Epilogue
ABBOT
Spring comes sooner to Boston than to Maine, so the drive south is a fast-forward to greener grass, leafed-out trees, and the thermostat ticking higher.
Abbot drives against the traffic streaming out of the city, everyone leaving for the beautiful early May weekend ahead.
He’s as eager as they are, his car pointed toward the skyscrapers and the narrow snarl of streets, weaving past cars as he turns right here, and left there.
He parks in the driveway and gets out, finding it’s too warm for his jacket. He takes it off and starts to leave it in the car, then thinks better of it. He can take it with him inside, and he does, up the steps to the porch, to the door he can unlock with his key.
“Hey, neighbor,” Claire calls before he can slip inside. She waves at him from a window, and points at the door to her entrance.
He meets her in her small, front entry where she greets him with a hug. Perfect, she’d said when she’d seen the apartment, adjusting her shirt once and then again over the barely noticeable bump of her stomach.
“Check it out.” Claire hands him a grainy black-and-white image of an ultrasound.
He studies it carefully, taking in the white shape she points to. “Did they say what you’re having?”
“A human baby.”
Abbot glances at the main house. You have to name it after me! he waits for Ned to call out, like he has every time the baby has been mentioned, but even with the windows open, Ned either can’t hear them or isn’t listening.
“So,” Claire says, drawing his attention back. “What’d you bring me today?”
“I believe some form of lentil concoction. It’s in the car still. Pat is very concerned about protein intake.”
Claire glances at her phone, then steps back into the narrow hallway that leads to her kitchen. “Would you mind bringing it in?”
“Of course.” Abbot quickly retrieves the small thermos Pat pressed on him before he left Portland.
“Looks good,” she says and points to where in her refrigerator he should set the container. “He’s getting better at this soup thing.”
“Just think, by the time you have this baby, you will have eaten every single soup known to humankind,” Abbot says, straightening.
He’s careful of how he stands here, the angle of the stairs making the room quirky as Claire had said, and certainly better suited for someone of her height.
The ceiling is higher where she is, in front of the window to the backyard.
“Just what I’ve always wanted.” Claire doesn’t start walking back towards the door, so he doesn’t move either, staying where he is, mindful of his head.
“If it looks good, you must be feeling better.”
“I’m okay. Up for some lentils, I think. Like, normal horrible morning sickness, instead of the type that was trying to end me.”
Still, she doesn’t move. He glances at the window, but can’t see past her. He likes Claire, of course he does, but this is finally his big moving day, leaving Portland for good, and he wants to go find Ned. “I’ll have to tell Pat your appetite is back so he can send more soup,” he offers.
“Please don’t,” she says and laughs. “So, you all moved out?”
“Yes, this should be the last trip.” His car is full of the miscellany that needed to be packed last minute, and the rest left for the movers.
“Gonna miss the old place?”
“I made some good memories there.” And some bad ones. More to be made in this house, which is what’s important. He’s been waiting so long for today to finally, officially move that he wants to hurry back down the hallway and revel in the moment with Ned.
Claire’s phone buzzes and she glances at it, then taps a quick response. “When you two go on your trip, anything specific to know about watching Baxter?”
“You’d really have to ask Ned,” Abbot says. They aren’t leaving for weeks, so are they discussing this now? Yes, apparently.
“Any little idiosyncrasies I should know about?”
“He likes to invite himself onto the furniture.”
“Oh, I love a cuddle bug.” Her phone buzzes again. She reads the message, then tucks the phone into her pocket. Only then does she move toward the door, pausing to grab a duffle bag.
Why? Abbot wonders, but she’s hurrying towards the porch, and when he follows her, he finds a car in the driveway, pulled up behind his.
“Hey! You made it. Good timing,” Claire says, waving.
Abbot looks closer. Isn’t that—“Pat?” he asks.
“Hey hey,” Pat says, climbing out of the driver’s seat. “Has the eagle landed?”
“What?” Abbot asks.
“The eagle is about to,” Claire says and stands on her toes to kiss him. “Hi, babe.”
“What’re you doing here?” Abbot asks. He just saw Pat in Portland before he left, when he’d given this week’s soup delivery to Abbot, with the lament that it’s the last one Abbot will bring.
