Epilogue
Sabrina
The harbor was full of summer light, and my husband was making a fool of himself on the dock.
I watched from the shade of the porch, a cold lemonade sweating in my hand, as Killian attempted to explain the principles of sailing to our six-year-old daughter.
He had charts. He had diagrams. He had, inexplicably, a laser pointer, which he was using to indicate various parts of the small sailboat with total professorial seriousness.
Ivy sat in the boat with her arms crossed, clearly unimpressed.
“Daddy, I just want to go fast.”
“Speed comes from understanding the fundamentals. If you don’t know how the wind interacts with the sail, you can’t optimize your trajectory.”
“I want to go fast NOW.”
“The wind is coming from the northeast at approximately eight knots, which means we need to position the boom at a forty-five degree angle to maximize-”
“DADDY.”
“Fine. We’ll learn by doing.”
He climbed into the boat, nearly capsizing it in the process, and I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing out loud. The man had built technology worth billions of dollars, but getting into a small sailboat remained beyond his coordination.
In my lap, Eli made a sound of delighted fascination.
He was five months old now, healthy and loud and absolutely obsessed with anything that blinked or lit up.
Right now, his attention was fixed on Killian’s latest invention: a custom life vest for Ivy that featured LED strips along the edges, supposedly for visibility but really because Killian couldn’t resist adding unnecessary features to anything he built.
The lights blinked in a slow, rhythmic pattern. Eli’s eyes followed them with the intense focus he’d inherited from his father.
“You like that, don’t you?” I said, adjusting him in my arms. “Your daddy made those lights. He’s very proud of them, even though they’re completely over-engineered for a sailing lesson in broad daylight.”
Eli gurgled in response.
On the dock, Killian was strapping an absurd number of safety devices onto Ivy’s small frame.
I could see the custom flotation bands on her arms, the whistle attached to her vest, the waterproof GPS tracker that he’d installed “just in case.” He’d also brought a drone, which was currently hovering overhead recording the entire lesson for what he called “post-session analysis” and what I called “excessive documentation.”
“He’s ridiculous,” I told Eli. “Your father is the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met.”
Eli made a noise that might have been agreement.
The sailboat finally pushed off from the dock, and I watched them navigate slowly into the harbor.
Killian’s instructions carried across the water, patient and detailed and far too technical for a six-year-old.
But Ivy was laughing now, her earlier frustration forgotten, and I could see her small hands on the tiller, steering with more confidence than I would have expected.
She was a natural. Of course she was. She’d grown up on this water, spent every summer of her life within sight of these shores. The ocean was in her blood, the same way it was in mine now, absorbed through years of salt air and early morning swims and long foggy crossings on this same ferry.
My tablet sat on the table beside me, open to the latest revision of my paper.
It had been accepted earlier that year, my first publication in years, and now I was working on the follow-up study.
The data was coming together beautifully, patterns emerging that supported my initial hypothesis and suggested new directions for research.
I was myself again. After years of feeling erased, I was finally, fully myself.
The studio Killian had built for me was still my favorite room on the island.
I’d spent hours in it every day since we came back, working on research and experiments and all the things I’d set aside when I’d decided that being a mother meant being nothing else.
I’d been wrong about that. Being a mother was part of who I was, but it wasn’t all of who I was. I could be both. I could be everything.
The sailboat tacked, and Ivy shrieked with delight as the boat picked up speed.
Killian’s voice floated across the water, something about wind direction and sail trim, but I could hear the laughter underneath the words.
He was having as much fun as she was, even if he’d never admit that the technical aspects were just an excuse to play with his daughter.
“Look at them,” I said to Eli. “Your daddy and your sister. They’re both completely insane, but they’re ours.”
Eli yawned.
“I know, buddy. It’s exhausting being this loved.”
The afternoon stretched on, warm and lazy.
The family drifted in and out, Bridget bringing lunch, Alistair settling into his usual chair with his newspaper, Tessa and Sully appearing for a while and then disappearing to whatever adventures they had planned.
The house was full of noise and chaos and the particular energy that came from too many Kerringtons in one place.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, a small tan disaster of a dog came barreling up the porch steps, ears flapping, and flung himself into my ankles with total disregard for the baby in my arms.
“Biscuit, no,” Ivy said sternly, arriving three seconds behind him.
She’d wanted a puppy since the day we came back to the island, had wished for one on the ferry the day we came home, and she had worn Killian down over the winter with a slideshow.
An actual slideshow, with bullet points, which I suspect is the exact moment he decided she was his.
She’d named the dog herself, of course. Everything needed a name, and this one had arrived already looking, in her words, “like a biscuit that got legs.”
“He’s not supposed to jump,” she informed me, hauling the wriggling puppy back by his collar. “We’re still working on it. Grandpa says he’s got a lot of personality.”
“Grandpa is being generous,” I said, and Biscuit licked my elbow in what I chose to take as agreement.
I’d learned to love it. The chaos, I mean. After years of quiet apartments and lonely dinners, this was better. Messier and louder and infinitely more complicated, but better.
The sailing lesson ended in the late afternoon, and I watched Killian help Ivy tie up the boat. He was sunburned and rumpled, his glasses crooked, his hair standing up in every direction. He looked ridiculous and wonderful and completely, happily unbothered by either.
