Epilogue
Jules
THANKSGIVING WAS THURSDAY at The Last Resort — MeeMaw, Bobbie-Jean, Stoney, both families, every fur baby within a hundred mile radius of the property. I had promised to bring a pie, which meant I had until Wednesday night to figure out how to make one.
Sarge was in every box I opened. He’d appointed himself supervisor of the unboxing process and wasn’t taking feedback.
He’d come to live with us officially earlier that fall — paperwork, carrier, his own water bowl in the back seat of the truck — and had treated Dutch’s ranch as his personal jurisdiction ever since.
“Out,” I told him.
Sarge extracted a packing peanut and looked at me.
My phone buzzed on the windowsill. Olivia had forwarded three booking inquiries before nine AM, with a note underneath: also mrs. whitestone’s persian has a new therapist and is doing much better, thought you’d want to know.
The Cosmo piece had run in September — Bobbie-Jean’s college friend’s husband had done exactly what Bobbie-Jean told him to do and run two spreads, the FiFi demolition photos and the Sarge-at-the-gate series — and the Texas branch had been open six weeks and was already booking into spring.
My mother had called after the piece ran.
I’d told her I was spending Thanksgiving in Texas.
She’d gone quiet and then said you sound happy.
I said I am, and we left it there, which was more than we’d managed in years.
I picked up my phone. Dutch came in from outside, crossed the room, and took it out of my hand.
“Hey —”
He set it on the nearest box. Sarge investigated immediately.
He reached into the front pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small velvet box.
Oh.
He went down on one knee in the middle of the living room — cardboard containers half-open, packing peanuts everywhere, Sarge abandoning the phone to come see about this instead. He lifted the velvet lid. A gold ring with a diamond that caught the November light from the window. He looked up at me.
“I was going to wait until Thursday,” he said. He held my eyes. “I love you. I don’t want to wait anymore. Jules — will you marry me?”
I was already crying before he finished the sentence.
“Yes,” I said. “Dutch — yes.”
I leaped. He caught me, both arms. His face was in my hair.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
He held on and I wasn’t stopping crying and didn’t want to.
Sarge came over from the box he’d been investigating and put himself between our feet. He looked up at us with the expression of a dog who had been right about this since a gate on a gravel drive in May and wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
The look said: Boy howdy, I told y’all.
Dutch scratched behind his ears. Sarge’s tail thumped on the floor.
Thanksgiving was almost here. There was so much to be thankful for, so much to celebrate — and I couldn’t wait to do all of it with my new family in none other than Frognot, Texas.
Yep. I was home.