Epilogue
Two Years Later
"Mama."
Isabelle looked down. Rosalie Isabelle Grant, two years old, was sitting on the hallway floor in a pair of corduroy overalls and one sock, pulling on the lace of a shoe she'd stolen from the basket by the door.
Her dark hair was a mess of curls that came from Xavier's side and would not be tamed by any clip, band or bribe Isabelle had attempted.
Her eyes were Xavier's green. Her jaw was Isabelle's.
Her temperament was entirely her own: stubborn, curious, vocal and deeply committed to removing her socks at every opportunity.
"That's Daddy's shoe," Isabelle said.
"Mine."
"It's not yours. It's four sizes too big for you."
"Mine." Rosalie clutched the shoe against her chest and looked up at her mother with an expression of total conviction.
Isabelle laughed because the expression was pure Xavier.
The absolute certainty. The refusal to negotiate.
Except that in Rosalie it was funny and harmless and applied exclusively to stolen footwear and the last strawberry on anyone's plate.
"Fine," Isabelle said. "Keep the shoe. See how far you get."
Rosalie grinned. She had four teeth on top, four on the bottom and the grin was devastating. Isabelle picked her up, settled her on her hip, resting a hand on her stomach.
She was twelve weeks pregnant. When Isabelle had told Xavier, he'd pulled her onto his lap and pressed his forehead against her chest. He'd started laughing and crying at the same time.
Rosalie, who'd been watching from the floor with Chairman Bun in her arms, had said, "Dada sad?"
Isabelle had said, "No, baby. Dada's happy.
“Dada's very, very happy,” Xavier had added, beaming.
Twins, the doctor had said at the eight-week scan. Two heartbeats. They were excited. Excited, happy, and so ready.
Isabelle carried Rosalie through to the kitchen, where Xavier was making breakfast. He was standing at the stove in a T-shirt and jeans, scrambling eggs with one hand and scrolling his phone with the other. Her mouth went dry: her husband had become even more handsome with fatherhood.
Xavier looked up when they came in. His eyes went to Isabelle first, and then to Rosalie, and his face opened completely. Just love, enormous and unguarded, pouring out of him like something he couldn't contain even if he'd wanted to.
"She stole your shoe again," Isabelle said.
"Good taste runs in the family." Xavier crossed the kitchen and kissed Isabelle, a real kiss, warm and unhurried, his hand finding the back of her neck. Rosalie, wedged between them, put her hand on Xavier's face and said, "Dada. Mine."
"Yes," Xavier said. "Yours. Everything is yours. That's been established."
They ate breakfast at the table. The table, not the island.
They always ate at the table now, the four of them, though the fourth chair was technically occupied by a stuffed rabbit named Chairman Bun that Rosalie insisted join every meal.
Xavier had named the rabbit. Isabelle had protested. The name had stuck.
Rosalie ate scrambled eggs with her hands, dropped toast on the floor and babbled a running narration of her morning that included the words shoe, no, more, and a sound that might have been "Dougie," which was what she called her uncle Douglas, or might have been a sneeze. It was difficult to tell.
Isabelle watched Xavier cut Rosalie's toast into pieces and wipe egg from her chin. He made a playful face that sent Rosalie into fits of laughter so intense she dropped her fork.
Xavier was an extraordinary father, in ways that surprised her and in ways that didn't. He was patient.
He was present. He came home at five-thirty every night, walked through the front door, set down his bag and got on the floor.
Rosalie would hurry into his lap. He'd hold her.
read to her and build towers of blocks that she'd knock down, cackling, and he'd build them again, every time.
He didn't check his phone while he was on the floor.
He didn't take calls. He was there, fully.
The kitchen was warm. Saturday light came through the windows and caught the terra cotta floor, the reclaimed tiles from Sonoma that Isabelle had laid herself a lifetime ago.
The house was different now. Still hers, every surface and hinge and join, but it had been softened by a child.
There were toys in baskets. A high chair at the table.
A gate at the bottom of the stairs. The plaster walls she'd mixed to match the inside of an oyster shell had crayon marks at knee height that she hadn't cleaned off because they were Rosalie's first marks on the house, and the house should bear them.
After breakfast, Xavier took Rosalie to the park. Isabelle stood at the window and watched them go down the hill: Xavier carrying Rosalie on his shoulders, her hands in his hair, both of them talking at the same time about nothing in particular.
She sat down at the kitchen table with her laptop, her tea and opened her email.
