Epilogue
HUNTER
FOURTEEN MONTHS LATER
The garden is producing more zucchini than any two people could reasonably consume.
That's what I'm thinking about, standing on the south ridge at six in the morning, looking down at the rows Nora planted in April between the two granite outcrops she spotted on her second week here.
She was right about the site. Morning sun from the east, natural windbreak on the north and west, drainage down the slope.
The tomatoes came in heavy in August. The squash is still going strong in late November, protected by the cold frames she built from scrap timber and old windows she found in the back of my workshop.
The woman built cold frames. Without asking. Without instructions. Measured the lumber, cut the angles, fitted the glass, and had four functioning frames operational before I came in from the south slope and found her installing hinges with my good drill.
Fourteen months. In fourteen months, Nora Marsh has planted a garden, repaired every fence line on the property, established a sourdough starter she treats with more tenderness than most people show their children, started a small business selling bread and preserves at the Grizzly Ridge farmers market on Saturdays, and made my cabin smell like a place worth coming home to every single day.
The sign hangs above the workshop door now.
MARSH TIMBER / Est. 1952 / Hunter & Nora Marsh.
The lettering has weathered slightly in the Montana elements, darkening at the edges the way good timber does when it's exposed to real weather.
It looks better than the day I carved it. Permanent things usually do.
The access road carries the sound of a familiar engine. Bette's SUV rounds the last curve, pulling into the drive, and my sister steps out looking like a woman who has been summoned.
"You said it was urgent." Bette crosses the gravel, coffee in hand, sunglasses pushed up into hair that's the same dark shade as mine.
"It's six in the morning, Hunter. The only things that are urgent at six in the morning are medical emergencies and bad coffee, and since you've never made bad coffee in your life?—"
"Nora asked me to get you here before she wakes up."
That stops her. "Before she— why? Is she okay? Is something?—"
"She's fine. She wanted to tell you something in person, and she's been planning this for a week, and if I ruin it by telling you first, she'll make me sleep in the workshop."
Bette's eyes narrow. Then widen. Then narrow again as the calculation runs behind them, thirty-eight years of sibling pattern recognition processing data points at a speed that would impress a computer.
"Hunter Marsh."
"Don't."
"Is she?—"
"I said don't."
"Oh my god." The coffee nearly hits the gravel. Bette's free hand covers her mouth. Her eyes are bright, shining, already filling, because my sister has never once in her life waited for confirmation before leaping to the correct conclusion. "Oh my god, Hunter."
"She wants to tell you herself. Go inside. Make yourself useful. Don't cry until she gives you permission."
Bette is already halfway to the front door, walking with the controlled urgency of a woman who has been waiting for this moment since she paid eight thousand five hundred dollars to a matchmaking agency and changed both our lives.
The door closes behind her. Through the kitchen window, I watch her set her coffee on the counter, smooth her hair, and assume a position of completely unconvincing casual normalcy at the kitchen table.
Five minutes. Maybe less. The sounds of the cabin waking filter through the morning air.
Water running. Footsteps. The soft creak of the bedroom door, which I keep meaning to oil and keep forgetting because the sound has become part of the rhythm of my mornings.
Door creak means Nora is up. Nora up means coffee for two.
Coffee for two means the day has started properly.
The front door opens.
She steps onto the porch wrapped in my flannel, the same one she claimed fourteen months ago, worn soft now at the cuffs and collar.
Bare feet on the timber planks despite the November chill.
Hair loose around her shoulders. Coffee mug in one hand, the handmade ceramic one I gave her the first morning, and in the other hand a small rectangular box wrapped in brown paper.
"She's inside?"
"At the table. Pretending she doesn't know."
A smile. Full. Warm. The one that starts at her mouth and moves through her whole face until even her eyes are smiling, brown and bright in the morning light. "Come in with me."
"This is between you two."
"Hunter." She looks at me the way she's been looking at me for fourteen months. Patient. Steady. Completely certain. "Nothing about this is between anyone except us. All three of us. Come inside."
All three of us.
The words reach something deep in my chest. Below the ribs.
Below the breastbone. In the place where a man keeps the things he doesn't say out loud because they're too important for language and can only be expressed through acts.
