Epilogue
Hanna
July in Copper Ridge is a specific color.
It's the color of grasslands going bronze at the edges and mountains still holding snow in the high draws, and at seven p.m. on a Friday at the Watershed, the color is coming through the windows sideways and hitting the bar in a way that's making Big Jim squint.
I'm at the back booth with Ty, Cal, Riley, Aiden, Beck, Gemma, and Derek, there's a fundraiser raffle Derek is loudly about to rig, and there's a basket of fries on the table that have been cooling while my brother argues with Riley about whether a bet she made two months ago counts if the thing she bet on happened in a more general sense than specified.
"Fourteen days, Cal."
"You said fourteen days from the first public disclosure — " Cal starts.
"I had CAL DISCOVERY, underlined, in the actual bet, Cal. I have the napkin."
"You kept the napkin?" I ask.
"I kept the napkin."
"Riley. You kept the napkin from May?"
"I have a filing system, Larsen."
Cal loses the argument. Riley collects. Derek, across the table, writes something in his little notebook he carries specifically for the crew's private betting records.
Ty, to my left in the booth, doesn't touch me for the whole exchange, because he's being careful.
We've both agreed to keep being careful at Cal's pace, which is slower than everyone else's pace, which is fine.
Cal pokes me with a fry.
"Pass the ketchup."
"You have arms."
"I have one good arm."
"Cal. You went back on full duty last week."
"Hanna."
"I'm your paramedic. I know your arm is fine."
"Hanna."
"Fine." I pass him the ketchup.
"Thank you."
Across the booth, Riley lifts her glass in my direction.
"To the lady of honor."
"Don't — "
"The woman of the hour."
"Riley."
"The betrothed."
"Pritchard."
"Fine. Fine. To Hanna. Just Hanna. Without commentary."
Everybody clinks.
Ty, to my left, doesn't clink right away — he's looking at me with the face he has when he's about to say something flat and true that I don't want him to say in front of people. I catch his eye. I shake my head half an inch. He accepts the instruction. He clinks.
I'm, for the record, not engaged.
I'm — we're — in the middle of what you might call a season.
Ty asked Cal three weeks ago. Cal said no.
Ty accepted the no. At the end of the month, Ty is going to ask Cal again.
I haven't been formally asked myself, and I'm not going to be until Cal has lifted the no, because Ty Brennan is the kind of man to wait for approval.
I'm, apparently, an idiot now, because I've agreed to this process instead of making the kind of joke I'd have made before all of this.
I haven't made any jokes. Riley knows. Derek is making loud guesses in the ledger.
Big Jim knows, because Big Jim knows everything, and he's specifically not saying anything about it because Cal has asked him not to — which means Cal is processing it correctly, which means it's going to be yes by August.
I'm not thinking about August.
I'm thinking about the fries.
Cal and I are okay.
Okay is the right word. Okay isn't where we were in May, in the sling and the kung pao, and it isn't where we're going to be by Thanksgiving.
Okay is eight weeks of small Tuesdays. Okay is Cal coming over for dinner and eating the thing Ty cooked and saying it wasn't bad, Ty saying thank you, and Cal saying it needed more salt.
Okay is Cal still calling Ty Brennan and me sister in the same sentence, like he's still practicing the sentence.
Okay is Cal giving Ty a book on his birthday — a Le Carré he hadn't read, the new translation — without saying anything about it, just handing it across the table: "For you, Brennan," in the voice Cal uses when he's doing a thing he isn't going to narrate.
Okay is Cal, at Sunday dinner two weeks ago, saying across Mom's table, "So Ty, Hanna, you want to tell me about the honeymoon fund that Big Jim has apparently been collecting into a shoebox under the bar since June."
"What — "
"Big Jim has a shoebox. He's taking a collection. Derek has been kicking in. Rivera has been kicking in. Gemma has been kicking in. Riley is the banker."
"A shoebox?"
