7. Epilogue 2 – Sabrina
The train looks almost exactly the way I remember it.
Same dark windows. Same worn metal steps. Same long row of cars stretching alongside the station platform. Tonight, though, Christmas lights run along the roof, a giant wreath covers the front, and cheerful music plays from speakers near the ticket office.
Ten years ago, I stepped off this train carrying everything I owned in two suitcases.
Tonight, I stand beside it with three children bundled in winter coats.
“Is Santa really inside?” Brielle asks, bouncing hard enough that both of her braids move.
“That’s what the sign says,” I tell her.
Toby squints at the train. At six, he’s begun questioning everything. “How did he get here without his sleigh?”
“He probably wanted to try the train,” Wren says. Our eight-year-old delivers this with the impatience of someone explaining the obvious. “Even Santa needs vacations.”
“Santa doesn’t take vacations at Christmas,” Toby argues.
Before Wren can explain why he’s wrong, the man dressed as an elf beside the train door waves them forward.
“That’s you three,” I say. “Stay together and listen to the adults.”
Brielle grabs Toby’s hand and pulls him toward the steps. Wren follows close behind, pretending she isn’t nearly as excited as the younger two.
I watch until all three disappear inside.
A warm cup presses against my hand.
“Extra whipped cream,” Damian says beside me. “And cinnamon.”
I turn to find him carrying four more hot chocolates in a cardboard tray. He’s wearing jeans, a heavy coat, and the black cowboy hat I bought him last Christmas. A few strands of dark hair curl beneath the brim, touched with gray near his temples now.
The years have been unfairly good to him.
“Thank you.” I wrap both hands around the cup. “You remembered.”
He gives me a look. “I’ve been married to you ten years.”
“You still forget where you leave your keys.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Keys don’t get mad when I disappoint them.”
I laugh, and he leans down to kiss me. His mouth is cold from the evening air, but the hand he settles against my lower back is warm and familiar.
“You all right?” he asks when he lifts his head.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve been staring at the train.”
“I was thinking about how different everything is now.”
His nods thoughtfully. “Better truck.”
“Much better truck.”
“Better husband.”
I pretend to consider it. “Debatable.”
He hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me against his side. “Careful.”
The warning in his voice still sends a thrill through me.
Damian has softened over the years, though I doubt anyone who doesn’t know him well would use that word. He’s still built like he could wrestle a steer into submission. His voice is still rough, and one hard look from him can stop all three children in their tracks.
Behind our bedroom door, he can still be as demanding as I ask him to be.
But the man standing beside me now is also the one who packs school lunches when I’m tired, checks beneath beds for monsters, and sits through tea parties wearing a plastic crown because Brielle tells him he has to.
He kisses my temple. “What’re you smiling about?”
“You.”
“Something good?”
“Mostly.”
He squeezes my hip. “Keep talking like that and we’ll put the kids to bed early tonight.”
“Is that a promise?”
“You’d better believe it.”
The train door opens before I can respond, and children begin spilling onto the platform. Wren appears first, holding a small wrapped box. Toby follows with a wooden train whistle, and Brielle comes down the steps clutching a stuffed reindeer almost as large as she is.
“Daddy!” she shouts.
Damian puts the tray of drinks into my hands and crouches. Brielle runs straight into him, and he catches her against his chest.
“What’d Santa give you?” he asks.
“A reindeer. His name is Jingle, and he’s magic.”
“Naturally.”
Toby blows his train whistle directly beside them.
Damian turns his head slowly. “Son.”
Toby lowers it.
“That stays in your pocket until we get home.”
“But Santa said I could play with it.”
“Santa isn’t riding in the truck with us.”
Toby considers this before slipping the whistle into his coat pocket. Damian is firm with the children when he needs to be, but he rarely loses his temper. He explains things. He listens. When he gets something wrong, he admits it instead of digging in until everyone is miserable.
Sometimes I look at him with our children and wonder whether the man I first met would recognize himself.