Fourteen unread messages. Two from current clients.
One from a potential client in Mill Valley with a Craftsman bungalow that needed a full restoration and interior redesign.
One from the Institute of Classical Architecture inviting her to speak on a panel about residential preservation in the Bay Area.
She'd spoken on two panels already. She'd published an article in their quarterly journal about the intersection of restoration and interior design, about listening to what a house was meant to be and designing the interiors around that intention.
The article had generated six inquiries.
She'd taken on two new clients and referred the rest to colleagues she'd met through the Institute network, which was something she could do now because she had colleagues.
She had a professional community. She had people who called her for advice about plaster restoration, period-appropriate color palettes and where to find salvage hardware in the East Bay.
She had a business. A real one, with insurance, a website and a portfolio that Douglas's photographer friend had shot across four of her completed projects. The Soto house. The Noe Valley Victorian. A Craftsman in Berkeley. A Painted Lady on Alamo Square that had been her largest project to date and had been featured in a local design publication that Margaret and even her mother had framed. Isabelle’s mother was now a doting grandmother to Rosalie, and had also developed a newfound respect for Isabelle, her talents, and her business.
Isabelle answered the Mill Valley inquiry. She opened her calendar and blocked time for the site visit. She looked at the panel invitation and typed yes.
Her phone buzzed. Douglas.
Brunch tomorrow? Leo's making his frittata and Rosalie can terrorize the cat.
Isabelle smiled. Douglas and Leo lived together now, in a two-bedroom on Divisadero that they'd been renovating in stages with Isabelle's guidance.
Leo, who was a food writer with a dry wit and a talent for eggs, had proposed to Douglas in September, on the roof of their building, with a ring he'd had made by a jeweler in the Mission.
Douglas had called Isabelle at eleven o'clock at night, crying and laughing simultaneously, and said, "He asked me, Iz.
On the roof. With the whole city behind him. "
The wedding was in April. Isabelle was the best woman. Rosalie was the flower girl, though "flower girl" was an optimistic designation for a child who would almost certainly eat the petals.
She texted back: We'll be there. Save Rosalie a seat next to the cat. She likes to negotiate.
Douglas: The cat is terrified of her. It's mutual respect.
Isabelle smiled as she put down the phone.
She thought, for a split second. about the horrible moment Xavier had accused her of carrying another man's child.
She rarely thought about it now. For a long time, the memory had arrived unbidden, sharp and sudden, triggered by a word or a silence or the quality of light in a room.
She'd told Doctor Harlan about it, because she'd started seeing Doctor Harlan too, six months after the reconciliation, because she'd realized that the work wasn't only Xavier's.
She had her own locked rooms. Her own patterns.
The years of making herself smaller, of saying a guy in Sonoma, of folding towels while her life collapsed.
Those were hers to examine. She'd examined them.
What had happened between her and Xavier, in a strange way, was what needed to happen to give her the fuller and happier life she had now.
And Isabelle was happy in a way that she hadn't known existed.
She was happy in a way that had been earned, tested, broken and rebuilt.
The rebuilding had made it stronger, the way unlacquered brass gets more beautiful with time, the patina deepening, the surface telling the story of every hand that touched it.
Xavier and Rosalie came home at noon. Rosalie was asleep on Xavier's shoulder, her curls pressed flat against his neck, one sock still missing. Xavier carried her upstairs, put her down. When he came back down he found Isabelle on the sofa with her laptop and her tea.
He sat beside her and took her hand. He found her pulse with his thumb, the old habit, and this time there was no possession in it.
Just a man confirming the biological fact of the woman he loved, the way he did sixty times a day, because he still couldn't believe his luck and he'd learned, finally, that the appropriate response to luck wasn't to grip it tighter. It was to be grateful.
"Two more," Xavier murmured, his hand moving to her stomach.
"Two more."
“I want even more, you know. A soccer team. A million little Isabelles.”
Isabelle laughed. “Says the one who doesn’t have to go through a million pregnancies.”
“Think of how much fun we’ll have making them,” Xavier said, with a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows.
Isabelle just laughed, leaning into him. She could hear the distant sound of Rosalie breathing through the baby monitor on the coffee table. The fog moving against the glass. The heartbeat of the man she loved under her ear, steady and sure.
“For now? I’m good with this," she said. "Just this."
Her husband, her daughter, the babies resting in her belly.
It was more than enough. It was everything.