Epilogue Ember
“Nothing dramatic happened after that.
They just kept waking up beside each other.”
— Author’s Note
There are currently seventy-two individual bottles of edible body glitter on my kitchen island, and Kevin the goat is systematically trying to ingest the one labeled Midnight Musk.
We’ve tried blocking the doors and setting up perimeter fencing, but frankly, it’s impossible—the goats have decided they are part of the immediate family, and they treat the kitchen like their favorite place to be.
“Kevin, if you eat that, your milk is going to taste like a cheap casino in Reno,” I yell, swatting his nose away from the counter.
Kevin lets out a flat, defiant baaa, his horizontal pupils judging me with the intensity of a high court judge, before he transitions to chewing on the hem of my apron.
“Oh, let him have a little sparkle, Ember,” my mother sighs from the kitchen table.
“In my latest chapter, the rugged duke coats his entire torso in a paste made of crushed pearls and the tears of his enemies before he takes the lady-in-waiting on the mahogany billiards table. It’s highly sensory. The readers love tactile friction.”
“Mom, it’s eleven in the morning on a Saturday, and it’s Sophie’s sixth birthday party. Please do not use the phrase ‘tactile friction’ near the bouncy castle.”
My father looks up from his own tablet on the other side of the table, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose.
“You know… The billiards table is structurally redundant. A velvet chaise lounge provides much better leverage for a man with a broad shoulder span. I’m editing the thrusting sequence now. ”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, taking a long, deep breath of air.
A second later, Martha enters with that familiar, guarded expression she always wears, her eyes darting around as if assessing the structural integrity of my hospitality. She holds out a small, glass bottle of deep amber liquid, her knuckles white as she clutches it.
“I brought this for the pancakes,” she says, her voice clipped. “It’s from the late tapping of the season. Don’t you dare waste it on the livestock.”
I take the maple syrup, feeling the weight of the gift, and smile. She might not like the mess, but she’s here, and that’s enough.
The screen door bangs open before I can even respond, and Lauren walks in, carrying a three-tiered sheet cake that looks like an explosion at a neon pink marshmallow factory.
Right behind her is Mark, her absolute saint of a fiancé.
They’ve been living out of a tricked-out camper van for the last eight months, traveling the coast, but there wasn’t a chance in hell they were missing today.
Mark is currently weighed down by a twenty-pound bag of ice and a giant wrapped box that looks suspiciously like a child-sized drum set.
“If anyone touches this cake before the six-year-olds see it, I will personally use the fire chief’s heavy-duty bolt cutters on your fingers,” Lauren announces, setting the monstrosity down on the island with a heavy thud.
She looks over at me, her sharp eyes taking in my flour-dusted hair, my unbuckled overall strap, and Kevin’s current attempt to eat my pocket.
She instantly bursts into a wide, wicked grin. “My goodness, Emmy. You look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backward by a very confused woodland creature.”
“I am managing a multi-species crisis, Lauren,” I say, grabbing the box of plastic forks.
“Where is he?”
“He is currently suffering,” Lauren says, leaning against the counter and plucking an apple slice from my prep bowl. “He’s out on the lawn trying to inflate the princess castle with a small generator, and Sophie told him that his technique was ‘inefficient.’”
I let out a loud, breathless laugh, my chest swelling with that warm, ridiculous ache that has lived there permanently for the last year. “Did he have his official clipboard?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Lauren giggles, leaning her shoulder into mine.
Mark wanders over to my dad, instantly getting sucked into a conversation about the load-bearing capacity of antique French chaises, leaving Lauren and me to our favorite hobby.
“He had the yellow legal pad and everything. I told him he looked like an insurance adjuster at a carnival, and he gave me that dark, gravelly look that usually makes the junior engineers cry. I just told him his hair looked thin from the back.”
“Lauren, you are an evil genius,” I say, shaking my head as I look through the kitchen window.
Out on the green grass, under the sun, Brooks is currently on his knees in the mud.
He’s wearing an old, tight gray t-shirt that stretches over his shoulders like a second skin, his dark hair ruffled by the summer breeze, and he is staring at a giant, deflated pink vinyl turret with an expression of profound, existential defeat.
Sitting right next to him on an upside-down bucket is Sophie, two massive neon-green glitter bows in her pigtails, and a t-shirt that says MY DAD LIKES GLITTER.
She is gesturing wildly with a carrot stick, clearly explaining the mechanics of pneumatic pressure to a man who has spent fifteen years running the town’s emergency services.
“He’s so far gone,” Lauren murmurs, her voice dropping into a softer, genuinely fond lilt as she watches them.
Then she looks at me, bumping her hip against mine.
“Seriously, Ember. Thank you. For being so incredible with her. Knowing she has a bonus mom who lets her feed goats while wearing a tutu makes it so much easier to be out on the road.”
“Are you kidding?” I smile, looking at the little girl out the window, my throat getting a little tight. “She’s my favorite person. Well, second favorite, but her dad is currently losing a fight with an inflatable toy, so she’s winning today.”
“He’s completely obsessed with you,” Lauren corrects, giving my arm a gentle squeeze. “Every time you walk into a room, his whole perimeter drops. It’s disgusting, honestly. It makes me want to vomit a little bit, but in a very healthy, supportive way.”
Before I can answer, Marge marches into the kitchen, her arms loaded down with three massive stainless-steel trays of the bakery’s signature cinnamon rolls. She sets them down with a loud, authoritative slam that makes Kevin the goat jump three feet into the air.
