Gale says that too.”
“I know,” Rene said, nudging his shoulder. He didn’t feel it, he never did.
“Rory, wake up. Rory, are you okay?”
“You’re making Gale nervous twitching in the bed,” Rene said. “Do it now. I want to watch. She’s going to say yes, Rory. So. Do. It. Now.”
His sister vanished from his dream, his eyes opened and Gale was next to him in bed looking him over. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Your shoulders kept twitching.”
“Rene,” he said. “She was egging me on.”
Gale laughed. “What did she have to say this time?”
He didn’t know if his sister’s ghost was really talking to him, or it was his subconscious unwilling to let her go.
All he cared was that she was still there and never left his side. That she thanked him for finding her killer and she always knew he could do it. He just needed the right help.
Which he got in the woman looking him over in bed.
“She told me she’s watching and I had to do this now.”
Gale frowned. “Do what?”
He rolled over and got up, left the room to go to his office and came back with a ring box, then sat on her side of the bed.
“This,” he said, flipping the lid. “Asking you to marry me. The woman who helped me not only solve my sister’s cold case, but finish what my agent is saying is my best series ever. You don’t just make me complete, you make me a better person all around. I would have cracked without you.”
“You’re right,” she said, laughing. “But I needed you just as much as you needed me. Yes, I’ll be your wife.” She was all but bouncing on the bed with her hand out for him.
He pulled the diamond solitaire out of the box and slid it on her finger. Simple at first glance, but brilliantly bright with each additional view.
The lights flickered off and then on, causing him to laugh.
“Rene is happy.”
“What?” Gale asked, looking around.
“She’s here, and she’s happy.” A tear ran down his cheek. “She used to turn the light on and off on me. It’s her form of attention. I don’t know why I never remembered that before.”
“Because you weren’t meant to. Not until this moment. Does that mean she likes me?”
“She loves you,” he said. “Almost as much as me.”
“Then I’ll have to work on her some more to get her to love me just as much,” she said, kissing him hard on the lips. “Rene. I love him. I really do. He’s in great hands with me, I promise.”
“She knows,” he murmured, a smile tugging at his lips. “She knows.”
The End!