He caught my eye across the dock.
And then, without a shred of self-consciousness, he executed an exaggerated, terrible curtsy. His arms swept wide, his head bowed dramatically, and he nearly fell over in the process.
I laughed so hard I snorted.
Eli startled at the sound and then settled again, apparently deciding that his mother’s undignified noises were acceptable background noise. Ivy was laughing too, pointing at her father and saying something I couldn’t hear but could easily imagine.
This was my life. This loud, imperfect, ridiculous life with a husband who made spreadsheets about snacks and curtsied on docks and loved me with an intensity that still took my breath away after all these years.
We’d almost lost it. The thought surfaced sometimes, unbidden, a reminder of how close we’d come to letting everything fall apart.
The distance and the silence and the misunderstandings that had nearly destroyed us.
The nights I’d spent alone in that tiny cabin, convinced that my marriage was over.
The moment I’d overheard him talking to Sully and thought he regretted ever meeting me.
And we’d fought our way back to it, both of us, together.
That was the part that mattered. Not that we’d struggled, but that we’d chosen to keep trying. That we’d shown up, day after day, and done the work of loving each other properly. That we’d learned to talk instead of assuming, to ask instead of withdrawing, to be present even when it was hard.
Especially when it was hard.
Killian and Ivy made their way up from the dock, both of them windswept and glowing with the particular satisfaction that came from a good day on the water. Ivy ran ahead to show her grandmother the shell she’d found, and Killian collapsed into the chair beside me.
“That went well,” he said.
“You nearly fell in the water twice.”
“Those were intentional demonstrations of what not to do.”
“Of course they were.”
He leaned over and kissed my cheek, then bent to kiss Eli’s forehead. The baby grabbed his finger and held on with surprising strength.
“He’s got a good grip,” Killian observed.
“He’s got your stubbornness.”
“I prefer to call it determination.”
“You would.”
The sun was starting to sink toward the horizon, the sky going gold and soft pink at its edges. Another perfect Nantucket evening, another day in this life we’d built together.
“I was thinking,” Killian said, watching Eli examine his finger with intense concentration. “We should teach him to sail as soon as he’s old enough. Start the training early.”
“He’s five months old.”
“I said as soon as he’s old enough. I’m not suggesting we put him in a boat right now.”
“Good. Because that would be insane, even for you.”
“I’m not insane. I’m enthusiastic.”
“You’re both. They’re not mutually exclusive.”
He grinned, and my chest did the stupid, helpless thing it always did when he looked at me like that. This man. This ridiculous, wonderful, infuriating man who had broken my heart and put it back together and made me believe in second chances.
I loved him so much it scared me sometimes. And I’d learned to stay scared and stay anyway.
***
That night, after both kids were finally down, after Ivy had demanded one more bedtime story and then another, and Eli had needed feeding more than once, after the house had settled into the particular quiet that only came when small children were sleeping, I found myself on the widow’s walk at the top of the house.
Killian was already there, leaning against the railing, looking out at the dark water. The lights of the harbor twinkled below us, and in the distance, the beam of Brant Point lighthouse swept across the sky in its endless rotation.
I stood beside him and breathed in the salt air.
“Good day,” he said.
“One of the better ones.”
“Ivy’s getting really good at sailing.”
“She has a good teacher.”
“I’m a terrible teacher. I talk too much about theory and not enough about practice.”
“You’re a perfect teacher for her. She needs someone who takes her seriously.”
He put his arm around me and pulled me close. I leaned into him, feeling the solid warmth of his body against mine.
Out of pure habit, I almost said something about wishing on the next crossing, the way we always had.
Killian must have felt the thought coming, because he caught my hand before I could finish it and turned it over in his.
“What are you wishing for?”
“I don’t know yet. Nothing urgent, which is new.”
He raised my hand to his lips and kissed the center of my palm. The gesture was so tender, so unexpectedly romantic, that my throat tightened.
“We’re already back,” he said quietly. “We never have to wish for that part again.”
He was right. We were back, in every way that mattered. Back on the island we loved, back in the life we’d built, back in each other’s arms where we belonged.
I leaned into all that solid, awkward, brilliant heat, and I agreed.
We stood together on the widow’s walk and watched the lighthouse beam sweep across the water, marking time, marking the life we’d chosen.
A life that was loud and imperfect, full of arguments and spreadsheets and terrible curtsies on docks, of midnight feedings and sailing lessons and a daughter who’d appointed herself teacher to her baby brother, and that demanded work and attention and the daily choice to show up for each other.
A life that was filthy and funny and entirely, completely ours.
“I love you,” Killian said, his voice soft against my hair.
“I know,” I said. “I love you too.”
“Even when I make too many safety devices?”
“Especially then. It means you care.”
“I care excessively. It’s a documented condition.”
“I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
He kissed me then, slow and deep, with all the promise of the future we were building together. When we finally pulled apart, we were both smiling.
“Come to bed,” I said.
“Best offer I’ve had all day.”
“It’s the only offer you’ve had all day.”
“Still the best one.”
We walked back down the stairs together, leaving the stars and the lighthouse behind. Tomorrow would bring more chaos, more challenges, more opportunities to choose each other all over again.
I couldn’t wait.
THE END