We walk toward the parking lot together, Wren telling me everything Santa said while Toby interrupts to correct her. Brielle stays in Damian’s arms, whispering secrets about her reindeer into his ear.
Our truck sits near the back of the lot. It’s bigger than the old one, with enough room for three children, groceries, schoolbags, ranch supplies, and the small collection of toys that somehow follows us everywhere.
The arguing begins before we leave town.
“Brielle touched my present,” Wren says from the back seat.
“I was only looking,” Brielle protests.
“You bent the paper.”
“Toby bent it.”
“I didn’t even touch it,” Toby says.
Damian glances into the rearview mirror. “Enough. Wren, put the present beside you. Brielle, keep your hands in your own seat. Toby, quit involving yourself when nobody asked.”
“But she said my name.”
“And now I’m saying it.”
Toby settles back. The girls separate, and silence lasts nearly thirty seconds before they begin discussing whether reindeer can eat cookies.
Damian reaches across the console and takes my hand. I thread my fingers through his, watching the lights of town disappear behind us. His thumb rubs slowly over my knuckles while he drives.
By the time we reach the ranch, Brielle has fallen asleep against Wren’s shoulder.
Christmas lights cover the porch and outline the front windows. Damian complained that I’d bought too many until he discovered an unopened box and added them around the barn himself.
Inside, the tree fills one corner of the living room, glowing with colored lights and crowded with ornaments the children have made. Damian’s leather chair sits several feet from its usual place.
He objected when I first suggested moving it. Then he saw how much room the children needed to decorate the tree and carried it across the room without another word.
The children scatter after we remove their coats. Toby takes his whistle and the dog into the hallway. Wren places her gift beneath the tree. Brielle wakes up enough to demand that Damian help introduce Jingle to every other stuffed animal she owns.
I carry the empty cups into the kitchen. Red carnations and white daisies sit on the dining table in the old pickle jar. The rim is chipped, and the glass has grown cloudy with age, but I still use it for every bouquet Damian brings home.
There have been hundreds by now.
I pull the prepared cookie dough from the refrigerator and begin placing circles on a baking sheet. From the living room, I hear Brielle ordering Damian to pretend he’s a reindeer.
“I’m not crawling around the floor,” he tells her.
“You have to. Jingle needs a daddy.”
“I’m already somebody’s daddy.”
“Please?”
A long pause follows.
Then heavy footsteps pound across the living room, and all three children burst into laughter.
I set the dough aside and look through the doorway.
Damian is chasing them around the tree with Brielle’s stuffed reindeer tucked beneath one arm. Wren hides behind his chair. Toby dives beneath the coffee table. Brielle runs straight toward Damian, laughing so hard she can barely stay upright.
He catches her before she falls and swings her into the air.
I rest one hand against the counter as happiness settles heavily inside my chest. There was a time when I couldn’t imagine having this much. A permanent home. Children filling every room. A husband who knows when I need help without waiting for me to ask.
Ten years ago, I answered an advertisement and traveled halfway across the country to meet a stranger.
The agency got my age wrong. It got my home state wrong. Maybe pairing us was another mistake that happened to work out.
Or maybe, somehow, they knew something neither of us did.
Damian looks toward the kitchen and catches me watching him.
“What?” he asks.
I smile. “You’re a good daddy.”
His expression goes soft. “Got good kids.”
“You’re a good husband, too.”
His mouth curves as he lowers Brielle to the floor. “Come tell me that closer.”
I leave the cookies on the counter and walk toward him.
He’s sweeter than the man I first met. More patient. Quicker to laugh and slower to anger. He loves us openly and takes care of us without question.
He’s also still devastatingly hot.
Damian catches me around the waist as soon as I reach him and pulls me against his chest.
Ten years ago, he was the rancher I had thirty days to decide whether to marry.
Now he’s my best friend, the father of my children, and the love of my life.
He’ll always be my rancher.
And I’ll always be his bride.