Epilogue Maurice
Five and a half months later…
When Maurice turned his car onto Monique’s street, all the anxiety that had percolated in his veins since leaving Newark four months ago vanished.
The tree-lined block was well-loved, full of generations of stories he was eager to hear and add to. May in Chicago meant magnolia trees blooming along the parkway, their scent thick and sweet.
He parked and grabbed the groceries from the trunk. Tonight was Justin’s going-away dinner, before his flight to Belgium tomorrow morning. The house would be full—twins, support group friends, maybe Cassie and Taurion with Ezra if the kid wasn’t too tired.
Maurice let himself in with his key. His key. To their home.
The living room showed evidence of recent chaos—Ezra’s toy fire truck parked under the coffee table, a stack of picture books on the couch from when Cassie and Taurion had visited last Sunday. Monique’s camera bag sat by the door, which meant she’d been out shooting.
“Mo?” Her voice came from the kitchen.
“Yeah, it’s me. Got everything on the list.” He found her at the stove, stirring something that smelled like her grandmother’s recipe. She’d tied her hair back, was barefoot in joggers and one of his T-shirts.
She turned, smiled, and he saw it—that slight puffiness around her eyes. She’d been crying. Again.
“You okay?” He set the groceries down, went to her.
“Fine. Just—” She waved the spoon. “My baby’s leaving the country tomorrow.
“He’s twenty.”
“I know. Doesn’t make it easier.” She leaned into him when he wrapped his arms around her waist. “Tell me I’m doing the right thing. Letting him go.”
“You’re doing the right thing. He’s ready.”
“What if he needs me and I’m not there?”
“Then he’ll figure it out. Like you taught him to.” Maurice kissed the top of her head. “Where is he?”
“Picking up Jasmine from the train station. She got in early.” Monique turned in his arms. “Which means we have about thirty minutes before this place turns into chaos.”
“Thirty whole minutes?”
“Mmm.” She reached up to touch his face, and he saw it—the way she was memorizing this moment. The quiet before the storm. “I went to the park today. The magnolias are perfect.”
“Yeah?”
“You should come with me later. After dinner. The light will be good.”
The ring box felt heavy in his pocket. Had been there every day for two weeks. “Okay.”
She studied him. “You’re being weird.”
“I’m not being weird.”
“You are. You’ve got that face.”
“What face?”
“That face you get when you’re planning something.” She poked his chest. “What are you planning, Maurice Martin?”
He was saved by the front door opening. “Ma! We’re home!” Jasmine’s voice rang through the house, followed by the deeper rumble of Justin’s laugh.
Monique’s face lit up. She pulled away from Maurice and headed for the front room, where her children were dumping bags and shedding jackets.
“There’s my baby.” She grabbed Justin, who’d grown another inch since January and bent low to hug her.
“Ma, I’m not a baby.”
“You’ll always be my baby.” She held him at arm’s length. “Let me look at you.”
“You saw me this morning.”
“That was hours ago. You could’ve changed.” But she was smiling through fresh tears.
Jasmine caught Maurice’s eye and winked.
She knew. Maurice shouldn’t have asked her advice about jewelry three months ago.
Since then, she’d found an excuse to leave Nashville every other weekend.
That she lasted this long without telling everything was either a miracle or a testament to how much she wanted this moment for her mother.
“Uncle Mo!” Ezra’s voice preceded him as Cassie and Taurion appeared in the doorway, the four-year-old already making a beeline for Maurice.
“Little man!” Maurice scooped him up. “Where’s your fire truck?”
“In the front room! I parked it!”
“Good parking job.”
Cassie hugged Monique, then stepped back to look at the spread taking shape in the kitchen. “What can I do to help?”
“Nothing. Y’all just relax.” Monique wiped her eyes. “Dinner’s almost ready anyway.”
The next hour was beautiful chaos. Too many people in too small a kitchen, everyone talking over each other, Ezra “helping” by reorganizing the pots, Justin telling stories about the Belgian team he’d be joining, Jasmine teasing him about learning the language.
Taurion pulled Maurice aside while Cassie was wrestling Ezra away from the stove. “You doing it tonight?”
“How does everybody know?”
“Jazz can’t keep a secret. She told Cass. Cass told me.” Taurion grinned. “For what it’s worth? About damn time.”
After dinner, after the dishes were done and Ezra had crashed on the couch and Cassie and Taurion had taken him home, after Jasmine had retreated to her room to FaceTime friends and Justin had gone to finish packing, Monique found Maurice on the porch.
“Walk?” she asked.
“Yeah. Let me grab my jacket.”
“Justin!” Monique called from the front door. “We’re going to the park for a bit!”
