Epilogue
Andrea
Buddy stole his third sandwich off the buffet table and I’d stopped pretending I was going to do anything about it.
Peter was chasing him across the lawn with a paper plate, which was pointless because Buddy was faster than Peter on Peter’s best day and today Peter had already chased him twice and was visibly losing the will to live. Mary was filming the whole thing on her phone and laughing too hard to help.
“Mary, control your husband,” I called.
“He’s not my husband right now. He’s entertainment.”
The lawn was covered in balloons Alex had zero interest in, wrapping paper he liked more than the actual presents, and dogs from the rescue wing wandering between guests stealing food off unattended plates. The orange cat was on top of the drinks table. Nobody had the energy to move her.
Alex was one today. One year old, walking now, barely, more of a controlled forward fall than actual walking, dark curls bouncing, green eyes that Grandma had been right about.
He had cake frosting in his hair, on his cheeks, on his shirt, and he was grinning with the four teeth he’d managed to grow so far.
Luca was on babysitting duty. Alex had grabbed his finger twenty minutes ago and hadn’t let go.
Luca was following my son around the lawn at a crouch because the baby was mobile now and had no concept of direction or danger.
Luca’s face was a mix of terror and devotion that I’d photographed six times.
“He’s not letting go,” Luca called across the lawn, bent in half, trailing after my son like a very large, very reluctant shadow.
“Welcome to fatherhood,” I called back.
“I’m not his father.”
“He doesn’t care. You belong to him now.”
Grandma was on the porch in the rocking chair she’d shipped from Whitebrook, watching everything with the calm satisfaction of a woman who had flown in three days ago and intended to hold her great-grandson for the entire visit.
She called him “my baby” and I’d given up correcting her because arguing with my grandmother was a losing game I’d stopped playing around age twelve.
The therapy group sent gifts. A card from Adela that said Proud of you. Now go be the mom that kid deserves. Noisemakers from Hallie, which Alex loved and everyone within earshot suffered for. A first aid kit from Tara, because Tara would send a first aid kit to her own funeral.
Finneas was somewhere in the chaos with frosting on his sleeve because Alex had grabbed him ten minutes ago and smeared cake across his arm.
He wore it like a medal. I watched him crouch beside Alex, catching him when he wobbled, letting go when he wanted to walk, scooping him up when he tipped face-first into the grass.
A year of watching him do that and it still hit me somewhere soft.
I took a break from the noise and walked to the front porch. Not because I was unhappy. Because the volume was a lot, the baby hadn’t napped, and I needed a minute to breathe before Buddy discovered the chicken platter.
I sat on the porch swing. The garden was blooming, peonies along the fence that I planted myself last spring because this was my home now and my mother’s flowers belonged here.
They grew in long uneven rows the way she used to grow them in Whitebrook, pink and white, spilling over each other.
I touched one of the petals every time I passed.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a letter.
It arrived last week. Margaret’s handwriting on the envelope, forwarded through three addresses because she didn’t know where we lived and had to send it through the pack’s general mail. I’d read it once.
She wrote about regret. About understanding. About hoping that someday Finneas might forgive her. She wrote about Paul, about legacy, about wanting to be a grandmother.
She didn’t apologize. Not directly. She wrote around the apology the way she’d always done, building a case for sympathy without ever actually saying the words. I could almost admire the technique if it wasn’t so goddamn infuriating.
I folded the letter and put it back in the envelope.
I didn’t know what to do with it yet. Part of me thought about showing it to Finneas, but not today.
Reopening that wound on his son’s birthday would be cruel and pointless.
He’d grieved his mother in our kitchen with his forehead on my shoulder and tears on my neck and he’d made his peace with it.
I wasn’t going to undo that with a letter that couldn’t even manage the word sorry.
I’d figure it out. Tomorrow, next week, whenever the right moment came. Or maybe there wasn’t a right moment for something like this.
I put the envelope in my back pocket. Put my hand on my stomach.
“What are you thinking about?”
I turned. Finneas was behind me, leaning against the porch post, arms crossed, frosting still on his sleeve. His hair was messy from Alex grabbing it and there was a grass stain on his knee from crawling after our son on the lawn.
“I’m thinking about how much I hated you when we first met,” I said.
“You didn’t hate me.”
“You communicated in grunts and glares for two years. And the sticky notes. ‘Tomorrow, no excuses.’ Who writes that to a person?”
“You delivered it ahead of schedule.”
“Because I’m excellent at my job. That’s separate from the hating.”
He smiled. The real one.
I watched his face and thought about the first time I saw that smile, really saw it, through the glass wall at the office the day I put a pink Post-It on his coffee mug.
I thought about reading to a dog on my porch and not knowing the dog was listening.
I thought about a parking garage where I fell apart and a bathroom floor where a pregnancy test told me my life was about to change.
A grandmother’s lawn in the rain. A bassinet with a label I had to point out six times.
A supply room where I told him I was happy and he kissed me and tasted like ice cream.
All of it. Every stupid, painful, beautiful piece of it. Leading here.
“Come here,” I said.
He pushed off the porch post. I took his hand and pressed it against my belly. Not the flat belly I had when I first started working for him. Not the huge belly I had when Alex was born. A new belly. Early. Barely there.
But there.
He looked at his hand on my stomach. Looked at my face. I watched it click, the same sequence from the anatomy scan parking lot: confusion, realization, then something that cracked his whole face open.
“Happy birthday to our son,” I said. “And congratulations to his dad.”
He stared at me. I held his gaze and let the dimple show.
He laughed. Not the quiet one, not the almost-smile.
A full, loud, head-back laugh that carried across the lawn and made Mary swing the camera toward us and Buddy bark in solidarity.
He picked me up and I yelped and he spun me once, carefully, his hands firm on my waist, his face split open with the biggest grin I’d ever seen on him.
He set me down, took my face in both hands, and kissed me. Slow, deep, his thumbs on my cheekbones, a kiss that made my knees go soft. I could feel his joy through the bond, bright, enormous, crashing against my own until I couldn’t tell which was mine and which was his.
He pulled back just enough to look at me. His eyes were wet. “Thank you,” he said, his voice rough. “For Alex. For this one. For giving me a family I didn’t know how to ask for.”
“You asked. You just did it badly. With grunts.”
He laughed again, shorter, wetter. He pressed his forehead against mine. “You’re incredible. You know that?”
“I do know that. Nice of you to catch up.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too. Now put me down before Buddy finds the chicken.”
“Again?” he said.
“Again.”
“We’re having another baby.”
“We are.”
From the porch, Alex laughed in Grandma’s lap, bright and delighted, a sound that carried across the garden.
Peter gave up on Buddy entirely. Luca was still at a crouch following Alex with his finger trapped, looking at us over his shoulder with an expression that said he already knew and had probably known for days because Luca noticed everything.
He pulled me against his chest. I pressed my face into his neck and breathed him in. The same way I’d breathed him in a thousand times. On porches, in kitchens, in hospital rooms, in the dark at three am with a baby between us.
The peonies were blooming along the fence. The dogs were raiding the buffet. My son was laughing on his great-grandmother’s lap. The estate was loud and messy and full of people who chose to be here.
I was home. I’d been home for a while now. I just wanted to stand on the porch one more time and feel it.
THE END