Epilogue
Rafe
The ring has been in the left pocket of my jacket for three hours, and I must have checked on it a dozen times.
I am not nervous. I am perfectly calm.
Right. If I lie to myself enough times, maybe I’ll start believing it.
This morning I put my glasses in the freezer and stood in front of the open door for a full minute wondering who did that, but otherwise, sure. I’m calm.
The New Belle sits at the Saltford Bay pier looking better than any of its counterparts.
White hull, navy trim, paint so fresh it still smells like a hardware store, and her name across the stern in the same cream block letters as the boat that came before her.
Captain Fergus swears the lettering was the painter's idea. Captain Fergus is a liar.
Our bags are stacked beside the gangway, which is to say my bags are stacked beside the gangway with Neri's one sensible duffel sitting on top of the pile like a reproach.
Fergus is prodding the stack with his boot.
"Six cases," he says. "The Belle is a working boat, Professor, not a moving van."
"Two of those are instrument cases going back to the lab. One is food."
"One is food," he repeats, to the harbor at large, so the gulls can share his suffering. "For a four-hour crossing."
“I’m bringing food to hungry scientists, Fergus. Sue me.”
He mutters something in which the words blasted and patisserie both feature, and turns to where Neri stands with her hair down, teal catching the morning sun like jewels. She's watching us with her arms crossed and a smile she's trying to hide.
"What's the water saying today, girl?" Fergus asks her.
Neri tips her head, and for a second her eyes go somewhere past the harbor mouth, out where the swell is just a texture on the horizon. A year ago, she wouldn’t have answered him.
"Flat and lazy clear to the mainland," she says. "You'll be bored."
"Bored is my favorite weather." He nods, satisfied. "And California? Still treating you properly?"
"California is treating me fine." Her grin widens. "The funding office is treating me better."
"That sounds about right to me.” Fergus shakes his whiskered head slowly. “They’d be fools not to treat you so well you’d never want to leave.”
"And this one." The boot swings my way. “I hope he’s treating you as well as you deserve, too.”
"I do,” I say. “I’m splitting my time between coasts just for the privilege of being with her. I’m a man who knows his luck.”
Neri rolls her eyes at me, but she blushes anyway. I love that she still does that.
I stepped down as department Chair in the spring. What I kept was AETHER: the research, the collaborations, the telescope runs, the work I actually wanted to be doing. Neri took that research position at Scripps and her career has flourished ever since.
Our home is in La Jolla now.
These last six weeks in Saltford Bay are for me.
We rented a cottage two streets up from the harbor while I helped get AETHER's new survey running.
Neri worked from the cottage when she could and flew back to California twice when she couldn't. Earlier this year, it was the other way around.
I spent more time on planes while she settled into Scripps and got her own work moving.
Sometimes we spend a few weeks apart. Sometimes one of us follows the other. Sometimes we eat dinner together every night for a month and start taking it for granted until one of us has to pack again.
It isn't always convenient, but it works.
And at the end of it is our house in La Jolla, where my stand mixer occupies more counter space than Neri thinks any appliance deserves, and her papers spread across every remaining flat surface in retaliation.
Carl Sagan the Second stands beside the bookshelf, turtleneck and all, mail-ordered once it became clear the original was staying at the bottom of the Gulf of Maine with the first Belle.
The balcony gives me enough sky to be happy, the Pacific is two streets away for her, and we have two offices because sharing one lasted nine days and nearly ended in bloodshed.
Home. I'm ready to go home.
Not my home. Ours. I still like the sound of that.
Fergus squints up at the sun, then at the tide, then at nothing at all, and produces the single least convincing performance in the history of maritime theater.
"Well," he announces. "I've a tremendous amount of captain business to see to."
He goes up the gangway at a speed I never witnessed from him on land. Both deckhands abandon the foredeck and follow without being told, which is its own miracle. And then the pier is just us and the gulls.
Neri watches all of it with her eyes narrowed to blue slits.
"That was strange," she says. "Even for Fergus."
"Was it? I didn't notice. Captains contain multitudes. You could say he has a lot on his plaice."
"That's a fish pun."
"It absolutely is not."
"That's the third pun in ten minutes, Rafe." She turns toward me fully. "You're nervous."
"Nothing's wrong."
"Rafe, I know you better than that. Spill it.”
"Nothing is wrong," I say, and that part comes out steady, because it has the advantage of being true. "Nothing is wrong at all."
I've had the ring since March. I kept waiting because I didn't want to ask her while everything still felt new. I wanted to know what happened after the reunion, after the first months together, after we had to start making actual decisions about jobs and travel and where we would live.
