Epilogue #3
Near midnight, Beckett and I finally escape to the guesthouse at the far edge of the gardens. My feet hurt, my hair has surrendered in several places, and I’ve never been happier. The balcony doors are open to warm air and distant music when I stop him from unfastening my dress.
“I need to tell you something.” Every trace of amusement leaves his face. I take his hand because mine has started shaking. “I found out this morning.” I can’t figure out a beautiful way to say it, and suddenly I don’t want one. “I’m pregnant.”
Beckett stares at me. His fingers close around mine, but nothing else moves. “Pregnant?” I nod, tears already coming. “Very. It’s early.”
He looks down at our joined hands, back at me, and I watch the understanding reach him piece by piece. His mouth trembles. “We’re having a baby?”
“Maybe.” The word hurts and hopes at the same time. “If everything goes well.”
He nods immediately. “If everything goes well.” He brings my hand to his lips, kisses my fingers and starts crying so quietly it breaks something open inside me.
“I’m happy,” I whisper. “I’m so so so so happy.”
I pull him into me, and he holds me with his face buried at my neck until both of us are crying too hard to pretend we aren’t.
The first drop of rain lands on the balcony railing.
Another darkens the stone near my bare foot.
Within seconds the garden begins to hiss softly below us, summer rain moving over leaves and roses, silver where it catches the light from the conservatory.
I start laughing. Beckett lifts his head. “What?”
I step outside. “Laurel.”
“Come on.”
“You’re wearing a wedding dress.”
“It has completed its primary function.”
He laughs, follows me into the rain and catches me at the waist when I nearly skid on wet stone. Music still drifts from the conservatory, muffled now by distance and weather.
I put my arms around his neck. “Hello, husband.”
“Hello, wife.” He looks up at the rain, then back at me. “This makes three.”
My smile blooms. “You counted?”
“I remember everything about you, Laurel Bellamy.”
The words hit exactly where they did a year ago under the magnolia. I kiss him, rain running into my hair, his hand warm at my back, our rings cold between us. When we part, I rest my forehead against his.
“Think this one sticks?”
Beckett nudges my nose with his. “Ask me when we’re eighty.”
My dress grows heavy at the hem, his shirt clings to his shoulders, and at some point I step directly on his foot hard enough to make him swear. I laugh so loudly my throat reminds me to behave, and Beckett kisses the sound out of me.
Across the rain-soaked garden, the conservatory glows like a lantern, our families still moving behind the glass.
Mama drifts between tables; Dean and Monica have found their way back to the dance floor, Lily is curled into a chair with her shoes abandoned underneath it, and Owen is stealing from the dessert table with no concern for witnesses.
Lila is tucked into Matt’s side. Theo and Evie are arguing about whatever can still inspire outrage in children at midnight.
Nora stands near the band with a glass in one hand, laughing at something I can’t hear.
For a moment I just watch them. All those people, all those years, all those ordinary days we nearly forgot as we lived them, glowing together on the other side of the rain. Our whole life is back there, imperfect and noisy and carrying on without needing us for a few minutes.
The music reaches us in pieces, piano first, then a low thread of strings softened by distance, rain keeping its own rhythm through the trees.
Beckett takes my hand and draws it between us; a second later his palm settles over mine where it rests low on my stomach, over a secret too new for either of us to feel yet.
I don’t know this child. I don’t know who Beckett and I will be five years from now, or twenty, or if life will be generous enough to give us every year we want.
My voice changed. My first marriage ended. Homes were sold. Doors closed. People I once believed would always be beside me became people I had to learn how to miss without letting grief swallow everything they gave me.
For years I thought love became safe once I knew where it was going, as if a promise could spare me the pain of change if I held tightly enough.
I know better now. Nothing I love comes with that guarantee.
Not Beckett. Not this baby. Not one person still dancing behind those windows.
And for the first time, knowing that doesn’t make me want any of it less.
Rain runs down Beckett’s face, and he smiles at me as if there’s nowhere else in the world he’d rather be.
I move closer, my cheek settling over his heart, and he folds me into him as we keep swaying on the wet balcony.
Three old chords live in my memory. A new life is beginning quietly inside me. My husband’s heartbeat keeps time beneath my ear, steady and real and here, and I close my eyes without needing to know how any of this ends. I only listen as midnight settles around us and the distant music carries on.
Our midnight melody.