Epilogue
Nora
The cottage got its electrical panel cleared on Tuesday.
I know this because Aunt June called me at seven in the morning to announce it like a woman delivering a birth announcement, and because Beckett was already on the phone with the electrician by seven-fifteen confirming the scope of remaining work while making pour-over coffee.
I watched him from the kitchen doorway — barefoot, phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder, measuring grounds with the same focus he'd give a mortise layout — and thought about how a week ago I'd been standing in this exact spot calculating how quickly I could get out of his house without making it weird.
Now I was wearing his T-shirt and no pants and making no moves toward the door.
"Panel's clear," he said, hanging up. "He wants to replace the outlet behind the fridge and re-run one line to the bathroom, but the breakers are safe. You could move back in by Thursday."
"Thursday," I repeated.
"If you want."
He set a mug in front of me — the second mug, the one that had been showing up on his counter since that first flooded morning — and his fingers brushed mine when I took it—easy, deliberate contact, not an accident and not for show, like he'd decided to stop pretending he wasn't always tracking where my hands were.
"Do I want," I said, "to move thirty feet away from you and back into a cottage that smells like damp subfloor and broken dreams?"
"The subfloor's getting replaced."
"You're not hearing the emotional weight of the question."
His mouth did that thing — the one-sided pull that looked like a man who found me ridiculous and hadn't figured out how to stop wanting me anyway. "I'm hearing it."
"And?"
He took a sip of coffee. Looked at me over the rim. "I'm not going to tell you where to live, Nora."
"That's very mature and unhelpful."
"You could stay."
He said it the same way he said everything — flat, direct, like a man reading measurements off a tape. But his thumb was moving along the edge of the counter, tracing the grain, and I'd spent a week learning what that meant.
"I could stay," I said.
"Yeah."
"In the spare room? Because I should clarify — the spare room and I have a complicated history at this point."
"You haven't slept in the spare room since Saturday."
That was true. That was extremely, specifically, warm-skin-and-tangled-sheets true, and the way he said it — matter-of-fact, unperforming, with just enough heat in his voice to make my stomach flip — was the reason I was standing in his kitchen wearing his clothes on a Tuesday morning instead of packing boxes.
"I'll talk to Aunt June," I said. "Tell her I'm not moving back in yet."
"Yet."
"I'm leaving myself an exit strategy. It's brand management."
"You're managing the brand of living with me."
"Someone has to. You have no social media presence and your workshop doesn't even have a sign."
He set his coffee down, crossed the two steps between us, and kissed me.
Different from the desperate one in the workshop and softer than the careful one behind the tent at the reception, this one came from knowing he could—slow, warm, his hand settling on my hip like it belonged there, like he'd measured the distance and decided to close it permanently.
When he pulled back, his forehead stayed against mine for a beat.
"Stay," he said. Quieter this time.
"I already said I would."
"I know. I just wanted to say it when you weren't making a joke."
I didn't have a comeback for that. Which was new, and which I was going to have to get used to — the way Beckett Lane could say three words in a kitchen and make my whole chest go tight and open at the same time.
"Fine," I said. "But I'm bringing my good towels over from the cottage. Yours are basically sandpaper."
"They're fine."
"They are not fine. They are a textile crime."
He was already walking toward the workshop, coffee in hand, but I caught the smile before he turned. The real one. Both sides.
***
By Thursday afternoon I'd moved the things that mattered — the good towels, my laptop, the work bag I hadn't opened all week because my former employer's HR department was still pretending two weeks' notice was a negotiable concept, and a suitcase of clothes that barely filled one side of Beckett's closet.
Aunt June had taken the news with the calm dignity of a woman who had been expecting this exact outcome since Wednesday of wedding week.
"The cottage will be there when you need it," she'd said on the phone, her voice carrying the specific warmth of an aunt who had successfully orchestrated a housing crisis into a love story and would never, ever admit it.
"Aunt June. The pipe burst on its own."
"I know, sweetheart. I'm just saying the timing worked out."
I chose not to interrogate that further.
The rest of Laurel Creek had absorbed the update the way small towns absorb all information: unevenly, enthusiastically, and with a narrative confidence that outstripped the available facts.
