Epilogue
MAGGIE (ONE YEAR LATER)
"Stop it! You're dripping on me," Sita yells from the lounger.
"That's the idea." Sloane shakes her wet hair one more time for good measure and Sita shrieks and swats at her. The two of them carry on like that for a minute, fifteen years of it in the way they bicker, while I drift on the inflatable bed and watch the sky go gold over the back paddock.
There's a pool in my backyard now. I still can't quite get over it.
I came home from the feed store one afternoon in May to find a man with a digger in my yard and Sloane standing there with her arms crossed, daring me to say something.
I said a great many things, but Sloane is stubborn and three months later the pool was ready.
I've stopped pretending I find it excessive.
After a day in the heat there's nothing like getting in cold water, and I get in most evenings.
"So you're sure you won't come to the party with me?" Sita asks. "Last chance. There's a great guest list, Sloane."
"I told you, I can't. I have to work. I need to be in Tulare."
"Not until Monday."
"I still have to get there and prep. They've got one weekend to film before their fundraising gala and if I turn up with nothing, I'm wasting everyone's time.
Forty rescue donkeys, Sita. If I get this right, they're funded for a year.
" Sloane grabs her water bottle and takes a long drink.
"And I've got a meeting with Barker & Co on Tuesday, that organic dog treat company.
They want me as their brand ambassador."
"Dog treats," Sita says. "From purses to dog treats. How the mighty have fallen."
"The dog treats pay for the donkeys, Sita. That's how I keep the charity work free."
"Fine, fine. Save the donkeys. But I still think you work too hard."
"Don't you ever feel like doing something more than —" Sloane looks her up and down "— nothing?"
"You mean work?" Sita pulls a face. "Ugh. No thanks. But I'm happy for you, babe. Truly. Enjoy your enlightenment." She waves a lazy hand toward the pool. "Maggie? Can I tempt you instead?"
"Thanks, but no," I say from the water. "I can't get away from here. And anyway, it's not my scene."
"Boring. Both of you." Sita sighs. "And I can't ask Mel or Nicole either. They've completely ignored me since they started dating twin brothers and I've got no one left to party with."
"Sounds like them," Sloane says. She looks over at me and we smile at each other across the water.
A year of this and it still makes me giddy — that she's here.
That the woman who cried at my gate over a thirty-minute walk now does charity work for a living and falls asleep before I do.
Somewhere along the way I stopped waiting for her to leave and embraced our love. Because, God, I love her.
"We might be having a party here soon, though," Sloane says.
Sita lifts her sunglasses. "What for?" She turns to Hank, who is standing beside her lounger with his lower lip drooping.
We let him into the fenced-off pool area in the evenings as he likes to hang out with us, and he's appointed himself Sita's chaperone.
"Is it your birthday, handsome? Are they throwing you a party? "
Sloane doesn't answer. She reaches into her purse next to her lounger, pulls something out and dives into the pool again. She swims the length of the pool underwater and surfaces right next to my inflatable bed, hair slicked back, blinking the water out of her eyes. I lean down and kiss her.
"Yeah, what party?" I smile against her mouth. "Because I told you, I don't care about my birthday and —" I stop.
Sloane raises a hand, and between her fingers is a ring. A diamond, beaded with pool water, shimmering in the low sun.
I slam a hand over my mouth. The bed wobbles underneath me and I grab the edge of it. Sloane is trying to look composed and failing — her chin is doing the wobbling thing it does when she's about to cry.
"I had a whole speech," she says in a shaky voice. "And now it's all gone. You seem to do that to me, so —" She takes a breath. "I love you. I love you so much I can't think straight. You're my home, and you're the one, Maggie Dawson. Will you please marry me?"
For a moment I can't move because I didn't see this coming.
The whole world has narrowed down to her face — the water running off her chin, her eyes searching mine, the slight tremble in the hand holding the ring — and I think, absurdly, of the first time I saw her, furious and out of place at my gate, and how I would have laughed in the face of anyone who told me that woman would one day ask me to be her wife.
My eyes are streaming as I slide off the bed and into the water, standing on my tiptoes to face her. I take her beautiful face in both my hands, and the word comes out half laugh, half sob.
"Yes." I kiss her. "Yes." I kiss her again, her cheeks, her wet eyelashes, her mouth. "Of course, yes. I love you, Sloane. I love you more than I knew I could love anyone."
She sniffs and kisses me. We both go under for a second and come up tangled together. She takes my left hand and works the ring onto my wet finger, and we both look at it sitting there like neither of us can believe it's real.
From the poolside comes a long, piercing shriek. Sita is on her feet with her phone up.
"Are you filming?" Sloane calls.
"Obviously I'm filming! I saw you grab that ring." Sita is crying too, fanning her own face with her free hand. "Oh my god. Oh my god. I call maid of honor. I'm calling it right now, it's on record."
"You got it." Sloane laughs and wraps her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist, and I hold her up in the water while the sky burns orange behind the oak. Hank brays at the commotion, long and operatic.
"Hank approves," she murmurs against my shoulder.
Out past the fence the goats are wandering toward their shed, and Dolly is asleep in the last patch of sun. Hank watches us with his one good eye like he's seen it coming all along. Maybe he has. He always was the smartest one here.