"A shoebox, Hanna. Don't ask how much. Let it go. It's touching. I'm touched. I'm not going to say anything else about it."
He didn't. Mom, at the head of the table, smiled down at her soup.
Ty, in my father's chair at her left, reached for the breadbasket with the specific patience of a man who's earned the chair.
I watched him do it. I watched my mother watch him.
I watched Cal watch my mother watch him.
The whole triangulation happened in about two seconds.
The chair was Ty's. It had been empty for fourteen years.
My mother passed him the salt without looking. He took it.
I didn't cry at Sunday dinner.
I've been good about not crying at Sunday dinner.
Mostly.
Tonight, at the Watershed, I watch the crew without touching Ty.
We pass fries and beer, Derek does the rubber chicken gag at Cal — which he isn't allowed to do at me anymore per Cal's very specific request on behalf of Cal's sanity — Chief Rodriguez comes by at one point to clap Ty on the shoulder and say nothing, the way Rodriguez has been coming by to do since everyone was allowed to openly know about Ty and me, and Big Jim sends over a round on the house.
Nora is at the table because she doesn't work Fridays, and she's telling a story about a customer who tried to pay in actual pennies.
Aiden is laughing into Riley's shoulder, and Cal is explaining to Derek why the rubber chicken joke is officially retired as far as the Larsen family is concerned, and I'm, for the first time in my life, the person in the room who's the least to be afraid of.
Ty orders me a coffee.
Big Jim brings it over. Black. Perfect temperature. Not my order. Ty's.
"You ordered me your coffee."
"It was a joke." He says it flat.
"Since when are you funny."
"Since I started spending all my free time with you, Hanna, I've had to up my game."
"That was two jokes in one sentence."
"I'm going to stop."
"Drink it."
"It's yours."
"I'll get my own. Drink yours, Ty."
He drinks it.
Under the table, he takes my hand. I let him.
The Just Coffee has a fourth movement.
At nine, Derek mentions the development project.
"Hey, speaking of bad business decisions — "
"Derek — "
" — the Wilder project is apparently falling apart."
"The resort thing?" I ask.
"The resort thing. Out past the river. Big fancy mountain resort. That billionaire guy, Colton Wilder. Apparently, he hurt his leg at the construction site on Tuesday. Wouldn't go to the ER. Made them call the local kinesiologist. The only one local is Laurel Finch."
"The kayak lady?"
"The kayak lady. Laurel runs that outfit out past the bridge. She's also a kinesiologist, which everybody forgets. She gets the call, shows up in paddling pants and a CPR kit. Wilder apparently wasn't pleased about being attended to by a woman."
"What happened."
"She told him to sit down and stop talking. His leg was fine, to ice it, to get over himself, and if he didn't listen to her, she was going to call his mother."
"Does she know his mother?"
"Nope. She said she'd find her, though."
Riley, across the table, is grinning. "I like her."
"Laurel Finch is a gem. Wait till Wilder finds out he has to be seen by her every day for the next six months because she's the only kinesiologist in a fifteen-hundred-mile radius. He's a man about to have a rough summer."
I file the name. Laurel Finch. Colton Wilder. The way you file a thing you're going to pick up again later.
At nine fifty-five we leave.
Ty and I walk out together under a sky that's purple at the top and still gold at the horizon, and we walk a block before he takes my hand, because Cal is behind us on the sidewalk, laughing with Aiden, and I’m sure Cal doesn't want to see us hold hands yet.
I respect that. We've agreed to respect that.
At the corner of Linden and First, Cal catches up.
"Brennan." He claps Ty on the shoulder.
"Cal."
"Dinner Sunday. Mom's."
"Okay,"
"You can bring wine." Cal says.
"Don’t I always bring the wine?"
"Don't cry at dinner," he says to me.
"Shut up."
"Love you."
"Love you too."
Cal walks home — his good arm around Aiden, his bad arm hanging, no longer bad. He doesn't look back. He's been working on not looking back at us. He's getting better at it.
