28. Epilogue
Dean
Five Years Later
The prince and the princess lived happily ever after.
I carry a crate of what amounts to a fairly pathetic apple harvest toward the house when Rosie calls out from the back door.
“Dinner’s ready,” she says.
I shake my head and smile to myself. If Rosie’s making dinner tonight, it will definitely be frozen pot pies.
To her credit, she has branched out more with her cooking skills, especially when I have to travel for work. Even though I still make sure there’s a supply of frozen homemade meals in the freezer for her when I’m gone.
I’ve been even more careful about that lately, with only three months to go until baby number two arrives. A boy this time. We can’t decide on a name, and Rosie keeps going back to Milton—a name I’ve already vetoed.
He’ll join his eighteen-month-old sister, Vivian Rose, who has weaseled her way past her mom and out the door, running toward me.
“Don’t run so fast, Vivi,” Rosie calls out.
She runs up to me and wraps her little arms around my leg.
“Want to help me carry these apples in?” I ask her.
She smiles and nods, and I reach into the crate and hand her one of the smaller ones.
She takes it in her small hands as if it’s the most precious thing she’s ever carried and follows me toward the house.
Originally, I planned to get rid of the orchard and figure out what to do with the land, but after it was all dug up and the land was tilled, I couldn’t imagine this place without one.
I planted half as many trees as my grandpa had, because I still have an actual job and no desire to become a full-time apple farmer.
Somehow, fifty trees are still a lot of work.
The white siding on the house stands out against the bare hills, with the porch wrapping around the front exactly the way Rosie pictured it the first time I brought her here.
Inside, the living room is full of oversized couches, and the kitchen has a large island in the center.
And since I do most of the cooking, I made sure it came with considerably more than a microwave.
Rosie handled most of the inside herself. She let me hire out the roof and the electrical work, then fought me on nearly everything after that. The upstairs bathroom is painted a color called Sage Against the Machine, which I still refuse to believe is the actual name.
The barn behind the house is newer than everything else.
Autumn Ridge rebuilt it during another barn raising at the end of the following year’s festival—one Rosie wasn’t in charge of this time.
Pam had asked her to run it again, and Rosie said no.
Then she spent the next three days telling me how terrible she felt about it.
She was considerably happier once the festival actually started. And, for the record, it ran just fine without her.
I follow Vivian inside the house and set the crate of apples on the kitchen counter.
“Hello, husband,” Rosie says, giving me a quick kiss on the lips.
I’d planned to wait a year before asking her to marry me, but I only made it until the next spring.
By Christmas, we were married, and now there’s a toddler trying to eat the apple she carried in and another baby on the way, and Rosie is determined to have at least two more, which is considerably less than the basketball team she originally wanted.
Life has moved fast these past five years. It’s felt like one change after another. I still have my consulting business, and Rosie still owns the inn, though Willa Pickle handles the day-to-day stuff now. But other than that, nothing has stayed the same.
And now, we’re building a cottage just behind the barn for my mom. She and Ed divorced last year, which surprised exactly no one, and I’m glad she’ll finally have a place that’s hers.
Rosie sets plates of steaming pot pies on the farm table, and I put Vivian in her high chair and give her a kiss on her head.
I’ll never know for sure, but I think this is exactly what my grandma expected me to do with the farm.
He’ll know what to do.
Turns out, she was right.
THE END
Thank you for reading Once Upon a Fall.