Chapter 32 Epilogue
Molly
"Mama, the bees are being VERY LOUD," Clem announces from the doorway.
Just over three years after the vow renewal, Clem stands at the farmhouse kitchen door with her hands on her hips, looking exactly like her grandmother when she disapproves of a hat. She's four now, all legs and opinions, with her father's dark hair and my stubborn mouth.
"That's because they're working, baby," I tell her.
"They should work quieter," she says.
"I'll let them know," I promise.
She considers this. "Also, Beau smells."
"He probably needs a diaper change," I say.
"You should do that," she informs me.
"I'm in the middle of labeling jars," I tell her. "Where's your daddy?"
"On the phone," she says, rolling her eyes. "Being boring."
I bite back a laugh. Taz's board calls have become legendary in our house; Clem narrates them from outside the kitchen, providing commentary on how boring corporate governance sounds.
The board has, remarkably, gotten used to random toddler interruptions, and to waiting on mute while their chairman films Clem "harvesting" in her bee suit.
"Tell Daddy that Beau needs him," I say.
Clem sighs dramatically and stomps down the hall. I watch her go, this tiny fierce person we somehow made, and my chest aches with how much I love her.
The farmhouse kitchen smells like wax and sage honey.
We're bottling the last of the spring harvest, thirty-two gallons of orange-blossom sage that's already spoken for by a restaurant in San Francisco.
Sagebloom has a waiting list now. Three years ago, I couldn't imagine it. Now I'm turning down orders.
The back door opens again.
Taz walks in with Beau strapped to his chest, the baby grabbing at his collar and making those happy sounds that mean he's not hungry yet. My husband, my husband, still, after everything, looks exhausted and content in equal measure.
"Clem says you wanted me?" he asks.
"Clem says Beau smells," I tell him.
"Clem is not wrong." He crosses to me, drops a kiss on my head without disrupting the baby. "Board call went long. They wanted to discuss the quarterly projections."
"Did you finish," I ask, "or is somebody still explaining a spreadsheet to an empty chair?"
"I told them my time was up," he says. "Hollis can read the remaining columns without me."
"A historic day for numbers," I say.
Taz takes Beau down the hall for a clean diaper, then returns and offers him to me. I wipe my hands on a towel and take him. Six months old, those honey eyes that everyone says he got from me, his father's refusal to sleep through the night. He grabs my hair immediately.
"Hi, stinky boy," I coo.
"Ba," he says firmly.
"That's your sister's word," I tell him. "Get your own."
Taz is already checking the labeled jars with the careful attention he's developed over years of watching me work. He's good at this now. He isn't great, since he still gets nervous around the hives, but he's good.
"Az called," he says. "Dinner at their place tonight?"
"What time?" I ask.
"Six," he says. "Eli's making pasta."
"Eli's pasta is suspiciously good for someone who lived on tour bus food for a decade," I say.
"I think June has standards," Taz says.
June is a little older than Clem, Az and Eli's daughter, with her father's eyes and her mother's calm practicality. She and Clem play together constantly, best friends separated by a fence line that neither of them understands exists.
"Did you finish the fence repairs?" I ask.
"Miguel helped," he says. "The east section's done, the south needs another day."
"Thank you," I tell him.
He shrugs, wiping down the counter. "It's our fence."
Our fence, our farm, our hives. The words still settle warm in my chest, even after three years of living here.
The farmhouse still carries my grandmother's choices: the deep windowsills, the hook for a sunhat beside the door. Now there are little boots beneath it and Taz's keys beside mine. I don't have to negotiate for space in this life.
"Come on," I say, settling Beau on my hip. "Let's walk the fence line before dinner."
"Let me get Clem's shoes," he says. "Last time she insisted a snail had stolen them."
"Check the porch," I tell him, not looking up from the jars. "She was building it a garage."
"We should start charging rent," he says. "Half the wildlife in Ojai has a room here."
The late afternoon light paints the valley gold. We walk the path between our property and Juniper Hill, Clem riding high on Taz's shoulders with both fists in his hair, Beau drowsing against my chest in the carrier.
Beau drools on my collar. Somewhere behind us the hives hum like an engine left running.
Almost five years ago I sat on a kitchen floor in Los Angeles, turning a bruise under the lights, waiting for a man who wasn't coming.
Tonight my feet ache from the fence line, and he's carrying our daughter on his shoulders, and I wouldn't trade the ache for anything.
