Epilogue
ZAC
My hands won’t stop shaking.
Duncan stands beside me. He’s got the rings in his pocket. I checked twice.
“They’re still there,” he says, not looking at me. “Same as thirty seconds ago.”
Two rows of wooden chairs. A strip of burlap for an aisle. Wildflowers in mason jars catching the late-afternoon light — Ruby’s been out here since dawn, fussing with every detail. Alana told her not to. Ruby fussed anyway.
Ma stands at the front — phone in one hand, printed officiant script in the other. She got ordained online between the lunch rush and the dinner prep. Called me the same afternoon.
“It’s done,” she’d said. “Don’t you dare elope.”
She adjusts her reading glasses. Clears her throat. Tries to look official, but her chin is already trembling. She’s been waiting for this longer than I have.
Etta Bowen is in the front row, overdressed as always — pearl earrings, a cream blazer over a silk blouse, heels sinking into the grass. She’s already dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief she probably monogrammed herself. Two for two. She’s matched two couples and she’s cried at both weddings.
Nate is in the back row. Arms crossed. Expression neutral.
He drove up yesterday. Didn’t call ahead — just gravel crunching under his tires the way it did the first time, except when I opened the door he was holding a garment bag and a bottle of whiskey.
He held out the whiskey. “For your nerves.”
I took it. Stood there for a second, not sure what to say to the man I’d been best friends with for twenty-five years and silent with for one.
He solved it for me — walked past me into the cabin, hung the garment bag in the bedroom, and sat down at the kitchen table like he’d been doing it his whole life.
We drank two glasses each. Didn’t talk about the punch. Didn’t talk about the silence before it.
“You finish the expansion?” He meant the north-light studio. The extra rooms.
“Framed them out last month.”
He nodded. “Good.”
That was enough. For now, that’s enough.
The music starts — Ruby’s phone connected to a small speaker, something acoustic that Alana picked. I straighten. I’ve guided men through grizzly territory without a tremor in my fingers, and right now I can’t keep still.
Then she walks out.
White sundress. Fitted through her full hips and open across her shoulders.
A crown of wildflowers in her honey blonde hair — the ones she picked herself this morning while I pretended not to watch from the kitchen window.
She’s smiling. The full one — beauty mark shifting, that snort barely contained.
My throat closes. My vision narrows to her. Four years of waiting. Four years of denying. And now she’s walking toward me in a white dress and wildflowers, and every second of the waiting was worth it to be standing here when she arrives.
Nate leaves the back row. Moves to the front, standing where a father would stand. She walks on her own. But when she passes him, his hand catches her elbow. He says something low — I can’t hear it from here, but her eyes fill and she squeezes his arm before she lets go.
She reaches me. Her hand finds mine and her fingers lace through the way they always do — small and paint-stained and warm. Graphite under her thumbnail from this morning’s sketching. The iron ring I forged on her left hand, where it’s been every day since the diner.
The vows are short. Ma reads from her phone, voice steady, holding it together until she gets to “Do you, Zac, take Alana—” and then her voice cracks and she has to start the line over. Duncan clears his throat. Ruby’s already crying.
When I get to “I choose you,” my voice breaks. Not a subtle crack — a full, humiliating rupture that makes my jaw clench and my eyes burn. I say it again. Steadier. “I choose you. Today. Tomorrow. Every day you’ll let me.”
Alana’s crying too. Laughing through it — wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, mascara be damned. “I choose you back,” she says, and it’s not part of the script but it doesn’t matter.
My hands shake when I slide the wedding band on — thin gold, fitted to sit beside the iron ring. Two rings now. The one I forged and the one I bought in town, choosing it the way I’ve chosen everything since she showed up at my door.
When Ma pronounces us husband and wife, I kiss her like no one’s watching. Like we’re still in the cabin. Like we’re still the only two people on this mountain.
The reception is a barbecue. Elk burgers, corn on the grill, wine in plastic cups. Ma’s cake is three tiers and slightly lopsided, with fondant wildflowers that don’t quite match the real ones. Alana presses her face into my shoulder when she sees it.
My hand finds the small of her back — right where the sundress dips, the fabric warm from her skin. I slide lower. Spread my fingers over the curve of her hip and press, just enough. She shifts into me, hips tilting like her body already knows who it answers to.
My wife. I flatten my palm against her belly through the thin cotton. My ring on her finger. And one day, my baby right here.
Across the yard, Nate’s laughing at something Ruby said. Not the polite version. The real one. He catches me looking. Raises his beer. I raise mine back.
Etta catches me on the way to the porch. She straightens my collar — a motherly gesture I didn’t ask for and don’t stop. “I don’t make mistakes, Zac,” she says. “I make matches.” She pats my chest once, hard, and walks to her car in those ridiculous heels.
Nate leaves next. Squeezes my shoulder on the way past, doesn’t say anything. His beer glass stays on the porch railing.
The yard thins out. Duncan and Ruby are last, waving from their truck.
“Be good to her!” Ruby yells out the window.
Duncan pulls her back in, shaking his head.
When the yard is quiet, I reach for her hand.
“Come inside.”
She’s still in the sundress. Still wearing the wildflowers, though some have fallen loose — one caught in the curve of her collarbone, another in the crook of her elbow. Her face is sun-flushed and happy and my cock is already hard just looking at her.
The bedroom door closes behind us.
“Keep the flowers,” I say.
Her breath catches. My hands find the hem of the sundress and I pull it up, slow, over her hips, her belly, her breasts. She raises her arms and the white fabric slips off and I’m on my knees before it hits the floor.
Later — much later — we’re in our bed. Wildflowers crushed on the pillow, her body heavy against mine, the white sundress a puddle on the floor where I left it. Her on my chest, my hand on her hip, thumb tracing the freckle the way I’ve done every night for a year.
She draws lazy circles on my chest with one finger. I could stay here. I could stay right here and not need a single thing to change.
Then she takes my hand and presses my palm flat against her belly.
“I have something to tell you.”
My hand goes still on her belly. Something clicks into place — the wine she didn’t drink at the reception, the way she pressed my palm here instead of anywhere else.
I don’t say anything. I need to hear her say it.
“I’m pregnant, Zac.”
The air leaves my lungs. I knew. I think I already knew. But hearing it — her voice, that word, my name after it — my hand presses harder against her belly.
“How long?”
“Six weeks. Maybe eight.” She’s watching my face. Reading it. “Are you okay?”
I press my forehead to her belly. Stay there. Her skin is warm and soft. My child is growing here.
I don’t speak for a long time. Long enough that her fingers come up to touch my hair, tentative, worried.
“I’m not my father,” I say.
The words come out rough. Like I’ve been holding them in my throat since I was twelve and they’re finally done sitting there.
Her hand touches my hair. Stroking. “No. You’re not.”
I lift my head. Her eyes find mine — red-rimmed, bright, searching my face the way she does when she’s trying to figure out if I’m okay.
“How do you feel?” she asks.
I almost laugh. My wife. Six weeks pregnant. Asking me how I feel.
“Like I want to be here tomorrow,” I say. “And the day after that. And every day after that.”
She pulls my hand tighter against her belly. Holds it there with both of hers.
From the kitchen, the faint sound of Ma running water, putting things away.
Alana falls asleep against me. Her breathing evens out. Her heartbeat slows against my ribs. I stay awake a little longer, my hand on her belly, listening to the cabin settle around us.
Everybody stayed.
THE END