Chapter 37 Epilogue
Epilogue: All the Moving Parts
JULIETTE
Eight Months Later
By six-thirty, my backyard had achieved the exact legal threshold between family gathering and operational incident.
There were citronella candles burning along the edge of the patio, two ceiling fans pushing warm air in lazy circles over the covered terrace, and enough food spread across the outdoor table to feed a small diplomatic delegation or one Wilder family with poor portion boundaries.
Florida had settled into its June personality, which meant the air was warm, damp, fragrant with salt and cut grass, and entirely committed to ruining everyone’s hair.
The sun hung low over Maris Key, turning the palms gold at the edges and laying a soft sheen across the pool.
Beyond the hedge, the bay moved in quiet flashes of silver.
Inside the house, the air-conditioning was losing a war against five Wilder sisters, four men, one teenager, an intern with dangerous initiative, and a catering delivery that arrived seventeen minutes late despite my explicit written instructions and the existence of GPS.
A pen sat beside my notebook on the outdoor bar, untouched. For once, my fingers had found other things to do.
“Juliette,” Summer said from beside the outdoor bar, holding a tray of lemon wedges with the expression of a woman who had discovered inefficiency in a sacred institution. “Why is there no separate ice bucket for non-alcoholic beverages?”
“Because this is a backyard dinner, not a beverage compliance review.”
“It's still a preventable bottleneck.”
Near the outdoor table, Brynn looked up from the chair her husband had attempted to make her sit in for the third time in fifteen minutes.
Wyatt slept against her chest in a soft wrap, one tiny fist tucked beneath his cheek, and her expression suggested motherhood had not dimmed her appetite for violence.
“Summer,” she said, “if you say bottleneck one more time, I’m going to throw a slider at you.”
Jerrick slid a plate into Brynn’s hand before she could weaponize anything. “Eat first.”
“I am eating.”
“You're threatening.”
“Multitasking is a leadership skill.”
Nick stood at the grill beside Max, one hand resting near the handle, the other holding tongs he had not needed for at least three minutes. Max had arrived from Rome with Rayann two days ago and had taken silent command of the outdoor cooking situation within ninety seconds.
Nick had allowed it, which told me two things: he respected competence, and he was nervous in the nearly invisible way only someone who knew how to read him would notice.
Nick did not fidget or fill silence, and he never made restless laps through a room just to prove he had somewhere to put his energy.
Instead, his tension lived in smaller places: the angle of his shoulders, the way his thumb brushed once along the side of the tongs, and the quiet inventory his eyes kept making as they moved from the grill to the patio doors, then to the edge of the pool, before landing on the fourteen-year-old girl standing near Daisy with a laminated badge in her hand.
Sofia arrived two days ago with a backpack, a duffel, three books, one pair of aggressively blue sneakers, and the calm, assessing stare of a person who had inherited her father’s observational skills and absolutely none of his interest in pretending not to judge.
Two of the books were fantasy. I said nothing, because I was an adult woman with excellent restraint and only a minor tightening around my glass to betray me.
She'd met me before. Spring break three months ago, over dinner at Nick’s townhouse and one deeply tense walk along the waterfront where both of us had tried so hard not to perform that we had nearly become pre-programmed hospitality bots.
We didn't hug each other, and we both respected that, which was how I knew we might survive each other. This, however, was different. Sofia was meeting the full Wilder family ecosystem, and no one should have to experience that without protective equipment. Daisy, apparently, agreed.
Sofia stared down at the badge hanging from a lanyard around her neck. “Wilder Horizons Junior Crisis Consultant.”
“Temporary title,” Daisy said. “Mostly ceremonial. Also legally meaningless.”
Sofia looked from the badge to Daisy. “What does it authorize me to do?”
“Survive dinner.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s the advanced placement version.”
Sofia’s mouth twitched, and Nick saw it.
He looked away before anyone else could catch him watching.
Too late. The tiny breaks in his restraint had become familiar now: the near-smiles, the lowered lashes, the way his face softened when Sofia forgot to hold herself apart for half a second and became a girl instead of a carefully armored adolescent testing the edges of her father’s new life.
Six months in Maris Key had changed him in ways most people would miss.
He still woke early, moved quietly, preferred direct answers and clean sight lines, and stored knives where knives belonged. He looked slightly offended by decorative pillows and deeply suspicious of people who said “circle back” without imminent threat.