"Daddy," Clem calls. "There's a LIZARD."
"Leave the lizard alone, monster," Taz tells her.
"I'm not going to TOUCH it," she says, deeply offended. "I'm going to NAME it."
"What's its name?" I ask.
"Beans," she announces.
Taz looks at me. "Beans?"
"Don't ask me where she gets this stuff," I tell him.
We reach the fence line where our property meets Juniper Hill. I can see Az's dahlias from here, bright splashes of color against the green, and Eli's vegetable garden that he tends with surprising dedication.
"Hey!" Az's voice carries across the field. She's waving from her porch, little June on her hip. "You're early!"
"We're walking," I call back. "Is that okay?"
"Get over here," Az yells. "June's been asking about Clem all day."
Clem wriggles down Taz's back and takes off running. She knows the way by now: through the gate, across the dahlia field, up to the porch where Az has probably already prepared snacks.
Taz and I follow more slowly, Beau snuffling against my dress.
We reach the porch. Az hugs me around the carrier while Eli lifts Beau out of it, holding him with the ease of someone who's done this before. June and Clem have already disappeared inside, their chatter floating through the open windows.
Eli hands Beau back to me, then sets the pasta on the porch table. Clem leans over her plate to inspect it.
"Is there green stuff?" she asks.
"Basil," he says.
"June says that's a leaf," Clem reports.
"June's right," Eli tells her.
My daughter considers whether we've all gone mad. "We have leaves at home."
"These cost extra," Taz tells her. "Try one before you send it back to the kitchen."
June demonstrates with a forkful. Clem watches her, then takes a cautious bite.
"Acceptable?" Az asks.
"I need cheese," Clem declares.
Eli reaches for the bowl. "Finally, a review I can work with."
Beau grips my finger while I eat one-handed. Taz cuts a piece of bread and sets it on my plate without stopping his conversation with Eli about the fence. Nobody announces the favor. Nobody expects a medal. I catch his eye, and he smiles around a mouthful of pasta.
By the time we put our shoes on, Clem has fallen asleep against June on the couch. Beau drowses in Eli's arms.
"Leave my daughter here," Az warns Taz as he bends to lift Clem. "They've got their arms tangled. You only get the one you brought."
"I'll check the paperwork," Taz says.
I take Beau, careful not to wake him. Eli pulls a little sock from between the cushions and hands it over.
"He tried to smuggle it out as a souvenir," he says. "I admire the ambition."
We say goodnight quietly and carry our children home.
The farmhouse is quiet. The kids go down without fuss for once, miraculously, and I stand in the doorway of Clem's room watching her sleep.
"She made me promise we'd visit Beans tomorrow," Taz says behind me.
"That lizard's going to need representation," I say.
"I've been appointed to find him," he says. "Apparently that's in the father contract."
He wraps his arms around me from behind, and I lean into him. The ring on my finger glints in the nightlight. Three years of wearing it again, and it still feels like a promise I'm keeping fresh every day.
He kisses me, soft and familiar and still somehow new. We've learned each other's shapes again over the past three years: the ways we've changed, the ways we haven't, the places where we fit better now than we did before.
"Come on," I say. "Kids are finally asleep. Let's not waste it."
"What did you have in mind?" he asks.
"I'm thinking about the porch swing," I tell him. "And the stars. And you."
"I'll bring the blanket," he says.
"And leave your phone inside," I add. "For once, let the lizards solve their own problems."
He salutes me with two fingers, deadpan, and sets the phone on the kitchen counter like it might bite if left unsupervised.
The baby monitor stays clipped to his pocket, volume low and screen dark.
The house is quiet in the particular way that only happens when small people have surrendered to dreams. I intend to use every minute of it.
"Blanket," I remind him.
"Got it." He grabs the soft one off the couch, the blanket that has survived three years of spilled milk, fence-line dust, and at least one incident when Beau knocked a tightly closed jar of comb honey into my lap, and follows me toward the porch.
We make it as far as the kitchen doorway before I change the plan with my mouth on his.
He backs into the counter. I climb him like the practical woman I am.
The blanket hits the floor with a soft flop.
His hands slide up under my dress, cup my ass, and lift, and I wrap myself around him and laugh into the kiss, because a Sunday night in a farmhouse kitchen should not feel this dirty, and somehow it always does with Tazio Williams when he remembers the phone can live without him.
"The porch swing's going to be jealous," he murmurs against my smile.