Epilogue
Eight Months Later
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” Ben asks, his voice low and serious despite the fact that he’s wearing his favorite sweatpants and a navy blue Paradise Cove Beach Café hoodie while sitting just a few yards from the Pacific Ocean.
It’s too dark to see the water’s full expanse, but the steady roar of the waves has been the soundtrack to the past few hours as we set up our campsite on the beach.
I turn to where he’s sitting next to me in a low beach chair, his reading glasses perched on his nose as he studies his glowing phone screen.
If the hard line his brow makes across his face is any indication, I’d almost think he was deciphering some sort of sacred ancient text and not the rules and regulations for Point Mugu State Park’s beach campgrounds.
“Let’s go with the good news,” I reply.
“Well, we’re in compliance,” Ben says, motioning to the campfire crackling in front of us. “Designated metal fire ring, clear perimeter, water on hand. We’re good.”
I nod like I had any part in helping with that. Instead, I’ve been organizing, then reorganizing our snack cooler since we arrived on the beach that afternoon. “So what’s the bad news?”
“Apparently we have to be on the lookout for mountain lions,” he replies grimly.
I shrug one shoulder, pulling my hair up in a ponytail. I might still be chasing the perfect shade of blond, but at least it’s long enough now that I can pull it back away from my face. “Okay.”
He barely moves except to look at me over the rim of his glasses. “Okay?”
I wave indiscriminately at the beach ahead and the rolling mountains that rise up in the darkness behind us.
“We’re in nature, Ben. This is their habitat.
Technically, we’re infringing on their territory, so the least we can do is stay out of their way like you would do for a deer or…
I don’t know, what’s a dangerous animal in Boston that you should avoid at all costs? ”
“Bruins fans,” he murmurs.
I laugh and, despite the stern line of his brow, the corner of Ben’s mouth ticks up, too.
As soon as Sara scheduled her C-section—she refused to wait for nature to take its course—Ben and I booked tickets to Los Angeles.
It wasn’t until I started planning our itinerary, a long list of all the places back home that meant something to me and which I wanted to share with him, that I realized the last few days of our trip corresponded with something else: my grandmother’s birthday.
And not just any birthday, her eighty-fourth. Her Jupiter return.
It was Ben’s idea to book a campsite right on the beach so we could light a small campfire (current fire level permitting, of course) and celebrate her birthday at the stroke of midnight, just like she had done for my first Jupiter return all those years ago.
Cynthia Aldridge may not be here to set her intentions, but I want to share my intentions with her.
The first is to be a good godmother to the newest member of our found family unit.
Sara and Garrett welcomed Meadow Elizabeth, the most perfect seven-pound, three-ounce human being to ever be born, on May 16, right on schedule. Ben and I were there to meet her, along with Matt, who drove up from San Diego for the weekend.
I was surprised how much it felt like old times.
The four of us fell into a familiar rhythm, one that seamlessly expanded to include Ben.
Somehow, even the addition of things like diaper shopping and troubleshooting issues with Sara’s new breast pump felt natural.
And I guess it was. We were growing and evolving just as we were supposed to.
Once Sara and Meadow arrived home from the hospital five days later, and I had triple-checked the nursery for the second time, Ben and I loaded our rented truck with Garrett’s camping gear and drove up the Pacific Coast Highway to Point Mugu.
As much as I would have loved to reenact the moment from my twelfth birthday exactly as I remembered, rules and regulations meant that if we wanted an open fire, we had to move to where there were designated fire rings available.
But that also meant camping on the beach, so after a quick detour to the Paradise Cove Beach Café for lunch, we drove up and claimed the perfect spot, just a few yards from the water.
Now we had a Nordisk Oppland 3.0—“the Cadillac of tents,” as Garrett described it—set up beside us and a fire roaring at our feet.
All that’s left to do is wait for midnight.
I reach into the pocket of my hoodie and pull out my new iPhone, the one I bought two months after the accident when it was clear that I couldn’t sit around and wait to remember my passcode before moving on with my life.
If my memories ever come back, my old phone is waiting in the drawer of my desk, holding steady at seven failed passcode attempts.
In the meantime, it’s time to move forward.
I press the side button and the screen illuminates.
11:59 p.m.
“One more minute,” I say.
Ben looks over, giving me that almost-smile I love so much.
I’m glad I get to show him this version of California.
Not just the glossy neighborhood in Burbank where Sara and Garrett live, or the areas usually visited by tourists, like Hollywood and Santa Monica, but the wild and reckless bit that defined my childhood.
Wind that smells like kelp, sand that sneaks into the cuffs of your jeans and follows you home, the jagged edge of the land where it falls away into the ocean.
Where my grandmother taught me the names of constellations, most of which I don’t remember, but it doesn’t matter. I remember her.
The fire pops, sending a brief spray of sparks upward.
Ben’s attention snaps to it, his eyes tracking their glowing arc to make sure they die before they travel further away.
When they land safely in the sand, he exhales, even as I smile.
