Epilogue
Two Years Later
Beau hates to listen to himself in interviews—his aversion borders on phobic.
So I download podcasts and cue up recordings to savor when he’s gone.
Two nights ago, Lani and Arthur forced him to watch the recorded episode of The Daily Show , and he cringed throughout, curled into the side of their couch with his hand on his forehead to cover his eyes.
I kept his bourbon full, so he survived the experience.
And nursed him back to health the next day.
The Truths We Tell Ourselves came out a month ago, and the marketing has kept him busy.
Everyone wants the secrets behind the secrets—the salacious details Beau is reluctant to share.
Instead, he launches into the implications of our misunderstanding of our own histories—how deception shifts the way we make choices, how lies change the chart of our futures.
But the interviewers want to know whether any of the confessors are famous—politicians, Hollywood stars, CEOs.
Beau is a bit stiff on camera, a tad serious, but he looks damn good.
I suspect his bone structure hasn’t hurt his bookings—that and the scandalous topic.
But he really attracted attention when he admitted he fell in love during his research—that over the rubble of lies, he found the courage to share a long-held secret of his own.
I got roped into doing a few small podcasts with him after that.
His publicist loved our chemistry and how I “humanized and humorized the stories.” But Beau worried it might ruin his academic credibility.
He couldn’t pretend to be stiff and clinical as I teased him about his mechanical bull injury.
And frankly, I don’t have time for it. I’m too busy with my own stuff to follow Beau around anymore—as much as I miss him when he’s gone.
I turn up the volume on the podcast so I can hear it over the mixer. This one came out a week ago, but I’ve yet to finish it.
The interviewer segues from Beau’s dry description of the psychology behind shame and asks, “You’ve said this book is uniquely personal, and I have to ask about the dedication and the woman behind it. ‘For Ophelia, who holds my most cherished truth.’ She was your research assistant?”
Beau credited me as a research assistant, and this interviewer sure makes it sound shocking, borderline unethical. Beau stammers before recovering. “Technically, she was a friend helping me out. My best friend from childhood, actually, and first crush.”
The interviewer laughs, and Beau continues.
“She’d just discovered a painful family secret.
And I, well ... I was going through a life change of my own.
So she volunteered to help me with my research.
It was part therapy, part archaeological dig, part self-discovery.
We learned that people lie for all sorts of reasons—self-preservation, generosity, fear—and the reasons for telling the truth aren’t always that different.
And the research forced us to face the truth of us .
So, yes. The dedication is hers. This book is fuller and more honest because of her shrewd insight.
And, more importantly, my life is fuller and more honest now that she’s back in it. ”
I’m startled from the podcast when warm arms slide around my waist. I flip off the mixer and pull out my headphones as Beau drops his face to my neck.
I lean back into his chest as he pulls me closer. “Where’d you disappear to?” I ask.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he teases, pressing a kiss below my ear.
“Taste this.” I dip the spoon into the bowl for a dollop of frosting and spin to him.
When it touches his tongue, he closes his eyes and makes a sound typically reserved for our bedroom. “Mm,” he says.
“It’s your mom’s guava cake recipe, with a little twist.”
“If you repeat this, I will deny it, but this is better than hers.” He leans down and kisses me, tasting sweet and tangy from the frosting. I expect it to be brief, chaste. But he presses me into the counter and cradles my face in his hands before a throat clears behind us.
“Ah, my keiki.” Lani chuckles as she moves to the fridge, Adonis at her heels. My dog loves her; I suspect she’s sneaking him snacks.
We freeze. Even now, I feel like a kid caught making out in the basement.
I was prepared to stay in the guest room the first time we came home, but Lani laughed and dropped my bag at the foot of Beau’s bed.
“You live together, Ophelia,” she’d said.
“I’m not an idiot.” When we curled up in his full bed later that night, surrounded by his Academic Decathlon medals and Spelling Bee ribbons, Beau pulled me over him and growled, “Make my adolescent fantasies come true, Ophelia.” And I giggled, called him a pig, and complied.
When I moved to the Bay Area to be with Beau after we reconnected, I was careful not to get lost in his life.
It helped that I didn’t have to move into the home he shared with Bianca.
In the end, they couldn’t come to an agreement, so they sold the house and split the proceeds.
Beau and I decided to find something together.
The house we chose is perfect for us. It’s small and cozy but has a gourmet kitchen and a wooded backyard strung with fairy lights, with a hot tub outside the primary bedroom.
The move was a fresh start—a gift, really.
