Epilogue RONAN
Epilogue
Ronan
Thursday nights I drive up from Boston.
Two days a week down there, three when something needs a face in the room. Frank stopped putting things in my calendar for Fridays about a year ago and has never once mentioned doing it. The rest of it runs out of the study with the water in the window.
I leave the city by four when I can. Somewhere north of Portland I stop taking calls, and the road opens up, and I take the last forty minutes faster than I need to.
I know what I’m driving toward now.
The calendar on the fridge is in her handwriting. Four twelves this week, the last of them Thursday, then off for the weekend.
We were married in June, on the beach below the house. Ten people. Her mother, her three brothers, Sadie, Denise, Mrs. Vale, Finn, Knox, and Frank.
The house is loud now. That’s the part I didn’t see coming. Her brothers turn up on weekends and eat everything in it. Sadie comes down the coast when she’s off. Mrs. Vale has opinions about all of them and voices none of them.
* * *
I’m home before her.
So I cook.
Haddock, because Mrs. Vale left it in the fridge with a note, and the lemon cream sauce Tessa loves.
I open the white she likes, pour two, and put hers by her place.
She’s in at ten past seven, still in her scrubs, hair coming out of the knot.
She comes straight into me and puts her forehead on my chest. I get my arms around her and hold her there, and she stands in it a while before she says anything.
“That smells illegal.”
I tip her chin up and kiss her.
“Sit down.”
She tells me about a kid who came off a roof and is going to be fine, and about a resident she’s decided to take on as a project. I tell her Frank wants to buy a company I don’t want.
Halfway through I get up and top up my glass.
Hers hasn’t moved.
“You’re not drinking that,” I say.
“No.”
She reaches into her scrub pocket and sets something on the counter in front of me. A white plastic stick, two lines in a little window.
It takes me a second. I’ve never seen one in my life, and my first thought is that it’s something from work, and I’m halfway to asking her what it is when I look at her. She’s smiling, and her eyes have gone bright, and she’s waiting for me to get there.
“I’m pregnant.”
I don’t say anything. I always have the next sentence—it’s the one thing I’ve never had to work at.
There isn’t one.
Her smile slips. “Ronan—”
I turn her stool until she’s facing me.
“Say something,” she whispers. Her hand closes around my arm. “Anything.”
I put my hand flat on her stomach, and she goes quiet. There’s only Tessa, warm under my palm. My wife. And somewhere under my hand, our child.
My chest goes tight and I have to bring her into me. I put my face against her neck and she wraps both arms around me, and neither of us says anything for a while.
Then I kiss the skin below her ear. “When?”
“June.”
I lift my head. “June.”
“I think.” She’s smiling. “We’ll know for sure at the scan next week.”
“How long have you known?”
“I’ve had a feeling about a week. I did the test at work this morning.”
She puts her hand over mine.
I haven’t moved it.
An hour ago it was just the two of us.
Now there’s somebody else coming home to this house.
Tessa watches me for a second. “Are you okay?”
I take her face in both hands.
“Ronan.”
Her eyes search mine. “Are you happy?”
I kiss her.
Then I’m on my feet. I get one hand into her hair and the other around her waist and pull her off the stool, right into me. Her mouth opens under mine, and whatever was holding me still is gone.
She makes a breathless sound when I back her against the counter.
“Does that answer it?”
“Maybe.”
I look at her.
She smiles. “You could be clearer.”
So I kiss her again. This one takes longer. Her arms wind around my neck and I kiss her until she’s laughing into my mouth and I’m smiling too, which ruins the whole thing and somehow makes it better.
“I’m going to be insufferable,” I tell her.
“You already are.”
“I’m driving you to every appointment.”
“I assumed.”
“I’m in that room next week.”
“Obviously.”
“And you’re not doing four twelves in a row anymore.”
She pulls back. “There’s the boss voice.”
“We’re not negotiating that.”
“We absolutely—”
I kiss her before she can finish. She laughs against my mouth, but her arms tighten around my neck and she kisses me back just as hard.
By the time I lift my head, we’re both breathing harder.
I slide my hand between us and settle my palm over her stomach again.
She looks down at it, then up at me.
“There’s nothing to feel yet.”
“I know.”
It’s the first week of October and June is a long way off.
I keep my hand there anyway.