Epilogue
SULLIVAN
SIX MONTHS LATER
The ring is in my sock drawer, which is a terrible hiding place, but Naomi doesn't go in there because she says my sock organization is "beyond help" and she "refuses to be traumatized by it."
Fair enough. Gives me a safe spot for a velvet box.
December in Crimson Hollow means the mountains go white, the town strings lights across Main Street, and Sage Harris at Bean & Bloom switches to her holiday menu.
Peppermint lattes. Gingerbread scones. Some kind of Jamaican rum cake that Naomi has been trying to reverse-engineer for three weeks using Gran's kitchen.
The cabin smells like nutmeg and burned sugar, which means the latest attempt didn't go well but she'll try again tomorrow because Naomi Jacobs doesn't quit on a recipe.
She doesn't quit on anything. That's been the lesson of the last six months.
August, she started working at Bean & Bloom.
Part-time at first, helping Sage with the morning rush because Sage was short-staffed and Naomi had restaurant experience.
Within a month, she'd reorganized the supply closet, streamlined the ordering system, and introduced a rotating dinner special on Fridays that doubled the evening foot traffic.
Sage offered her assistant manager by September.
Naomi cried in the truck on the way home, then made sweet potato pie to celebrate, then cried again because she said she hadn't had a job with her real name on the paycheck in over a year.
Her real name. Naomi Jacobs. Not the name she used in Saskatoon, or the one she used in Thunder Bay. Her actual name, on a paycheque, in a town that knows her face and says hello when she walks down Main Street.
October, Matt found her.
Not in person. By phone. He called the landline at the cabin, which I didn't even know still worked because nobody's used it since Gran stopped calling the butcher in town to argue about the price of ground beef.
The phone rang at seven in the morning. Naomi answered because she was closest. I was in the barn with Gerald, who'd gotten his horns stuck in the fence again because Gerald is a menace.
By the time I came inside, she was sitting at the kitchen table with the phone in her lap. Face blank. Hands steady. That controlled calm I recognized from the night she told me about him.
"He called."
Two words. My blood went cold.
"What did he say?"
"Nothing useful. Same things he always says. That I belong to him. That I'll come back eventually." Her jaw tightened. "Then he said he knows I'm in British Columbia."
Sitting down across from her, I took her hands. Cold. Steady. Mine.
"What do you want to do?"
"I want to change this phone number. Then I want to call Silas McCrae and ask if he knows a good lawyer. Then I want to eat breakfast, go to work, come home, and live my life on this mountain with you."
So that's what we did.
Silas, because this town takes care of its own, had a lawyer on the phone within the hour.
By the end of the week, Naomi had a restraining order filed in British Columbia and Alberta.
The lawyer, a woman in Vancouver named Priti who specialized in domestic violence cases, told Naomi that Matt's pattern of tracking her across provinces constituted criminal harassment under Canadian law.
Charges were filed. Not civil. Criminal.
Matt called the landline one more time, three days after the charges went through. I answered. Told him that if he ever contacted Naomi again, by phone, by mail, by showing up at my property, the RCMP would be the least of his problems.
He hasn't called since.
The phone number changed anyway. Naomi picked the new one.
She picks everything now. The groceries, the paint color for the spare room she's converting into an office, which day we drive into town for Saturday errands.
Small choices. The kind of choices Matt took from her.
Every time she makes one, something in her shoulders relaxes a fraction more.
This morning, Saturday, we're at Bean & Bloom for breakfast. Snow is falling outside the windows, fat flakes sticking to the glass.
Sage is behind the counter arguing with Luna Blackthorne from the bookshop about whether rum cake counts as breakfast food.
Venus Santana from Tangled Roots is doing something to Naomi's hair at the corner table because apparently Saturday breakfast is also Saturday salon, a concept I don't fully understand but have learned not to question.
"Hold still," Venus says, twisting something at the back of Naomi's head. "Almost done."
"You said that ten minutes ago."
"Beauty takes time, sweetheart. Sully, tell your woman to hold still."
"I'm not getting involved."
"Smart man." Sage slides a coffee across the counter. Black. Two sugars. She's known my order since September. "How's Gerald?"
"Still an idiot."
"Dolly?"
"Pregnant."
"Dolly's pregnant?" Naomi whips around, disrupting whatever Venus is doing. Venus sighs loudly. "Since when?"
"Vet confirmed it Thursday. Due in spring."
Her face does the thing I'll never get tired of watching. Joy that starts in her eyes and works its way down until she's smiling with her whole body. "We're gonna have a calf."
"We're gonna have several. Dolly's not the only one."
The squeal she makes turns every head in Bean & Bloom. Venus gives up on the hair entirely. Luna peers over her book. Sage grins behind the espresso machine.
This. This is what Gran wanted. Not just a woman in my cabin, but a life.
Community. The slow, steady accumulation of ordinary moments that add up to something whole.
Saturday coffee. Friendly arguments about bull names.
A woman who argues with my spice rack, befriends my cattle, makes my coffee right, and sleeps in my bed with her Bible on the nightstand like she was always meant to be there.
The ring has been in the sock drawer for two weeks. I bought it from a jeweler in Nelson. Simple gold band. Small diamond. Nothing flashy, because Naomi isn't flashy. She's warm and steady and real, and the ring should match.
Tonight. I'm doing it tonight.
Not with a speech. Not on a knee in a restaurant.
On the porch swing, after dinner, wrapped in Gran's afghan.
The swing where I sat alone for three weeks after the funeral wondering what the point of all this was.
The swing where she brought me coffee on her first night here.
The swing where we sit every evening now, watching the light leave the mountains while the Herefords settle for the night.
The simplest, most honest thing I can think of: Will you marry me?
And if she says yes, which God and Gran willing she will, I'll tell her the other thing. The thing I found last week in the bottom of Gran's desk, under the crossword books and the schnapps, in an envelope addressed to me.
Sully,
If you're reading this, I'm gone and she's there. I know you're mad at me. That's fine. You were always stubborn, just like your grandfather.
I signed you up because I could see you disappearing.
A little more every year. A little quieter.
A little more like furniture. You deserve more than furniture, sweetheart.
You deserve a woman who makes you laugh and argues about your coffee and turns this cabin into a home instead of a waiting room.
I don't know if she'll be the one. That's not up to me. But I know you won't go looking on your own, because you're scared, and scared men don't walk toward things. They sit still and let the world go by.
So I gave the world a push.
Don't waste it.
I love you more than crosswords.
Gran
More than crosswords. The highest compliment Edith Cross ever gave anyone.
Folding the letter back into my pocket, I look across Bean & Bloom at Naomi.
Venus has finished whatever she was doing to her hair.
Braids twisted up, elegant, showing off the neck I like to put my mouth on when we're alone.
She's laughing at something Luna said, head tipped back, that single dimple visible from across the room.
My chest does the thing it always does when she laughs. Expansion. Like the cavity was built too small for what's inside it now.
Tonight. The porch swing. The ring.
And Gran's letter, because Naomi should know. She should know that the woman who wrote to her about mountains and cattle and fresh starts loved her grandson enough to give the world a push.
Outside, snow falls on Crimson Hollow. Inside Bean & Bloom, the woman I love is arguing with a hairstylist about whether braids can be considered an emergency and whether Saturday breakfast should involve this much physical contact.
I drink my coffee. Two sugars. Perfect ratio. The way she taught me.
Somewhere, Gran is doing a crossword and feeling very smug about it.
Sullivan and Naomi continue on to have such a heart-warming HEA, and I bet you’d love a sneak peek. Don’t worry I’ve got you.