“Picking up my lady for a surprise weekend away,” Pat says and takes Claire’s bag from her.
“I would’ve given you a ride.” Abbot is confused as he looks between them. “Or the soup—”
“Oh, she knows about it. The surprise is for you,” Pat says. “So I needed my car. And the soup was to throw you off the trail, obviously.”
“What trail?”
“Nothing,” Pat says. “There’s no trail. Or eagle. Or anything. Have a great weekend. We’ll be back on Sunday.”
“What is happening?” Abbot asks, but they both get into Pat’s car, and then he’s backing out of the driveway, leaving Abbot alone on his new front porch.
He stands there a moment before letting himself inside. Only then does he realize that Baxter’s not barking. Worried, he quickly hangs up his coat and calls, “Ned?”
But Ned’s not here either, coming behind the scrabble of paws and panting breath with a smile and a kiss.
“Ned?” he calls up the stairs. Why is the house so still and empty? He and Ned talked just this morning, and specifically arranged to meet at the house now, this afternoon, to begin a weekend of unpacking.
Is he not here? Is Peggy alright? Or Baxter, rushed off to the vet?
—There, the jingle of a collar, from the backyard.
Abbot opens the door from the kitchen onto the small patio. Baxter whines, then rushes over in a flurry of black and white fur. He squirms against Abbot’s legs as Abbot pets him. Confused, Abbot looks up to see Ned standing in the middle of the lawn.
Baxter seems entirely normal—back to normal, really—and Ned does too, except—he’s wearing a dress shirt, neatly tucked into a pair of slacks. Abbot notices that first, because every time he’s seen Ned here at the house, he’s been in a paint-stained T-shirt.
“Ned?”
“You gotta read it,” Ned says. “Baxter, sit.”
But Baxter doesn’t sit, happier to have his ears scratched, and only as he keeps wriggling does Abbot feel something tucked into his collar. A note, he sees as he draws it out. Will you be my dog dad? it says in Ned’s handwriting. Abbot turns it over, looking for an explanation.
“I couldn’t ask Peggy to get involved, because she already thinks we’re married.” Ned’s talking quickly. “Which we are. But if I had it to do again, I’d have asked her to help me ask you if—ah damn, I’m getting this all wrong.”
“All what?”
“If you want to be part of our family?” Ned, seeming to remember himself, quickly kneels. “I’m sorry. I’m nervous, which is absurd, I know, but Abbot?”
“Yes?” He steps past Baxter, who clearly wants to keep being pet, the dog fully unconcerned with Ned now on one knee.
Abbot just stares down at Ned, who wipes his palms on his thighs.
“Abbot,” Ned says, his name more of a statement this time. “Okay, I’ve got this. I did practice, alright? So if any of our new neighbors think Claire and I are engaged, it’s because she was out here with me for like an hour, playing your part.”
“My part,” Abbot repeats softly.
“Henry Abbot,” Ned says in a different tone than Abbot’s used to. More solemn, this moment suddenly more weighty. “You are the partner I never knew I needed, and my best fit, and I hope I’m yours too.”
“Ned—”
“No, let me.” Ned holds up a hand and after a deep breath, he goes on.
“I have been over-the-moon happy with you for a year and a half now, and I hope you’ve had all of that happiness and more, too, with me.
I want, more than nearly anything in this world, for you to keep being happy, and I want to be part of the reason you are.
I want to spend all day making you smile, and hearing your laugh, and I want to build with you a home and a family where you feel safe and secure, because that’s how you make me feel when I’m with you. ”
“Ned,” Abbot whispers.
“I want you to be part of my family, and I want to be yours,” Ned says, his voice growing stronger, gaining momentum.
“I am so incredibly honored that you’re taking on the role of Peggy’s stepdad.
As she grows up, and we have our own kids, and we get to build our lives together, year after year, I can’t imagine a better partner in all of this than you.
You deserve everything, and at the very least, a real proposal. ”
Abbot looks at the note in his hand, and then at Ned down on one knee in front of him. An energy thrums through him, bubbling up, ready to spill out and as if in answer, a smile splits Ned’s face.