“Move it, livestock,” Marge says, pointing a long, sharp finger at Kevin, who immediately trots out the screen door like he’s been caught by the principal.
Marge turns her formidable gaze onto me, her hands resting on her hips, her eyes tracking the flour on my nose. “Ember, why are you still in your overalls?”
“I was helping the goats with their morning rotation, Marge,” I say, stepping forward to give her a quick, tight hug around her middle.
She sighs, pretending to hate it, but her warm hand comes up to pat my back with that familiar, fierce maternal strength she’s given me ever since my own parents started spending six months a year in a villa in Tuscany researching ‘Renaissance-era bodices.’
“You’re a mess,” Marge declares, pulling back to straighten the collar of my flannel shirt with a rough, loving jerk. “Now go out there and tell that big fireman of yours to stop staring at the pink castle like that. It’s a birthday party, not a chemical fire.”
“Yes, Marge,” I grin, unbuckling my other overall strap just to watch her jaw tighten.
I grab the tray of juice boxes and push my way through the door, the heat hitting my face instantly.
As I cross the lawn, the high-heeled click of the church knitting brigade echoes from the driveway. Bernice, Hazel, and Dotty are marching in a tight formation past Brooks’s truck.
Bernice is holding a slow cooker like a shield, Hazel has a box of handmade knitted goat sweaters (a sentence I never thought I’d have to process), and Dotty is using her cane to prod my father, who has wandered out to the porch to describe a “particularly moist velvet drapes sequence” to her.
Mark is standing right next to him, looking deeply fascinated and taking mental notes for his camper van renovations.
“Brooks Lawson!” Bernice shouts across the grass. “Why is that castle still looking like a melted piece of saltwater taffy? Six years ago today, I held your daughter in the hospital while you were crying like a baby into a paper towel. The least you can do is give her a proper bouncy castle!”
Brooks looks up from the grass. He looks at Bernice, then he looks at Sophie, and then his dark eyes slide across the lawn until they find me.
The tight line of his shoulders drops an inch. The corners of his mouth loosen, and this slow, heavy, completely private look takes over his face.
I walk up to the upside-down bucket, setting the juice boxes down, and lean my hip against his shoulder. “Having some structural difficulties, Chief?”
Brooks lets out a long sigh, his hand coming up to wrap firmly around the back of my thigh, his thumb tracing a slow circle through the denim. “The manual is written in three languages, none of them English, and our daughter is currently threatening to mutiny.”
“She gets her adherence to regulatory perfection entirely from your side of the grass, pretty boy,” I remind him. “I am a creature of artistic chaos. If she were my biological clone, that castle would be inflated with pure enthusiasm and held together by hot glue.”
“It needs the silver tape, Ember,” Sophie insists. “Daddy says the silver tape doesn’t meet the safety standards for a bouncy environment, but I told him that the pink environment is different.”
“The pink environment is completely different,” I agree, leaning down to press a loud, sloppy kiss against her cheek, making her giggle and swat at my curls. “Go find Lauren and Mark, Soph. They just brought in a huge cake. Go make sure Mark doesn’t eat the frosting.”
“Copy that!” Sophie shouts, jumping off the bucket and sprinting toward the kitchen door, her little boots kicking up small clumps of clover.
Brooks stays on his knees for a second, looking up at me through his eyelashes. He reaches up, his fingers twisting into the belt loop of my overalls, pulling me down until I have to crouch in the grass right between his knees.
“You smell sweet,” he whispers, his voice dropping into that low, hot register that makes the entire summer afternoon disappear. “And you have flour on your left ear.”
“It’s called branding, Brooks,” I whisper back. “I am a walking advertisement for cupcakes. And you look like you’ve been hazed by a bouncy castle.”
“I’m losing control of the perimeter, Ember,” he murmurs, his eyes sliding down to my mouth.
“Your mother is currently explaining the mechanics of historical intimacy to the junior engineer, your father is trying to get Mark to test out the suspension on his camper van for a scene about a runaway carriage, and Lauren just told me my hair looks thin.”
“Is it thin?”
“It’s not thin,” he says, his hand sliding up to the back of my neck.
He pulls me in, his lips hitting mine with a slow, deep, completely unhurried certainty that tastes like black coffee and summer heat.
“Get a room, you two!” Marge yells from the porch, banging a large wooden spoon against the railing. “There are children present!”
Brooks breaks the kiss with a short laugh, his forehead resting against mine for a brief second before he stands up, lifting me with him like I weigh nothing at all. He wipes the mud off his knees, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Mark is being cornered by your parents,” Brooks says. “We should probably save him.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I say. “You haven’t even cleared the bouncy castle scene yet. You’re still on duty.”
Across the lawn, the screen door flies open again.
Sophie comes running out, holding a massive piece of pink cardboard, followed closely by Kevin the goat, who is now wearing a bright green knitted sweater with tiny yellow buttons down the front—compliments of Hazel.
Behind them, my mother is waving her laptop like a flag, my father and Mark are laughing together on the porch, and Lauren is holding a digital camera, her shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
Amy drifts out from the side of the house, her camera lens clicking as she captures a candid shot of the chaos, her expression softening into a quiet, knowing smile as she watches us.
“Ember! Look!” Sophie screams, pointing at Kevin. “He’s a gentleman now!”
I look at the goat, I look at the fire chief holding my hand like it’s the only stable thing in the universe, and I look at the small, crazy town that has somehow become my home.
“He’s a perfect gentleman, Soph,” I laugh, leaning my head against Brooks’s shoulder as the first guests start to flood the lawn. “Just like your dad.”