Epilogue
Ten years later
Madison
The dog weighs one hundred and forty pounds.
This is important information because he is currently sitting on my husband.
“Roger,” I say calmly, standing in the doorway of our kitchen, coffee in hand. “You’re crushing a doctor.”
Beckett’s voice comes out somewhere beneath fur. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You can’t breathe.”
“I can breathe. I just can’t feel my legs.”
Roger shifts, which somehow makes it worse.
For the record, getting a Great Dane was Beckett’s idea.
“We have the space,” he said.
“We don’t have children,” he said.
“It’ll be easy,” he said.
Now the dog is essentially a small horse with separation anxiety.
And yes, I got to pick his name.
I thought Roger was fitting.
Partly because I miss Mr. Rogers, who shuffled quietly above me for two peaceful years. Partly because if I wasn’t having children, I wanted my dog to have a solid, sensible, human name.
We decided not to have children a long time ago. We revisited it every year or so and checked in just to make sure neither of us had changed quietly.
There was a wobble once during year four.
Everyone around us was pregnant, or trying, or announcing something with pastel cupcakes and coordinated outfits. I remember standing in a baby store buying a gift and feeling something twist in my chest. It wasn’t longing exactly. It was more like a question.
Are you sure?
I brought it home with me, sat at this very counter, and asked him.
Beckett didn’t panic or try to convince me either way. He just said, “If you want that life, we’ll build it. If you don’t, we won’t. I just don’t want you choosing out of fear.”
That was the moment I knew the wobble wasn’t about wanting a child. It was about wondering if I was allowed to choose differently.
Our life is full.
It’s full in the way people don’t always understand because it’s not loud in the expected way.
It’s full of late-night ER stories and early-morning board meetings. Full of nieces and nephews who descend on this house every other weekend and occupy the spare bedrooms.
I am still the best babysitter in the family.
I do crafts. I make pancakes shaped like dinosaurs. I referee sibling wars. Then, at the end of the weekend, I hand them back to their exhausted parents.
The doubt passed because I examined it and made sure it wasn’t regret in disguise.
It wasn’t.
It was just noise.
Our house has laughter. It has tiny sneakers by the door some weekends and silence on others. It has a dog with a human name and a husband who loves me loudly.
It has more than enough.
I take a sip of my coffee and lean against the counter, watching my six-foot-three trauma doctor pinned to the hardwood floor by unconditional love.
Ten years.
Ten years since hot yoga tried to murder me.
Ten years since I climbed the stairs in granny slippers to scream at the cardio demon upstairs.
Ten years since that cardio demon opened the door shirtless and changed my life in the best way.
“Are you going to help me?” Beckett asks.
“Roger,” I repeat. “Get off your father.”
Beckett groans. “You named him. You handle him.”
Roger finally lumbers off, tail wagging.
Beckett looks up at me, hair messy, gray at the temples now. I like to tell him he’s seasoned. There are lines at the corners of his eyes that weren’t there when we met.
They appeared gradually. Some from laughing, some from loss, some from holding other people’s tragedies in steady hands.
He still runs, but on the ground floor of this house because he likes being married.
“You’re staring,” he says.
“I’m reflecting.”
“On?”
“How right I was.”
He snorts. “About?”
“Everything.”
He pushes himself to his feet and crosses the kitchen toward me before he takes my coffee from my hand, sets it aside, and pulls me into him.
Ten years and he still makes my stomach do a little flutter.
He slides one hand along my waist and brushes his thumb along the curve of my hip. I wrap my arms around his neck and tilt my head back just enough for him to kiss me properly.
His mouth moves against mine with the kind of certainty that only comes from time. Ten years of learning each other’s edges. Ten years of arguing and apologizing and choosing each other again the next morning.
Roger huffs dramatically beside us, offended by the intimacy.
“Ignore him,” Beckett murmurs against my lips.
He deepens the kiss, one hand sliding to the small of my back. I feel that grounded heat and steady pull. The thing that has never once felt temporary.
“Uncle Beckett!”
“Aunt Madi!”
Our front door is almost knocked off its hinges by the small bodies barreling toward us, their backpacks bouncing and their shoes half untied.
Roger explodes into motion.
Beckett barely has time to turn before two of them collide with his legs. He laughs and scoops them both up, one under each arm.
“Whoa, whoa. You’re going to cause an injury, and it’s my day off,” he says as they cling to him.
I roll my eyes and smile.
Always the doctor.
In the next breath, another one crashes into my waist.
“Grandma and Grandpa brought us!” someone announces at top volume, as if we hadn’t noticed the parade behind them.
Then my parents step inside.
My mother first. She looks good. She’s clear-eyed and present. There’s color in her cheeks, and her hair is pulled back the way she wears it when she’s feeling strong.
She smiles at me, really smiles, and something in my chest settles the way it always does when she’s steady.
My dad follows, juggling overnight bags.
“Surprise,” he says, though there is nothing subtle about this ambush.
“You could’ve warned us,” I tell him.
Beckett shifts both kids higher in his arms. “You brought reinforcements.”
“We brought sugar,” my dad corrects.
Roger circles the children like a very large, very enthusiastic security guard. One of them squeals and throws their arms around his neck. He immediately melts to the floor, tail thumping so hard it rattles the cabinet.
Our house fills in seconds.
Noise.
Shoes kicked off.
Voices overlapping.
Someone is already asking what’s for dinner.
Beckett lowers the kids but keeps one hand steady on a shoulder as they bounce in place. He looks over at me across the madness.
There’s no question in his eyes.
This is ours.
I catch my mom watching me for a second. She tilts her head like she’s taking inventory. Making sure I’m happy. Making sure I’m whole.
I give her a small nod.
I am.
One of the kids grabs my hand. “Are we making dinosaur pancakes again?”
“Obviously,” I say.
“Uncle Beckett lets us put chocolate chips in them,” another one tattles.
Beckett raises a brow. “You’re welcome.”
I roll my eyes. “Doctors can’t be trusted with sugar.”
He grins at me, then leans down to kiss the top of my head.
I look around.
At my parents inside our home.
At the spare bedrooms that will be full tonight.
At the dog named Roger sprawled across the floor.
At my husband, holding the hand of a child who is not his and looking like the safest man in the world anyway.
I thread my fingers through his for half a second before one of the kids wedges in between us, demanding immediate attention.
Our life isn’t quiet all the time.
It’s not conventional.
It doesn’t look like the version people expect when they picture a full house.
But it is full.
It’s full of choice.
Full of laughter.
Full of people who come and go and always feel welcome here.
Ten years ago, I climbed the stairs in slippers to scream at the man ruining my sleep.
Now he stands in our kitchen with gray at his temples and two children hanging off his arms, and I can’t imagine a single version of my life that feels more right than this one.
Roger barks again, as if to punctuate the moment.
“Alright,” I clap once. “Shoes off. Hands washed. Pancake station opens in ten.”
As the house fills with noise and footsteps and the sound of my parents laughing at the kitchen table, I realize we didn’t choose less.
We chose exactly enough.
The End.