Epilogue #3
Hearing her say it again undoes me. My eyes burn, and I blink hard, unwilling to miss the way she is watching me.
We talked about children months ago, lying awake while rain tapped against the bedroom windows.
She told me she wanted one with me, and I lay there afterward imagining a small, sleepy weight against my chest. Since then, the possibility has found its way into ordinary conversations, quietly welcome, something we both hoped we would get to know.
Now she’s here telling me, and all I can think is that there will be someone who knows her as their mother. Someone who gets to be loved by her from the very beginning.
“Max.” Her thumb strokes my cheek. “This is the part where you’re allowed to be pleased.”
“I’m so happy I can barely look at you.” I manage another breath, unsteady enough to make her eyes fill. “And I can’t seem to look anywhere else.”
She makes a small sound, laughing and crying at once, and leans back into me.
I rest my cheek against hers, keeping my hand quiet on the reins while my other arm holds her close.
For a while, neither of us says anything.
I can feel her breathing settle beneath my palm.
Somewhere beyond the orchard, a bird calls twice, and the leaves move softly above us.
“Are you happy?” I ask her quietly.
“Very.” She covers the hand resting at her waist. “I wanted to tell you the second I knew. Then I wanted to have you to myself when I did.”
“You’ve had to sit through me defending the donkey painting.”
“It required considerable restraint.”
I laugh against her cheek. “You could have interrupted.”
“You were making such a passionate case. I thought I should let you finish before giving you something else to be insufferable about.”
“I am going to be insufferable.”
“I know.”
She sounds so fond that it hurts. I look down at our hands together, her ring catching a thread of sunlight.
There is so much I don’t know yet. What our child will need.
How it will feel to hold them. Whether I’ll recognize the difference between hungry and tired or spend the first weeks trying everything while Elle laughs at me over a cup of cold coffee.
I want to find out. I want the mornings when she nudges me awake because it’s my turn, and the moment we discover what makes our baby laugh. I want to hear her voice in the next room and know who she’s talking to.
“What?” she asks, catching the smile I can’t contain.
“I’m remembering that child at my mother’s garden party. The one I made laugh.”
“The one who laughed at your haircut?”
“That was a very successful face I was making.”
“It was an unfortunate haircut.”
“Either way, I have something to offer.”
She laughs properly then, her shoulders moving against my chest, and I kiss her cheek again. I want to be standing in front of her. I want both hands free, her arms around my neck, room to show her what her news has done to me.
“Let’s get down,” I murmur. “I need to kiss my wife.”
“An excellent idea.”
I ask him forward, and we walk the last stretch of path toward the lower gate. The groom is there, checking the latch on the paddock, and she looks up when she hears us coming.
“Could you hold him for a moment?” I ask as we approach.
She nods and comes to take Sovrano’s bridle, her hand steady on the leather. With Sovrano held still, I ease my leg clear behind Elle and slide down. When I turn toward her, she is still mounted, looking down at me with the sun warm on her face.
“Come here, principessa,” I say.
She shifts forward on the pad and swings her leg over, and I catch her as she slides down, my hands at her waist. Before her boots can reach the ground, I draw her against my chest and turn with her, one delighted circle away from Sovrano.
She catches my shoulders, laughing my name as her feet swing clear of the grass.
I have lifted trophies with crowds shouting around me, cameras flashing, my own name coming back at me from a hundred mouths. I can’t remember a single one as clearly as I know I will remember the sound she makes now, surprised and breathless and so happy that I start laughing with her.
Beyond her shoulder, the sun hangs just above the hills. It catches the loose strands of her hair and the tears on her cheeks, and I hold her a little longer before letting her feet find the ground.
I keep my hands at her waist as she reaches up to unfasten my helmet, her fingers working the clasp beneath my chin. I do the same with hers, and we set them both on the low stone wall beside the gate.
Elle pulls the tie from her braid and works her fingers through it, loosening the plaits until her hair falls in pale waves to her hips. The light catches it, turns it to silver and gold, and I reach out to touch it without thinking.
“I love you,” I tell her.
“I know.” She steps closer and wraps her arms around my neck. “I love you too.”
“We’re going to argue about names.”
“We’re going to argue about everything.” She kisses the corner of my mouth. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“What about family names? Your side has several.”
“Your side has more. And longer ones.”
“We could compromise.”
“We could give the child a simple name and let them choose their own complications later.”
I laugh and pull her closer. Behind us, the groom is leading Sovrano back toward the stable, the horse’s hoofbeats soft on the path. The lowering sun throws our shadows across the grass, joined at the shoulders where she is leaning into me.
“What are you thinking?” Elle asks.
“That I want to remember this exact moment.” I look at her face, the softness of her mouth, the way the fading light catches in her eyes. “You, here, telling me. I don’t want to forget any of it.”
“You won’t forget.”
“I won’t.” I kiss her, slow and deep, tasting the sweetness of figs and the salt of tears that might be hers or might be mine. When we separate, she’s smiling.
Her hand settles over mine at her waist. She guides it a little lower, laying our palms against the place where there is nothing yet for me to feel.
I look down anyway.
“You look very serious,” she murmurs.
“I’m trying to imagine them.”
“I keep doing that too.”
I lift my eyes to hers. “I hope they have your laugh.”
“And your modesty?”
“We shouldn’t burden one child with everything.”
Her laughter comes easily now.
She tips her forehead against mine, her hair slipping over my wrists, and I close my eyes for a moment to feel all of it.
The warmth of the evening. Her fingers threaded through mine.
The way she has brought me into this happiness without hesitation, certain that I will want to stand here with her and marvel at it.
“You’re crying again,” she whispers.
“You might have to get used to it.”
“I think I can manage.”
She kisses my cheek, just below my eye, and I draw her into me.
Behind her, the last light spreads across the hills she loves, turning the windows of our house gold. I can see it over her shoulder, the place where we will bring our child home.
For once, I don’t try to picture anything beyond that first arrival.
THE END