I had gotten unstuck in the months following our road trip, but the move increased my momentum.
The proceeds from Dad’s house gave me some wiggle room, and I used a portion to enroll in a culinary program.
I didn’t have an endgame, except to do something that brought me joy.
And cooking—creating a sensory experience and sharing it—was the thing that always had.
And then I had an idea. I started small.
When ordering groceries for clients, I’d share my recipes.
For local clients, I began to book weekday meals, delivering a few custom recipes to be reheated.
It was another convenience offered through my personal concierge service.
Some hired me to cater dinner parties. A few told their friends.
Now, 70 percent of my business is food—personal chef, weekly meal deliveries, curated recipes bundled with grocery delivery.
I love to puzzle out how to feed a family with complex dietary needs—with vegetarian, eco-conscious, gluten-free, and paleo diets under one roof.
One client hired me to give her weekly cooking lessons and equip her kitchen with knives, pots, pans, and gadgets.
The business is a bit scattered, and a lot to manage—even with two associates to handle the simpler accounts.
I’ll need to specialize at some point, but right now, I’m loving the variety.
I’ve also visited Mary a few times. Beau and I stayed at the little cottage over the water and met Mary and Jack for dinner.
It was awkward and loaded, with stilted conversation where the unsaid was so thick that understanding eluded us.
On my second visit, I took a different approach.
I showed up at Café Huckleberry and asked to be put to work.
And as Mary taught me her famous huckleberry scone recipe, as we became flour coated and fatigued, we began to speak the same language.
She and I are working on it and have the tentative start of a relationship.
I’m hopeful that we’ll have a future, even though she’ll never hold my history—or be my home.
But that’s okay. That’s here. With this family, who are the people who help me keep Dad’s memory alive—and are the connective tissue stretched between my then and now.
Beau and I arrived in San Diego ten days ago, after he finished his spring semester and as the dreaded second anniversary of Dad’s death approached.
I was grateful to be here with the Augustins, next door to my family home, but not trapped within the mausoleum of memories.
We visited the grave site on the anniversary, just as I did a year ago, and I sat on the green lawn in front of his headstone for an hour while they waited patiently at the curb, and then they took me home, where I beat them all in a game of poker using Dad’s heirloom chips.
Today is our last day of this nostalgic trip home, and Lani has planned a big Hawaiian dinner as a farewell. The kitchen smells of home cooking and Lani’s love.
“Everything’s ready,” Lani says. “We’ll eat in ten minutes.” She looks meaningfully at Beau, but I can’t read whatever passes between them.
“Just enough time,” Beau whispers in my ear, and I smell the salt air and sunblock on his skin. He’s always the most Beau when we come home to San Diego. “I have to show you something.”
“But I need to frost the cake,” I protest.
“It’ll just take a minute.” He tugs on my arm and drags me out through the patio doors and onto Lani’s lanai. He covers my eyes with his palm.
“What are you—”
“Shh,” he says. “Trust me, Phe.”
He wraps another hand around my waist and leads me off the deck and onto the lawn. “Did you clean up after Adonis? Because Lord help me if I step in dog poop. I’m wearing flip-flops.”
He grumbles, “Shh,” but then laughs and stills, unwinding his hands.
I squint as the scene comes into focus. The tree house, faded and likely dry-rotted now, is lit up with fairy lights and draped in an arbor of wildflowers.
“What—” I start, but he leans forward and steals the words with a kiss, threading his fingers in mine.
He takes a huge breath and releases it in an uneven exhale, and then he sinks to one knee. My pulse incites a riot in my veins.
“The first time I knew I wanted to marry you was when I stood here beside you in a Spider-Man costume and said, ‘I do.’ But it took a lot of years, a lot of mistakes, and a lot of heartbreak to make our way back to each other—back to where we belong. So I’m asking you, thirty years later, to marry me for real. ”
He releases my hand and reaches into his pocket.
I think he’s opened a ring box, but I can’t be sure, because tears blur my vision.
Adonis storms into the backyard and jumps on me, nearly knocking me over.
From the distance, a camera flash fires, making stars swirl overhead at the same time they burst in my chest.
“Yes,” I say, laughing, crying, and sinking into the grass to catch his face in my hands. He breaks into a grin even as he kisses me. “I choose you. I’ll always choose you.”
There are more clicks from the camera shutter, and I’m aware that Lani and Arthur have joined us to document the moment—a photo that will bookend that old, faded photo of us, which rests on our mantel at home. But I can’t process anything but Beau and the way it feels to love him.
It feels like luck. Like hope. Like truth.