“Okay! Take pictures!” Justin hollered back. “And Ma? Don’t cry about the flowers. You do that every year.”
“I do not!”
“You literally do!”
She muttered something unflattering about smart-mouthed children, but she was smiling when she took Maurice’s hand.
They walked the four blocks to the park, hand in hand, the way they’d been doing for months. Their routine. Her introducing him to her world. Him pointing out things she’d stopped noticing.
May in Chicago felt like years away from that cold January. They nodded in greeting as they passed the Rodríguezes, who were always in a heated debate whenever they passed, but they held hands doing it.
The park was quiet, and most families were already home for dinner. The magnolia grove glowed in the golden hour light, petals drifting down like pink snow.
Monique raised her camera, but Maurice caught her hand.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“Just… wait. For a second.”
She lowered the camera, studied him. “There’s that face again.”
“I have something to say.”
“Okay…”
“I had this whole speech planned,” Maurice said, pulling the ring box from his pocket. “About how you taught me the difference between surviving and living. About how I want to keep choosing you every day for the rest of my life.”
Monique’s breath caught. Her camera fell to hang from its strap.
“But standing here, all that fancy stuff doesn’t matter.” He opened the box. “Monique Moore, will you marry me?”
She was crying. Laughing. Both. “You’re serious.”
“As a heart attack.”
“We’ve only known each other five months.”
“Six. And I’ve loved you for all of them.”
“I’m difficult.”
“I know.”
“I’ll probably get sick again.”
“I know that too.”
“I come with two meddling kids and a whole mess of people who have opinions about everything.”
“I’m counting on it.”
She looked at the ring—simple, rose gold, a small diamond that caught the light. “It’s perfect.”
“That a yes?”
“That’s a—” She kissed him hard, and the answer was yes in every language that mattered. When she pulled back, she was grinning. “The twins already know, don’t they?”
“Jasmine helped me pick the ring.”
“Of course, she did.” Monique laughed as he slid the ring on her finger. “We’re never gonna hear the end of this.”
“Probably not.”
She held up her hand, studying how the diamond caught the light.
“When?”
“Whenever you want. Tomorrow. Next year. I’m not going anywhere.”
“What about Deb and Don? They’ll want to plan something big.”
“They can plan whatever they want. Long as I get to marry you at the end of it.”
Monique raised her camera, pointed it at him, then turned it around to capture them both—her hand with its new ring in the foreground, their faces behind it, laughing. “For the record,” she said, “I would’ve said yes in January. In the hotel. If you’d asked.”
“I know. But we needed these months. To be sure. To build it right.”
“Are we sure now?”
He thought about the last four months. The fights over where to hang pictures and whose turn it was to take out the trash.
The scans that came back clear and the ones that would come.
The Sunday dinners and Wednesday meetings and Friday nights on the couch.
The ordinary work of choosing each other every single day.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure.”
“Me too.”
They walked back home, hand in hand.
At the house, they found Justin on the porch, scrolling through his phone. He looked up when they approached, clocked Monique’s face, then her hand, then grinned. “Finally.”
“You knew too?”
“Ma. Everybody knew.” He stood and hugged Maurice. “Welcome to the family. Officially.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Now, can we tell people?” Jasmine appeared in the doorway, phone already in hand. “I’ve been dying.”
“I knew you weren’t coming home just because you missed us!” Monique protested. “And you”—she turned to Maurice—“you got my child involved!”
Maurice shrugged. “She has good taste.” He kissed Monique’s temple.
“Exactly!” Jasmine threw her hands up. “You have no idea how I suffered. Three months! That’s like a year in secret-keeping time!”
Maurice pulled Monique close, watched her children argue about who got to call who first, about whether a group text was tacky or efficient, about whether they should wait until morning or tell everyone now.
This. This was what he’d been building toward. Not just her, but all of this—the chaos and the love and the family that had claimed him as their own.
“Hey,” Monique said softly, just to him. “You good?”
“Yeah.” He kissed her temple. “I’m really good.”
Inside, Jasmine was already calling Cassie, and he could hear Ezra’s sleepy voice in the background asking why everyone was yelling. Justin was texting someone, probably Deb and Don, from the way he was grinning at his screen.
Tomorrow, Justin would leave for Belgium. Tomorrow, the real chaos would begin when everyone found out. Tomorrow they’d start planning a future that felt both impossible and inevitable.
But tonight was theirs. All of them. This messy, beautiful family they’d built from grief and hope and stubborn, persistent love.
“I love you,” Monique whispered.
“I love you too.” And for the first time in his life, Maurice Martin felt completely, utterly home.