Mrs. Delaney had seen me carrying a box from the cottage to Beckett's front door on Wednesday morning and by Wednesday evening, three people had texted Willa to confirm that I was officially moved in.
My mother had called to say she was happy for me, twice, and then a third time to ask whether Beckett had enough closet space, as if the man who owned four flannel shirts and one navy suit was in danger of running out of hangers.
Donna Lane had invited me to Sunday dinner. Not as Beckett's girlfriend. Not as the woman from the Wisteria. Just — Nora, sweetheart, six o'clock, bring nothing, I mean it.
She and my mother had talked. I knew that because Beckett told me, in his flat, careful way, that his mom had called him Monday night and said, I know how it started, and I don't care, because I know how it is now. And then she'd asked him if I liked peach cobbler.
That was it. That was Donna's entire processing of the messiest week of my adult life — a phone call, a cobbler question, and a Sunday dinner invitation.
I didn't deserve it. But I was learning that the point wasn't deserving.
The point was showing up honest and letting people decide what to do with that.
Beckett was in the workshop when Theo texted me.
Theo: Photo previews ready. Willa gets hers Saturday but I pulled a few for you first. You around tomorrow? I want to drop something off.
Nora: You're being mysterious. That's my job.
Theo: Just say yes.
Nora: Yes. Come by around 4. I'll be at Beckett's.
Theo: Obviously.
I set the phone down and went to find Beckett, who was sanding something at his bench with the radio on low and sawdust in his hair, which was objectively not a look that should work on a person and yet here I was, standing in the doorway like a woman who'd lost the ability to walk past a workshop without stopping.
He looked up. Didn't say anything. Just looked at me — my mouth first, then my eyes — with an expression that said he knew exactly why I'd stopped and was going to let me pretend otherwise.
"Theo's coming by tomorrow," I said. "Dropping off photo stuff."
"Okay."
"He's being cryptic. It's unsettling."
"He's a photographer. They like the reveal."
"You're not concerned?"
"About your cousin bringing photos over?"
"Here?" I said, and something about the way it came out — easy, unplanned, like I'd already stopped thinking of the place as temporary — made us both go still for a second.
Beckett's hand stopped on the sandpaper. Then he went back to work, but the corner of his mouth was doing the thing again.
"Our house," he said.
"Don't make it a moment."
"I didn't."
"You absolutely did."
"I said two words."
"You said them with intent."
He put down the sandpaper, crossed to where I was leaning in the doorframe, and stood close enough that I could smell cedar and coffee and warm skin. "Go inside. I need to finish this."
"What are you making?"
"Shelf for the bathroom. Your towels need somewhere to go."
I stared at him. He stared back, perfectly straight-faced, like a man who had not just turned a towel complaint into the most quietly devastating gesture I'd ever received.
"I am not going to cry about a shelf," I said.
"Good."
"I'm going inside now."
"Okay."
I made it to the kitchen before I pressed my hands over my face and stood there grinning like an idiot for thirty full seconds.
***
Theo showed up Friday at four on the dot, which was unusual for a man who ran on what the family generously called "creative time." He had his camera bag over one shoulder and a flat matte-black portfolio case under his arm.
"Special delivery," he said, stepping onto the porch like he owned it. "Where's Lane?"
"Workshop. Why?"
"He'll want to see this too."
I led him inside — into the kitchen that was now half mine, past the counter where two mugs sat drying, past the shelf hooks where my jacket hung next to Beckett's — and the domesticity of it all registered on Theo's face as a quick, bright grin that he had the decency not to narrate.
Beckett came in through the back door, sawdust on his forearms, and gave Theo a nod. "Hey."
"Hey." Theo set the portfolio on the kitchen table and unzipped it. "So Willa's getting the full set tomorrow, but I wanted you two to have this one first. It's from the ceremony."
He slid out a single print, eleven by fourteen, and laid it on the table.
It was us.
Not a posed shot. Not the processional, not the formal bridal-party lineup.
It was from the ceremony itself — the moment right after Willa and Eli's kiss, when the meadow had erupted.
In the photo, everyone was on their feet, clapping, and in the left third of the frame, slightly behind the front row, Beckett and I were turned toward each other instead of toward the aisle.