“Charles Henry Abbot, my beautiful, wonderful husband, will you stay married to me?” Ned looks so very hopeful, and yes, nervous too, his face tipped up, his eyes raised, and his chest rising on his breath that’s coming quickly.
Abbot’s face is warm, taking in the sight. He notices a bucket with ice in it next to Ned, the neck of a bottle of champagne sticking out of it. Two glasses, and a blanket on the grass, and a rectangular box wrapped in white paper with a gold ribbon on it.
Ned was planning this? To surprise him? This, their first day in their house together, everything packed up and moved from Portland, the very last drive behind them?
“I—yes,” Abbot says, because hasn’t that always been his answer to Ned? Yes, yes, and yes again? “Of course, Ned, of course.”
Ned laughs and jumps up.
Abbot meets him in a kiss. Ned’s shaking. Or maybe he is. Abbot holds him tight, so they can brace against each other, Ned’s lips warm, his hands in Abbot’s own grounding, holding him down to this moment, right here and right now.
“Really?” Abbot asks when they finally part.
“Yeah.” Ned’s smiling so very wide. “I didn’t do that part with Claire.”
“I would marry you all over again, Ned. All of it, everything it took to get here. I love you.”
“I love you too.” Ned ducks forward for another kiss. “You gotta answer Baxter.”
“Yes, I will be your dog dad,” Abbot says, turning to look for him. Baxter’s found something to sniff in the grass, unimpressed with the moment going on around him, and Abbot can’t help but smile at the sight of his tail gently wagging, head down as he explores the yard.
Abbot has a dog. And a husband, and a stepdaughter, and a house. How very much all of that is, when he’s used to having so little. “And Peggy,” Abbot says, turning back to Ned. “I couldn’t be happier to be one of her parents, too.”
Ned grips him, his smile even wider. “Careful what you wish for. The cape club at school has added a specific pair of socks to their mandatory wardrobe. I could only find one pair of them to order, and no, she won’t take them off for laundry day.”
“If that’s the biggest problem we’re currently facing, I think we’re doing alright.” Abbot squeezes him. “Ned, this is—thank you. I never expected this.”
“We’re not done,” Ned says. “I made reservations for tonight. I’m taking you out.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. I’m good for it, cause I married really, really well.
” He laughs then, that slightly self-conscious one Abbot heard more than once while they were looking at costs for the house, the flights they bought together.
And then Ned smiles again, more genuinely, more comfortably, and his hand slips lower on Abbot’s waist, brushing his lower back. “In more ways than one.”
“Do we have time to explore each and every aspect before we leave for dinner?”
“Oh yeah. We can do an entire regression analysis.”
“A Wilcoxon signed-rank test?”
“Only if it’s nonparametric,” Ned says, his voice lowered.
“Say that again.”
“No, cause you’re going to ask me what it means.” Ned pulls back enough to bend and pick up the box at his feet. “Here. This is for you.”
“What is it?”
“Open it.” Ned shifts his weight, clearly nervous again.
Whatever it is, Abbot will love it, he already knows. “I didn’t get you anything.”
Ned laughs again. “You’ve gotten me so much.”
Abbot will get Ned something. He’ll decide on a perfect gift to mark this change in their lives. Think on it and turn over options until he’s settled on exactly the right decision. There’s no rush. He has plenty of time.
The box is too large to be a watch, and that isn’t Ned’s style anyway, to pick one out for him.
It’s not a book, either, since it’s too light.
Abbot lifts away the wrapping paper and then the lid of the box to reveal tissue paper that’s just transparent enough to make out the frame beneath.
An old email between them, he guesses, back when they barely knew each other, some stilted exchange from their early past that they can laugh about now.
No—it’s their future, caught in a picture of them from their wedding at Pat’s cafe.
Abbot doesn’t remember it being taken, but so much of that evening was a blur.
Yet there they are, arm in arm, smiling at each other.
It looks nicer than their thrown-together ceremony has any right to be, their shirts amazingly complementary, the focus on their faces, the bar a warm blur behind them.
And it’s put together so nicely, on a wide white mat in a wood frame. And below it…
“Oh,” Abbot says and touches the words inscribed there.
Welcome home.