Now I know what our ordinary life looks like. Sometimes it means airports. Sometimes it means six weeks in a rented cottage because my work needs me in Maine. In October, it means Neri disappearing onto a research vessel for three weeks while I stay behind.
I love all of it because it's ours.
"Neri."
Something in my voice makes her go still.
"I had a speech," I tell her. "Three drafts. The second one had an extended metaphor about binary stars that, on reflection, nobody needs."
"Rafe, what—"
"Here's what survived." I take a breath. The harbor smells like diesel and salt and fresh paint. Her eyes are enormous. "We've spent the last year figuring out what our real life looks like. It's busy and inconvenient and sometimes I miss you so much I hate every airport in North America."
Her mouth trembles.
"But then we’re together and everything is new and beautiful in the world again.”
I reach for her hand.
"And that's the part I want for the rest of my life. Coming home to you."
I go down on one knee. The planks are damp. I could not possibly care less. The box comes out of my pocket and I open it.
"Dr. Nerissa Marsh," I say. "Will you marry me?"
She's stunned. Actually stunned. Both hands have come up over her mouth, and above them her eyes have gone glassy and bright, and for once I have absolutely no idea what she's about to do.
Then the first tear goes over the edge.
My heart stops.
"Yes."
The word comes out wet and cracked and completely without hesitation.
"Yes?"
"Yes. Obviously yes. Rafe. Ask me again."
"Marry me."
"Yes!” She's laughing now, and crying, both at once, at full capacity. "Yes!”
I laugh too, because apparently breathing has become optional.
She holds out her left hand. I slide the ring onto her finger: a simple band and a stone that catches blue and green when she moves it. Then she grabs me by the collar with both fists and hauls me up off my knee, and she kisses me with that fierce confidence I love so much.
I wrap her up. I kiss her back. I hold on. She's laughing against my mouth, and I can feel her heart pounding through both our jackets.
Somewhere above us, applause breaks out.
I lift my head, and there they are: Fergus at the New Belle's rail with both deckhands beside him, all three clapping.
Neri looks at the assembled audience. Then at me.
"You told him?"
"I required logistical cooperation."
"He asked for five minutes alone on the pier," Fergus booms down, entirely unrepentant. "And thank every tide he finally used it, because I've been sitting on this since Tuesday and another week would have finished me. I'm a sea captain, girl, not a vault."
The laugh comes then, the full famous maelstrom of it, rolling across the water loud enough to lift six gulls off the pilings. Neri buries her face in my shoulder and shakes, and it takes me a second to be sure she's laughing too.
"Congratulations, aboard, in that order!" Fergus bellows, wiping at his whiskers with the back of one furred hand. “Or you’ll make an old selkie make a fool of himself.”
Neri turns toward Fergus looming over the rail.
“You’re crying,” she says.
Fergus looks personally offended. “Crying, me? That’s dust in my eyes, girl. Don’t flatter yourself. Now, get aboard before I revoke the boarding permission.”
I pick up our bags. She takes my hand and we board together.
The lines come off, the diesel settles into its steady thrum through the deck, and the New Belle eases away from the pier. Neri stands beside me at the stern rail, holding her left hand out and turning the ring in the sunlight.
“How long were you planning this proposal?” she asks.
“Well, I bought the ring back in March, but I figured it was a bit early.”
Then she pulls my arm around her and settles back against me.
"For the record," she says, "I'd have said yes back then.”
"That's deranged. I withdraw the proposal."
"Too late. We have witnesses."
We're standing near the stern bench, almost exactly where I once offered a muffin to a furious woman who looked like she'd rather throw me overboard than have a conversation with me.
I reach into my backpack and produce the Tupperware.
"Blueberry brown-butter," I say. "In case you'd like to bite my head off about it for old times' sake."
She takes one. She bites into it and makes the sound, the exact indecent sound. This time she looks me dead in the eye while she does it, daring me to say a word.
“Not bad,” she says around the mouthful.
"A devastating review."
Saltford Bay is folding itself back into the coastline behind us, the harbor going small, the spruce hills going soft and blue. Ahead, the mainland, and after it an airport, and after that our house in La Jolla with two offices, one overworked stand mixer and one very smug cardboard astronomer.
Neri is already talking about October. Her cruise. My next telescope run. Whether a wedding fits better in the gap before one or after the other. Whether my mother will cry, cater, or—as Neri strongly suspects—do both.
Her hand finds mine on the rail, and the ring throws a small piece of the sun back at the water.
None of it matters to me, because my happiness is wherever Neri is.
THE END
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