Epilogue
Corey
One Year Later
The cake is a disaster.
I ordered it from the fancy bakery Willow likes, the one across town that does the custom designs with real buttercream because my wife has strong opinions about fondant and I’ve learned the hard way not to cross her on matters of cake-related texture.
I specified pink frosting. I specified a single candle.
I specified the name “Maeve” written in elegant script across the top.
What arrived this morning is blue, has three candles, and says “Congratulations, Dave” in letters that are both crooked and aggressive.
“It’s fine,” Willow says, laughing at my expression. “She’s one. She’s not going to care about the cake.”
“I care about the cake. The cake represents my competence as a party planner. The cake is supposed to demonstrate that I have my life together.”
“The cake demonstrates that the bakery needs new employees.” She kisses my cheek. “It’s hilarious. Take a picture before Glenn gets here so I can send it to him.”
I take the picture. Then I take another one of Willow, still laughing, wearing a paper crown that Maeve grabbed off the party supply shelf at the store yesterday and refused to relinquish.
Then I take one of Maeve herself, sitting in her high chair and systematically destroying a banana with the focus and determination she brings to everything.
She has her mother’s stubbornness. Her mother’s laugh. Her mother’s way of looking at me like I’m the most interesting thing in the room, even when I’m just standing there holding a phone and grinning like an idiot.
She also has my eyes. My hair. My complete inability to function before coffee, which Willow finds endlessly amusing given that Maeve’s version of coffee is warm milk from a bottle.
“Glenn’s here!” Willow calls from the front room. I hear the door open, hear Glenn’s voice doing the exaggerated excited thing he does whenever he sees the baby, which is often, because Glenn has taken his godfather duties more seriously than anyone expected.
“Where’s my favorite goddaughter? Where is she? There she is!”
Maeve shrieks with delight. She does that every time Glenn walks in, which is frequently.
He’s the one who bought her the obscenely expensive stroller.
The custom nursery furniture. The tiny designer outfits she outgrows before she can wear them twice.
When Willow pointed out that he was spoiling her, he simply said “That’s literally my job” and bought her a cashmere blanket that cost more than my first car.
I used to be jealous of the way Willow lit up around him.
Now I’m just grateful. Grateful that my daughter has an uncle who adores her.
Grateful that my wife has a friend who’s stood by her through everything.
Grateful that the man I once wanted to destroy is standing in my kitchen wearing a paper party hat and making airplane noises while he feeds my daughter pieces of the wrong cake.
“This fondant is a crime against humanity,” Glenn announces. “Who ordered this?”
“He did,” Willow says, pointing at me.
“I ordered a completely different cake. I have the receipt. I can prove it.”
“And yet.” Glenn gestures at the blue monstrosity. “The universe provides.”
“The universe has a sick sense of humor.”
“The universe is doing its best. Just like you.” He grins at me over Maeve’s head, and there’s no malice in it. No lingering resentment. Just the easy warmth of a friendship neither of us expected but both of us have come to rely on.
Mrs. Potts arrives next, bearing a gift wrapped in paper covered with tiny elephants.
She stayed on after Maeve was born, transitioning from nurse to nanny to something closer to family.
She’s the one who gets up with Maeve when Willow and I both need sleep.
She’s the one who taught me how to change a diaper without gagging.
She’s the one who told me, the night Maeve came home from the hospital, that I was going to be a good father.
I didn’t believe her then. I’m starting to believe her now.
“Cake looks wrong,” Mrs. Potts observes, setting down her gift.
“I’m aware.”
“Should’ve gone with the bakery on Fifth. They never make mistakes.”
“Also aware. Thank you for the feedback.”
She pats my arm with the particular fondness she reserves for people she finds deeply exasperating but loves anyway. Then she goes to help Glenn extract Maeve from the high chair, and I’m left standing in my own kitchen with nothing to do but watch.
I do that a lot these days. Watch. Marvel. Try to memorize moments I know I’ll want to remember later, when Maeve is grown and these days are just photographs in an album.
The moment Glenn lifts Maeve over his head and she grabs his party hat with both hands.
The moment Mrs. Potts pretends to scold them both while clearly trying not to laugh.
The moment Willow appears at my side, slides her arm around my waist, and leans her head against my shoulder.
“You’re brooding,” she says.
“I’m not brooding. I’m observing. There’s a difference.”
