Epilogue #2
“You should probably go inside.”
Martha frowned. “Why?”
Eliza looked down pointedly at Martha's work dress.
Then Martha remembered.
“Oh.”
Jonas smiled.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You could have reminded me.”
“I was curious how long it would take.”
“You are becoming intolerable.”
“So I've heard.”
Martha looked toward the western sky. The sun had begun its slow descent, though several hours of daylight remained.
Several hours until the church.
Several hours until she married Jonas Numa.
Even after months, the thought could still make her heart behave strangely.
The proposal itself had been quiet, just the two of them alone, speaking intimately, no big, dramatic speech or crowd of onlookers.
Jonas had asked her one evening beside the river where she once sketched him. He had told her he did not want the woman she had pretended to be when they met. He wanted the one who had finally decided to be known.
Martha had cried before he reached the question.
Naturally, Jonas had complained that she ruined the suspense.
She had said yes anyway.
Now Eliza hooked her arm through Martha’s.
“Come inside before you decide one of those men needs help.”
“I could help.”
“Not today.”
Martha glanced back.
Jonas had already returned to the west wing.
He looked over once.
Their eyes met across the yard.
The smile he gave her was small and private.
Martha carried it upstairs with her.
***
By the time the church bell rang, Martha hardly recognized herself.
Eliza and Nell had taken over the room. Nell adjusted the fall of Martha's skirt while Eliza worked a final pin into her hair.
“Ouch,” Martha complained.
“Beauty has consequences.”
“That sounds threatening coming from you.”
Nell laughed from somewhere behind them.
Martha looked at herself in the mirror.
The dress was not extravagant. She had refused anything she could not wear again. Cream-colored fabric, fitted neatly at the waist, with small, embroidered flowers along the cuffs that Nell had added during evenings at the inn.
Her mother’s sketchbook lay closed on the dresser.
Martha had looked through it that morning.
She wished her mother could see this.
She wished, in a different and more complicated way, that Amos could too.
The thought no longer filled her with guilt.
She had loved Amos.
He belonged to her life.
So did everything that came after.
Martha reached up and touched the tiny scar through her eyebrow.
For years, she had lied about even that.
She smiled at her reflection.
No more.
Eliza rested her hands gently on Martha’s shoulders. Their eyes met in the mirror.
“Ready?”
Martha took a breath.
“Yes.”
This time, she was.
***
Not everyone in Willow Crossing came to the wedding.
Martha noticed, but she also found that it didn’t ruin a thing.
Some people had changed toward her after the truth became known. A few had become kinder. Others remained cautious. One family that once ate regularly at the inn had not returned.
Horace Beckett still expected payment on time.
Martha considered that reassuring.
But the small church was full enough.
Fergus stood with Nell and little Annie near the front. Tobias had managed to make himself presentable, though Martha suspected Reuben had threatened him into a clean collar. Percy stood so straight beside Jonas that he looked as if he had been appointed personally responsible for the ceremony.
Eliza took her place beside Martha.
Reuben smiled at her from across the aisle.
And Jonas waited.
Everything else softened at the edges.
He wore a dark coat that fit him better than Martha had ever seen one fit him, his hair braided neatly down his back. The scar on his leg had healed enough that only the slightest stiffness remained when he shifted his weight.
Martha walked toward him.
Once, she had believed a new life meant burying the old one deeply enough that nobody could find it.
Now she understood better.
A life was not made new because the past disappeared.
It became new because you chose what came next while carrying the truth of what had come before.
When Martha reached him, Jonas took her hand.
His thumb moved once across her knuckles.
Later there would be food spread across long tables outside the church, flowers Nell had gathered that morning, Percy stealing more cake than anyone believed one boy could eat, and Reuben finding increasingly poor excuses to sit beside Eliza.
Tomorrow, there would be guests at the inn.
Bills. Even though they had paid everything they owed, bills had a tendency to keep coming back up.
There would be ordinary days.
For most of her life, Martha had underestimated them.
Now, as Jonas looked at her and began to speak the vows that would bind their lives together, she could think of nothing in the world she wanted more.
THE END