But there were shirts in his closet now that were not field khaki, technical gray, or black.
There was a pair of flip flops by his front door he had once called “structurally unserious” and now wore without comment.
Sofia had a room at his townhouse now, with her books on the shelf, a ridiculous flamingo throw pillow she'd bought specifically to irritate him, and a small framed photo from her spring break visit tucked on the desk.
Nick and Sofia at the beach, both squinting into the sun, both pretending they hadn't enjoyed themselves.
He had gone to D.C. four times since January. Sofia had come to Florida once in March and now again for the start of summer. The calendars were complicated, the flights were annoying, and phone calls had become sacred territory. Easy had never been the goal. Real mattered more.
“Are they always like this?” Sofia asked.
I stepped beside her near the patio doors, where the air smelled of grilled pineapple, sea salt, sunscreen, cut limes, and expensive cologne losing a brave fight against the humidity.
“No,” I said.
Near the grill, Rayann was explaining something to Max with both hands, full-body emphasis, and the kind of volume usually reserved for evacuation orders.
Sofia watched her for three seconds. “Worse?”
“Much.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“Regrets?”
“Not yet. Your intern gave me credentials.”
“Daisy is a security risk in lip gloss.”
“I heard that,” Daisy called.
“You were meant to.”
Luc appeared behind Emme with a platter in both hands and the expression of a Frenchman who had been personally betrayed by the climate. His linen shirt was open at the throat, his dark hair damp at the edges, and his scowl had become more elegant with each degree of humidity.
“Florida,” he said, setting the platter on the table, “is soup with architecture.”
Emme patted his arm. “You said that at breakfast.”
“It remains true.”
“You also said it at lunch.”
“The conditions haven't improved.”
Theo, who had returned from the Galápagos three days earlier and still looked faintly sunburned despite Annie’s militant sunscreen agenda, leaned toward Nick near the grill. “Did you ever see elephant herds shift their corridor use after fence pressure increased on one side of the reserve?”
Annie’s head snapped up with the speed of a woman hearing her dissertation topic enter casual conversation.
Nick answered without hesitation. “Yes. Not always immediately. Depends on water, calf age, human scent, and how often the pressure repeats. One breach rarely changes the pattern. Repeated disturbance does.”
Annie’s eyes narrowed with academic delight. “Spatial pressure.”
Nick glanced at her. “Yes.”
“Thank you,” she said, with the satisfaction of a woman whose published research had been proving a point for three months and would continue proving it until the end of time.
Theo smiled at her like she'd hung the moon and annotated it.
Summer, standing beside me now with the non-alcoholic ice situation apparently unresolved but temporarily abandoned, followed my gaze toward Annie and Theo. “UF sent the updated doctoral prep schedule.”
“I know.”
“The January start is official.”
“I know.”
Summer’s mouth softened. “Dad would have cried.”
“Yes,” I said. “Then he would have pretended it was allergies.”
“He would have blamed Florida.”
“Reasonable.”
Summer looked down at her phone when it buzzed, and her expression changed before she could stop it.
It was not much. Summer had been born with a boardroom face and had perfected it through years of carrying the emotional logistics of the rest of us like a handbag full of knives. The shift was there anyway: the almost-smile, the flicker of light she tucked away as quickly as it came.
Rayann saw it too from twenty feet away, because Rayann was medically incapable of minding her business.
“Summer,” she called, “are you sexting?”
Summer didn’t look up. “I do not sext in proximity to Rayann.”
“That was very fast.”
“It was also accurate.”
Brynn pointed at her with a pickle spear. “That is exactly what someone sexting would say.”
Summer lifted her eyes then, and the temperature around the bar dropped three degrees.
“I’m postpartum,” Brynn added. “My body built a person and currently runs on caffeine, spite, and cracker crumbs. I know things.”
Jerrick took the pickle spear out of her hand.
Brynn glared at him. “That was evidence.”
“That was sodium.”
Summer placed her phone facedown on the bar, but not before I caught the flash of an Alaska forecast for Juneau.
Interesting.
Summer didn't believe in casual weather. In her world, precipitation was either logistics, liability, or a problem pretending to be scenery.
“I am not discussing my personal life at Juliette’s dinner.”
Every Wilder woman on the patio went silent.