“You’re brooding. I can tell by the forehead crinkle.”
“I don’t have a forehead crinkle.”
“You absolutely have a forehead crinkle. It appears whenever you’re thinking too hard about things you can’t control.” She reaches up, smoothes her thumb across the spot between my eyebrows. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s…” I shake my head, struggling to find the words.
“A year ago, I almost lost you. Both of you. I stood in a hospital corridor and told them to save your life over hers because I couldn’t imagine existing in a world without you.
And now here we are, a year later, arguing about the wrong cake. ”
“And that’s bad?”
“It’s terrifying.” I watch Glenn swing Maeve in a circle while she shrieks with joy.
“It’s terrifying because I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.
In my experience, good things don’t last. Happiness is just the setup for the next disaster.
And this…” I gesture at the room, at our friends, at our daughter.
“This is too good. It’s too perfect. Something has to go wrong. ”
“That’s your mother talking,” Willow says softly.
“I know.”
“She’s wrong.”
“I know that too. Intellectually, I know it. But the feeling…” I shake my head. “The feeling doesn’t care what I know.”
Willow is quiet for a moment. Then she takes my hand and pulls me toward the living room, away from the noise of the party, to the shelf where she’s been arranging things for the past year.
The shelf that holds our history.
There’s the shoebox, unpacked now, its contents displayed instead of hidden.
The diner apron, framed. The old ledger with the startup’s first numbers in Willow’s handwriting.
And the photo of the apartment over the laundromat, the one with the heater that never worked, the one I used to think of as proof of my failure.
It’s framed now. Willow’s doing. She put it up the week we brought Maeve home, and when I asked her why, she said: “Because that’s where we started. And I don’t ever want to forget it.”
Next to the photo is my watch. The one she bought for our fifth anniversary and never got to give me, the one I found in her empty closet and carried in my pocket like a wound. The one engraved with words I didn’t deserve then and am still working to deserve now.
Always yours.
“Do you see this?” Willow gestures at the shelf. “This is real. This is proof. Not of some perfect fairy tale where nothing ever goes wrong, but of us. Of what we survived. Of what we built out of the wreckage.”
“I see it.”
“Do you believe it?”
I look at the photo. At the watch. At the woman standing beside me, the mother of my child, the love of my entire life.
“I’m trying to,” I say honestly. “Every day, I try a little harder.”
“That’s all I ask.” She squeezes my hand. “Now come back to the party before Glenn teaches our daughter to throw cake. I saw him eyeing the fondant with malicious intent.”
We go back to the kitchen, where Glenn is indeed attempting to show Maeve the proper technique for cake destruction. Mrs. Potts is filming it on her phone, which means it’ll end up in the family group chat within the hour.
We have a family group chat now. Me, Willow, Glenn, Mrs. Potts. Sometimes Glenn sends pictures of dogs he sees on the street. Sometimes Mrs. Potts sends recipes none of us will ever make. Sometimes I send photos of Maeve at 3 a.m., when she’s finally fallen asleep and I’m too wired to follow.
It’s silly and mundane, the ordinary family stuff I never had growing up and never expected to have.
I love it. I love all of it.
“Okay, candle time!” Willow claps her hands, and everyone gathers around the cake that’s the wrong color with the wrong name and the wrong number of candles.
She lights all three because at this point, who cares.
“Glenn, you’re on camera duty. Mrs. Potts, you’re on fire safety. Corey, you’re on Maeve.”
I lift my daughter from Glenn’s arms and hold her in front of the cake. She stares at the flames with the wide-eyed fascination of someone who’s never seen fire before, reaching out with tiny fingers that I gently redirect away from the heat.
“Okay, ready?” Willow starts to sing, and everyone joins in, even Glenn, who cannot carry a tune to save his life. “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Maeve, happy birthday to you!”
I lean close to my daughter’s ear. “Make a wish, baby girl. Blow out the candles.”
She doesn’t understand, of course. She’s one. But she waves her arms excitedly, and between the arm-waving and my helping breath, the candles go out.
Everyone cheers. Maeve claps her hands, delighted by the noise. Glenn snaps approximately forty photos in rapid succession. Mrs. Potts cuts the cake into pieces and distributes them, fondant and all.
It’s chaos and joy and everything I spent thirty years convinced I didn’t deserve.