I’m not worried about the fire. To be honest, I’m not worried about much of anything, which might be a first.
Suddenly, my phone lights up and the soft, trilling sound of my alarm rings out.
It’s midnight.
Ben stands up, then offers me his hand as I do the same. He doesn’t let go once I’m on my feet, just intertwines his fingers with mine and gives a soft squeeze as he looks up into the darkness.
“Happy birthday, Cynthia,” he says.
I look up, too. The night sky is a mess of stars the way I always loved when I was growing up.
A giant glowing clump here, a scattering there.
It’s like the universe accidentally spilled them out over the darkness and is just too lazy to pick them all up.
But there’s still order to it, a rhythm that I can’t see but know is there.
Jupiter has returned to the exact same spot in the sky as when you were born, my grandmother’s voice whispers in my head. That deserves a celebration.
“Happy birthday, Grandma,” I whisper.
We stand there for a long moment, listening to the waves as they roar up the beach in a steady pulse. Then Ben turns to me again.
“So how does this work?”
I smile. “You just tell the universe what you want to manifest this year. What’s important to you. What you want to welcome into your life.”
His brow furrows, as if he’s still not completely clear on the goal.
“Here, I’ll go first,” I say, then I turn my head back up to the stars. “I will travel to Japan!”
When I turn back to Ben, he’s watching me, the corner of his mouth slightly ticked up again.
“Your turn,” I say.
He sighs, and I almost think he’s going to come up with some excuse, but instead, he seems to consider, then tilts his head back to shout, “I’m going to go with her to Japan!”
“And Spain!”
“And Spain, too!”
I laugh, turning to him again. “You have to come up with your own intentions.”
“And what if I intend to be with you?” he asks, his deep voice becoming almost a whisper.
I squeeze his hand. “You can multitask.”
He chuckles to himself, then looks up again as he seems to consider.
“I’m going to play pickleball with my mom!” he finally yells.
I laugh. Joyce Martin has been trying to convince him to come up to Rockport and sit in on her pickleball team for months now.
Ben had used every excuse under the sun to avoid it, even tried to pawn the responsibility off on Lauren, but since she found out she was pregnant in February, she had the perfect excuse. Now it was all on Ben.
“I’m going to make a photography portfolio. And sign up for that pottery class in Cambridge!” I shout upward.
“You want to try pottery?” Ben asks.
I roll my eyes. “You can’t talk about your intentions.”
“Why not?”
“It dilutes the energy needed for manifestation,” I say, even putting on my grandmother’s dreamy voice as I recite her words.
“Of course,” he deadpans. Then he tilts his head upward again. “I’m going to try pottery with her!”
I can’t help but laugh again.
My grandmother would have loved him, I think.
Sure, she would have teased him relentlessly about the campfire permit, then asked what his sign was (Virgo), and nodded knowingly like that explained everything.
But she would have smiled, too, because she would see me smiling.
She would know how happy I was with him because I would have told her all the memories we’ve made together.
How he walked me to the grocery store that first day I was home from the hospital.
How he bought me a burner phone and invited me to a Red Sox game.
Showed me his favorite painting and told me all his stories, even the most painful ones.
How we ordered takeout on our first date and I forced him to play Monopoly, even though he hated it.
How he had laughed when I finally had enough money to build hotels on Park Place and Boardwalk, so touched by my excitement he didn’t even care that it meant he would lose. How—
Wait.
I blink, forcing my brain to return to the memory.
Yes, it’s there, as if it has always been.
It’s like someone’s adjusted the focus, making the details sharp and clear.
Ben and I are sitting on the floor of his apartment, a Monopoly board between us.
I’m the top hat and he’s the little dog.
The TV is on but muted, playing scenes of the rain delay at Fenway, but the two of us barely notice.
In that moment, all I know is that I don’t want it to ever stop raining, just like I never want to leave that apartment.
I was already falling in love with him then.
I’m starting to remember.
Tears prick the backs of my eyes as I turn to Ben. It takes him a moment to notice. When he does, his eyebrows draw together.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I’m just really happy.”
His eyes take on a soft edge, and he squeezes my hand again. A long moment passes, then he turns his face back to the sky.
“I’m going to ask this woman to marry me!” he bellows.
I still, my tears halting as my heart explodes into a hundred points of light in my chest. “What did you say?”
“Sorry, I can’t talk about my intentions,” he says with a heavy sigh. “It dilutes the energy needed for manifestation.”
Then he smiles and pulls me into his arms, drawing me up and placing a soft kiss on my lips.
I melt into him as my grandmother’s voice fills my head: Just be still and let the magic find you.
But this doesn’t feel like magic. It feels earned. More than a dozen doctors’ appointments, endless tests. A hundred small choices that never feel like destiny, but like effort.
There is nothing mystical about that. And yet, this feels miraculous.
Maybe that was the secret all along. Destiny is real—we just build it ourselves. And in that way, my grandmother was right after all. The magic isn’t what happens to us. It’s that we keep going anyway.