Epilogue
SILAS
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
Wren rearranged my kitchen again.
The mugs are sorted by color now. Last month they were sorted by size.
The month before that, by "frequency of use," which is a system she invented and I still don't fully understand.
The condensed milk has its own shelf. There's a French press next to the percolator because she bought one in Reno and drove it up the mountain like it was fragile cargo.
There are also curtains. Yellow ones. And a rug under the kitchen table that I trip over every morning. And framed photographs on the wall above the bookshelf. The garden at sunrise. Ash in the wildflowers. My hands holding a tomato, the burn scars visible, the light warm.
She hung that last one without asking. When I stared at it too long, she said, "Your hands are beautiful. Get over it."
My cabin doesn't look like my cabin anymore. It looks like someone lives here. Two someones, plus a dog who has fully and permanently defected.
The first month after Reno was logistics.
She drove up on weekends, stayed through Monday, edited photos on the porch while I worked the garden.
Ash went insane every Friday afternoon, pacing the access road an hour before her car appeared.
I didn't pace. I stood on the porch drinking coffee and watching the road. Which is not pacing.
By month three, the weekends stretched longer. She booked fewer Saturday weddings, started marketing elopement packages focused on mountain venues. Whisper Vale turned out to be exactly the kind of place brides wanted. Remote. Mossy. Magical. Her words.
Month five, she brought the last box from her apartment. Set it on the kitchen table, looked at me, said, "I gave notice on my lease."
That night I held her in the dark and didn't say anything because I couldn't talk without my voice cracking.
Now it's spring. The garden is in. Ash is asleep on the porch in a patch of sun.
Wren is somewhere on the property with her camera, shooting wildflower content for her website.
The business has tripled since she added "Whisper Vale Mountain Elopements" to her services.
Brides drive hours to stand in my meadow and say their vows with the ridge as a backdrop.
Ridge came for beer last Tuesday. Sat on the porch for ten minutes, surveyed the curtains, the rug, the photographs. Looked at me with an expression I'd never seen on his face before. Something close to relief.
"You look good, man."
"Don't make it weird."
"I'm serious. You look alive."
He wasn't wrong. The nightmares come less often now.
Once a month maybe, and when they do, Wren doesn't panic.
Just puts her hand on my chest, says my name until I surface, stays awake with me until the adrenaline fades.
She doesn't try to fix it. Doesn't ask me to talk about it unless I want to.
Just exists next to me in the dark, steady as the mountain itself.
I'm in the garden tying up the early pea shoots when she comes around the side of the cabin. Camera bag on her hip, braid falling apart, flannel sleeves rolled to her elbows. She's flushed. Smiling.
Nervous.
Wren doesn't get nervous. She photographs strangers for a living. She drove a rental sedan up a mountain in a thunderstorm. She told a man she'd known for three days that she was falling in love with him.
But right now she's nervous.
"Hey."
"Hey." Standing, I brush dirt off my knees. "Get the shots you wanted?"
"Yeah. The columbine is incredible right now." She sets the camera bag on the porch steps. "Can you come inside for a minute?"
The kitchen table has something on it. A photograph, printed on matte paper, propped against the wildflower mug. Not a landscape. Not the garden.
A photograph of a positive pregnancy test sitting on top of my flannel shirt.
Everything stops.
"Wren."
"Seven weeks." Her voice is steady but her hands are shaking. She's gripping the back of the kitchen chair. "I drove to Whisper Vale for the test yesterday while you were splitting wood. I wanted to be sure before I told you."
Seven weeks. That puts conception right around the time she moved in permanently. Right around the night we christened the new curtains by not closing them.
"You're pregnant."
"I'm pregnant."
My knees give. Not a collapse. Just a slow folding until I'm kneeling on the kitchen floor with my forehead against her stomach, my hands gripping her hips. She runs her fingers through my hair. Gentle, patient. Letting me have the moment.
A baby. My baby. Growing inside this woman who showed up in a thunderstorm with a camera and a sharp mouth and burned through every wall I'd spent three years building.
Bobby Callahan would have laughed. Would have slapped me on the back and said something like "About damn time, Reeves." Jenny would have sent banana bread.
The grief is still there. Always will be. But it's not alone anymore. It sits next to something bigger. Something alive.
"Silas." Her voice is thick. "Say something."
Looking up at her from the kitchen floor, her gray-blue eyes bright with tears she's trying not to let fall, freckles dark against flushed cheeks, my flannel hanging off one shoulder.
"Marry me."
She laughs. Choked, wet, surprised. "You're proposing from the kitchen floor."
"Yes."
"You don't have a ring."
"I'll get one. Tomorrow. Whisper Vale has a jewelry store. Marry me, Wren."
Both hands on my face. Thumbs tracing the lines by my eyes. She bends down and kisses me, soft and deep, tasting like coffee and tears.
"Yes." Against my mouth. "Obviously yes."
Ash pushes through the dog door, shoves his head between us, tail going wild. He licks my face. Licks her face. Barks once.
"He's happy," she says.
"He's not the only one."
That smile. Full dimples, bright eyes, devastating. The smile I earned with a kiss in a thunderstorm and almost lost because I was too afraid to keep it.
My hand spreads over her stomach. Flat still. Nothing to feel yet. But I keep it there while she covers it with hers, and we stay on the kitchen floor with the dog between us and the spring light coming through the yellow curtains she hung without asking.
My mountain. My woman. My family.
Bobby, if you're watching. I'm not wasting the living anymore.