Epilogue Imogen
Imogen
Epilogue
Imogen
The cabin smells the same as it did that first Christmas, only now it’s louder, stickier, and infinitely better.
I’m on the floor in front of the tree, trying to untangle two small bodies from the Christmas-light cord they’ve turned into a lasso.
Rowan, our four-year-old with Flynn’s storm-gray eyes and my reckless grin, is yelling “Giddy-up, Mama!” while riding my back like a pony.
Sage, our two-year-old with a mop of dark curls and the stubborn chin of every Jones that ever lived, is attempting to eat an ornament like it’s a cookie.
Flynn’s deep laugh rumbles from the kitchen doorway. He’s got flour on one cheek, a dish towel slung over his bare shoulder, and a wooden spoon in his hand like a scepter. The man still fills a room just by existing, and five years together have only made him broader, more solid, more mine.
“Breakfast in five, heathens,” he announces. “Pancakes shaped like reindeer. Antlers are bacon.”
The kids abandon me instantly and barrel toward him, leaving me sprawled on the bearskin rug that now has permanent juice stains and one mysterious glitter smear we’ve never been able to explain.
He scoops them both up, one under each arm like sacks of potatoes, and they shriek with delight as he carries them to the table.
I watch the three of them and feel my heart do the same ridiculous swoop it’s done every single day since that Christmas morning when we burned the divorce papers and decided forever was ours.
The tree is no longer crooked and half-decorated.
It’s enormous and buried under five years’ worth of handmade ornaments, paper chains, salt-dough stars, the walnut tree he carved the first year, and two tiny handprints in plaster from each kid’s first Christmas.
The white porch lights are still there, but now they’re joined by multicolored ones the kids insisted on, blinking in cheerful chaos.
After breakfast, we do presents. The kids rip through theirs like tiny tornadoes. A wooden truck for Rowan, a stuffed moose for Sage that’s almost as big as she is. Then Flynn hands me a small box wrapped in newspaper and red ribbon.
I open it carefully. Inside is a new ornament for the tree. It’s a delicate wooden cabin no bigger than my hand, tiny windows carved so the light shines through, a curl of smoke rising from the chimney.
My eyes sting instantly.
He shrugs like it’s nothing, but his ears are pink. He makes me one every year, and I cherish them all.
I hand him my gift, a framed drawing I stayed up finishing after the kids finally passed out last night.
I always draw him something for Christmas.
It’s him sitting on this very rug, firelight across his face, Rowan asleep on one broad shoulder, Sage curled in his lap with her thumb in her mouth.
His expression in the drawing is soft and utterly content.
He stares at it for a long time, throat working.
“Imogen,” he says, voice rough.
I lean over and kiss him, tasting maple syrup and coffee and him. The kids collapse into giggles.
Later, when the chaos settles, and both kids are down for naps, Flynn and I stand at the window watching fresh snow start to fall again.
He wraps his arms around me from behind, hands settling over the faint swell of my belly that’s just starting to show with baby number three.
“Still happy, Vixen?” he murmurs against my ear.
I turn in his arms, slide my hands around him, and look up at the man who was a stranger once and is now the center of my entire world.
“Every single day,” I tell him.
The snow falls thicker, sealing us in again.
Some things never change.