Epilogue Daisy
Epilogue
DAISY
One Year Later
"Book," Annie says, pointing one chubby finger at the cardboard pages in Adam's hand. Her first word. Her first word, and she chose it in the middle of the stockroom while her father takes a board call with her strapped to his chest in the carrier.
I freeze in the doorway, hand pressed over my mouth.
Adam freezes too. On the laptop propped against a shipping box, four vice presidents in four separate windows stare at their screens with varying degrees of impatience.
"Mr. Smith?" one of them says. "The quarterly projections—"
Adam hits mute.
"Did you hear that?" He's looking at me now, and his face shows what I've never seen on it before: pure, unfiltered wonder, the kind that makes him look ten years younger and slightly unhinged. "Daisy. Did you hear that?"
"I heard it."
"She said book."
"I know."
"Her first word is book."
"So I heard." I'm already moving, pulling out my phone, trying to get the camera open before this moment disappears. "Say it again, baby. Say book."
Annie looks between us, clearly pleased with the chaos she's caused. She pats Adam's chest, then points at the board book again, some generic thing about farm animals that Adam's been reading to her every day for the past month. "Book."
"Oh my God." Adam looks like he might cry. On the laptop, the muted vice presidents are visibly confused. "This is the greatest day of my life."
"Greater than our wedding?"
"We got married at a courthouse with a chained pen."
"Greater than our vow renewal?"
"Okay, tied with the vow renewal." He kisses the top of Annie's head, then looks back at the screen like he's just remembered it exists. "I have to… they're waiting—"
"Go. Finish your call." I reach for Annie, and Adam transfers her carefully into my arms, pressing a kiss to my temple in the process. "We'll be in the reading corner."
"It's going to be like five more minutes."
"It's going to be an hour, and you know it."
He grins, unmutes the call, and immediately says, "Sorry about that, gentlemen. My daughter just said her first word. It was book. I'm going to need you all to be appropriately impressed before we continue."
I snort and retreat before I start laughing audibly. Chaucer lifts his head from where he's been sleeping on Adam's boots (always Adam's boots, never mine, which feels like a betrayal) then settles back down with a huff.
The reading corner at The Margin is full this afternoon. Two teenagers sharing a beanbag, an older man with a newspaper, a young mother trying to keep her toddler from eating the board books. Nell waves at me from behind the register.
"First word?" she calls.
"Just now."
"And it was…?"
"Book."
Her face splits into a grin. "That's my goddaughter."
I settle into one of the armchairs with Annie on my lap, letting her grab at the pages of a soft fabric book about animals. One year old today. One year since Adam held my hand in a hospital room and cried when they put her in his arms. One year since everything changed again.
Nell appears at my elbow. "How's the press going?"
"Good. Really good." My small press has signed three debut romance authors so far, writers whose work deserves to reach the readers I know.
I built the plan with my blog income, spoke to three potential investors, and chose a documented loan from Adam, reviewed by my own lawyer, with no editorial control attached.
He still submits joke proposals; I still reject them.
"We're announcing the fourth acquisition next week. "
"And your husband?"
"Currently explaining quarterly projections to four vice presidents while wearing a baby carrier and a spit-up stain on his collar."
Nell laughs. "The chairman life."
"Since the board made him chairman, the new CEO handles the day-to-day work. But board calls are—" I gesture vaguely. "Unavoidable."
"I saw him in the stockroom earlier. Taking a meeting with Annie strapped to his chest like it was completely normal."
"It is normal. For us."
Annie makes a grab for my necklace, and I redirect her toward the fabric book. "He's a good dad."
"I can see that."
"Like, really good. Better than I expected.
Better than he expected, I think." I watch Adam through the stockroom doorway, still visible on his call, gesturing at something on the screen while Annie chews on her fist in my lap.
"He reads to her every night. The same farm animal book, over and over, until she falls asleep.
And she—" My voice catches. "Her first word was book, Nell.
Because he reads to her so much that books are the first thing she thinks to name. "
"You're going to make me cry."
"I'm already crying."
"I noticed."
Adam wraps up the call faster than I expected (fifty minutes, not an hour) and finds us in the reading corner. He scoops Annie out of my lap and settles into the chair beside me, letting her grab at his fingers.
"Meeting go okay?"