Building a sign. Making coffee. Planting a garden in the spot a woman identified on her second week because she was already planning a life here before either of us admitted it.
The kitchen is warm. Woodstove crackling. Bette at the table, hands folded, expression set to "aggressively casual" in a way that fools absolutely nobody.
Nora sets the brown paper package on the table. Slides it across to Bette.
"Open it."
Bette's hands tremble slightly as the paper tears. Inside, a wooden box. Small. Hand-carved. My work, done in the workshop over the last week while Nora stood watch at the door to make sure Bette didn't stop by unannounced.
The lid lifts.
Inside, resting on a bed of soft cotton, a pair of tiny knitted booties. Yellow. Gender neutral. The size of my thumb.
And underneath the booties, a photograph. Black and white. Grainy. The unmistakable shape of a bean-sized human being curled in the dark space where my child is growing inside the woman who showed up at my door with two suitcases and made herself impossible to refuse.
Bette's hand presses to her mouth. The sound she makes is not a word.
Not a sob. Something between. A sound that contains thirty-eight years of sisterhood and eight years of watching her brother disappear into solitude and eight thousand five hundred dollars of faith that love could find him if she just opened the right door.
"Seven weeks." Nora's voice is steady. Warm. Her hand finds mine under the table, fingers threading through, squeezing. "Due in July."
The chair scrapes back. Bette is around the table before Nora can stand, arms wrapped around her, face buried in Nora's shoulder, crying the way my sister cries when something matters too much for composure. Full. Unrestrained. The kind of crying that shakes the whole body.
"I knew it," Bette manages. "The morning you showed up at my door, I knew. I told Mom's headstone, I said 'this one is going to give me a niece,' and she?—"
"Or nephew," Nora says.
"Or nephew. Or both. Or seventeen. I don't care. You're— Hunter, you're going to be a dad."
My sister looks at me across my wife's shoulder. Tears streaming. Mascara destroyed. Grinning with a joy so fierce it reshapes her entire face.
A dad. The word settles into my chest. Heavy. Permanent. A timber beam set into the foundation of a structure that will hold weight for a lifetime.
"Yeah," I manage. "I am."
Bette stays for breakfast. Then lunch. Then leaves at two in the afternoon only because Nora physically walks her to the SUV, hands her the keys, and tells her that if she doesn't leave, she won't be allowed to tell Maggie until tomorrow.
Bette is in the SUV and down the access road in forty-five seconds. The dust hasn't settled before Nora's phone buzzes.
Bette:
I'm calling Maggie from the car. I can't wait. I physically cannot wait. She's going to scream. The whole diner is going to hear it. I love you both. Name the baby after me.
Me:
We're not naming the baby Bette.
Bette:
Bettina? Bethany? Bretton? I'm flexible.
The phone goes on the kitchen counter. The cabin is quiet again. Just us. The woodstove. The smell of bread that Nora put in the oven at seven this morning because she's been baking every day for fourteen months and the only difference now is that she's baking for three.
Three. The number keeps rearranging the architecture of my thoughts.
Every room in this cabin suddenly has a secondary purpose.
The guest room at the end of the hall, the one Nora slept in for six nights before I pulled her into mine.
That room has a south-facing window. Good light.
Warm in the morning. Big enough for a crib, a rocking chair, a small shelf for books.
"You're doing it again." Nora leans against the counter, watching me. Still barefoot. Still in my flannel. Brown eyes tracking my face the way they've tracked my face since day one. Reading. Understanding. Knowing.
"Doing what?"
"Building things in your head. Your eyes go distant and your hands twitch. You're designing the nursery right now, aren't you?"
"The guest room has the best light."
"It does."
"South-facing window. I can extend the sill for a reading nook. Build the crib from the same timber as the dining table so the grain matches."
"The grain doesn't need to match."
"It does."
Her smile breaks wide open. The one that reached me across a driveway fourteen months ago and hasn't stopped reaching me since.
She crosses the kitchen, bare feet on clean floorboards, and her arms wrap around my waist. Her head rests against my chest. My arms close around her.
My chin settles on top of her hair, and the smell of her, flour and shampoo and the cold November air still clinging to her skin from the porch, fills my lungs.
"You're going to be an incredible father." Her voice vibrates against my sternum.
"You don't know that."