Ty takes my hand.
"You want to be alone?"
"Don't be stupid."
"My place or yours."
"Ours?" I say it before I mean to.
Ty stops on the sidewalk.
"What? Are you saying yes?"
"I told Mom. Yes, I'll move in with you. We can fight about it later — but I'm telling you now."
"Hanna — "
"Do you still want me to move in with you or are you going to be a difficult man about it, Ty Brennan?"
"Yes. I want you to move in with me."
"Good, Ty."
"I have to ask Cal."
"Ask him Sunday at dinner. He's going to say yes this time." I squeeze his hand.
"How do you know?”
“I asked him yesterday what he thought about you and me moving in together, and he said, 'It's about time, Hanna,' and then he said, 'Don't tell Brennan I said that, because I'm still making him work for it.' So ask him. And he's going to say yes."
"Okay."
"Okay."
We start walking.
At the corner, under a streetlight, we pass Micah locking up Peak Grounds. He sees us and nods.
"Micah."
"Hanna. Ty."
"Hanna." His voice isn't unkind. "You two have a good evening."
"Okay. You too, Micah."
He locks the door and walks the other way.
Ty and I walk home.
In the apartment, later, at some specific minute I'm not tracking because I'm no longer a woman who tracks specific minutes of things like this, the lamp is on in the bedroom and Ty is already in bed because Ty is an old man who reads.
He's reading a book with his little glasses on.
I'm in the kitchen making my own coffee because tomorrow is my day off and I want coffee ready for six a.m., and in the mirror above the kitchen sink I look at myself.
I look at my face.
My face doesn't have the small set around the eyes it had when I got here in March.
My face is the face of a woman who sleeps.
My face is the face of a woman who doesn't deflect.
My face is the face of a woman who, twenty-nine years ago, came out of a mother who saved a speech for ten years, and, fourteen years ago, lost a father I've finally stopped trying to not-remember, and, only weeks ago, came home to a town where everyone knew about Ty and me and nobody said a word, and stood in a linen closet kissing a man I've loved since I was nineteen.
My face is okay.
My face is the face I came home for.
"Hanna." I hear from the bedroom.
"Yeah, Ty."
"Are you coming to bed?"
"Yeah."
"Bring your coffee."
"You want coffee?"
"No, I want to watch you drink it."
"You're so weird."
"Bring it."
I bring it and I get in bed. He pulls me against his shoulder. My coffee sits on the nightstand.
"Hey, you." He leans down and kisses my forehead. The lamp is on. The book is face down on his chest.
Outside, somewhere in the dark of July Copper Ridge, Cal is home.
Laurel Finch, the kayak lady, is icing the scraped knee of a billionaire.
My mother is asleep with the kitchen light on, the way she sleeps every night, and she isn't going to wake up at three a.m. to check the doors, because she's stopped doing that, because she's started sleeping all the way through. Finally.
I'm staying.
I'm staying in a town where I know everyone and everyone knows me, and the man I love is reading a book against my shoulder with my coffee on the nightstand, and the basil plant is on the windowsill, and the ceiling duck is, for the record, still on this ceiling, and now the duck is ours.
"Hanna."
"Yeah?"
"Read."
"I don't have a book."
"Take mine."
"You're reading it."
"Take it."
I take his book. He kisses the top of my head. I read two pages of Le Carré and don't absorb any of it. I set it down. I lean against his shoulder. The lamp is on.
I fall asleep, under my own roof in my own town with the man I was always going to love.
I stay.
Ready for more Copper Ridge heat?
Colton Wilder built an empire from nothing.
Now he’s hiding out in Copper Ridge while the media tears his life apart.
The last thing he needs is a distraction.
Unfortunately, distraction comes in the form of a sunshiney local woman who gets under his skin faster than he can shut her out.
Forced proximity.
Explosive chemistry.
One grumpy billionaire who never expected to fall.