"Fine. Peterson's still pushing back on the international expansion, but he'll come around." He says this while making ridiculous faces at our daughter, who giggles in response. "More importantly: book. She said book. I'm never recovering from this."
"You're very dramatic."
"I'm an appropriate amount of dramatic." He pulls out his phone. "I texted your dad."
"Of course you did."
"And Ingrid."
"Naturally."
"And posted it to the family group chat."
"We have a family group chat?" I twist to look at him.
"We do now."
I lean my head against his shoulder, watching Annie wave the fabric book around like a trophy.
Chairman of a company, empty baby carrier still strapped to his chest, spit-up on his collar, reading board books in the back room of an independent bookstore.
Not the man I married all those years ago. Better.
"Read to her," I say. "The farm one."
"You sure? I've read it approximately eight thousand times."
"I want to hear it."
So Adam pulls out the battered board book, settles Annie more comfortably in the crook of his arm, and starts reading aloud about cows and pigs and chickens in the voice he only uses for her: soft, warm, patient. I pull out my phone and take a picture. Then another.
Then I put the phone away and just watch them, my husband and my daughter, in a bookstore that burned down and rose back up, on the first birthday of a baby who just said her first word.
At 7 PM, the store is closed and quiet. Ingrid took Annie for the night ("You need adult time," she said, "and I need baby cuddles, so everyone wins") and I'm standing in the Meridian lobby, waiting for the elevator.
The receptionist (new since last year, young, professional) recognizes me immediately. "Mrs. Smith! He's still on a call, but he said to send you up."
"Thank you."
The elevator opens. I step inside, watching the numbers climb.
It still feels strange, being here. A year of rebuilding hasn't erased the memories: the first time I walked these halls, the photograph I laid on his conference table before I knew what we'd become, the slow realization that he was losing himself to this building and I didn't know how to pull him back.
But the memories don't hurt the way they used to.
They're just... memories. Part of the story. Not the ending.
The doors open on the executive floor. Adam's office, the one that used to feel like a fortress, has its door open, warm light spilling into the hallway.
I find him at his desk, loosening his tie, looking tired and successful and very much like a man who's been arguing with vice presidents all day. His eyes lift the second I walk in, and his whole face changes.
"Hi."
"Hi yourself."
"You're early."
"I'm exactly on time." I walk around his desk, and he swivels his chair to face me. "You said seven. It's seven."
"I said around seven."
"Around seven means seven. Everyone knows that." I say it with the confidence of a woman who has explained this rule before.
"I don't know that."
"Then you haven't been paying attention for all this time you've known me."
He laughs, reaching for my hand. "I've been paying attention."
"Prove it."
"You hate being late. You think being early is a form of respect. You once ended a friendship with someone who was chronically twenty minutes behind."
"That was about more than punctuality."
"It was definitely about punctuality." He pulls me closer. "Come here."
I step between his knees, and his hands settle on my hips like they belong there. Like they've always belonged there.
"How was your day?" he asks.
"Good. Annie said 'book' approximately four thousand times. The new mystery shipment arrived. Ruth wants to start a true crime subcategory, which I think is a terrible idea, but she's very persuasive."
"Ruth could convince anyone of anything."
"That's what worries me."
His thumbs trace circles on my hipbones, slow and deliberate. "And how was the blog?"
"Two hundred new subscribers this week. Someone left a very long comment about how the pining CEO in a novel I reviewed reminds them of their divorce attorney."
"Is that... good?"
"Unclear."
He laughs. "Well. Your very real, non-fictional chairman husband would like to take you to dinner."
"Would he?"
"Desperately." His voice drops lower. "But first, he'd like to do something else."
"What's that?"
He reaches up, hooks a finger through the loop of his tie, and tugs it loose. "Close the door."
I raise an eyebrow. "Mr. Smith. Are you propositioning me in your office?"
"I'm suggesting that my wife might want some privacy before we discuss dinner reservations."
"Very professional."
"I'm a very professional person."
I walk back to the door. Close it. Lock it.
He tries to be civilized first: pours two fingers of the whiskey he keeps for clients, offers me the glass, asks about the press's print schedule like a man whose hands haven't just settled on my waist. I take one sip, set the tumbler on a quarterly report, and tell him civilization can wait.
"You're distracting me," he says, delighted.
"That was the intention."
"Noted."