Epilogue
SILAS
Soft, golden light poured through the window like a blessing.
June sat in her chair, curled up with a Bible in one hand, a pen in the other, and our son cradled against her chest like he’d always belonged there.
Asa was fast asleep, tiny fist curled under his chin, his breath slow and steady against the curve of her collarbone.
June kept murmuring to herself as she read, probably shaping tomorrow’s sermon line by line, lips moving in that quiet, thoughtful way she had when the Spirit spoke to her.
I didn’t say anything at first—didn’t want to interrupt. Just stood there in the doorway like a man who’d stumbled into heaven and wasn’t quite sure if he was allowed to stay.
She was in her PJs, hair in a braid that had mostly come undone, sleeves of an oversized flannel—my flannel—rolled up to her elbows.
The blanket wrapped around Asa had slipped a little, and she paused long enough to tuck it back in place, her palm lingering at his back like she couldn’t help herself.
God, I knew the feeling.
I stepped into the room, careful not to make the floorboards creak. June looked up anyway, smiling at me like she’d felt me coming before I’d moved an inch.
“Hey, preacher,” I said softly, coming to kneel beside her chair.
“Hey, husband,” she whispered back.
I reached up to touch her face, brushing my thumb across her cheek. Then I leaned forward and kissed Asa’s dark little head, right at the crown where his hair was starting to curl.
“You two been workin’ hard?” I asked.
June nodded. “He’s helping me write about healing.”
I huffed a soft laugh. “Seems like he’s got a good teacher.”
She kissed me before I could say anything else—light and warm, with all the certainty of a woman who had come through fire and made something holy on the other side.
I stayed kneeling there with them, my head resting against her knee, one hand curled gently around her ankle.
The windows were open, the curtains stirring in the breeze, and outside the air smelled like rain and rosemary.
Somewhere in the distance, I could hear children playing in the park…
the park where our child would play someday soon.
For a long time, neither of us said anything.
We didn’t have to.
The world was quiet in the way it only ever got when you were exactly where you were supposed to be.
I looked up at her again—my wife, my home, the second love of my life—and then at the baby in her arms. He huffed a breath and his brow furrowed, like he was deep in thought…just like his mama.
“You been talkin’ philosophy to him?” I asked, looking up at her. “He looks…serious.”
“He’s got deep thoughts,” June shrugged. “Can’t help it. Must’ve gotten it from his dad.”
I grinned. “Poor kid. Didn’t stand a chance.”
June chuckled under her breath and leaned forward to press a kiss to my temple. “He’s lucky,” she whispered. “Got two smart parents.”
My throat went tight. I let my fingers trace slow circles against her ankle, grounding myself in the quiet miracle of it all—this house, this woman, this child.
Everything I’d once thought I wasn’t meant to have.
“Think he’ll be happy here?” I asked.
June looked around the room like she could already see Asa growing into the space—toddling across the floor, dragging books off the shelves, chasing fireflies in the yard, getting paint on his overalls from something his cousin talked him into.
She smiled.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think he will.”
We sat like that for another stretch of stillness, the soft rustle of her pen against paper starting up again. She was writing something new—something good, I could feel it. She always got this look when the words were right.
“So…” I said. “Healing. What about it?”
June kept writing for another few seconds, then paused with the tip of the pen resting against the page. Her eyes flicked up to mine.
“That it doesn’t always look like you think it will,” she said. “It’s slower. Stranger.”
I let that sink in. “Is that so?”
She nodded, shifting Asa just slightly so he could rest more comfortably. “Healing isn’t about going back to who you were before. It’s about becoming someone new…someone softer. Wiser. Freer. And yeah—holier, too. Because it leaves room for grace.”
My throat tightened again. I reached up to run a hand over my face, not because I was tired, but because she always had this way of saying things that made me feel.
Wiser. Freer. Softer.
She was already proving herself right.
“That what you’re preachin’ tomorrow?” I asked.
She smiled again—gentle this time, but no less sure. “I think so. About healing, and mercy…about what it means to keep showing up.”
I sat back on my heels, breath slow in my chest.
Because that’s what it all came down to, wasn’t it?
After everything—the ghosts, the grief, the curse—we were still here. Still reaching. Still learning how to hold each other without dropping the past, without letting it ruin the future. Still finding our way through.
Still healing.
“I think that sounds like the best damn sermon I’ve ever heard,” I said, brushing my knuckles over Asa’s soft cheek.
June raised her eyebrows. “Better than the Gospel of Mothman?”
I snorted. “Well…maybe not quite.”
She laughed and went back to writing, her pen scratching quietly across the page. And I stayed right there beside her.
Outside, the light turned golden.
Inside, everything I’d ever prayed for was already in my hands.
Soft, sacred, and deeply, deeply loved.
This love spell is about to have its way with the next Ward brother.
Beau Ward thought the hard part was over—until a sharp-tongued paranormal podcaster named Noelle Kinney shows up asking questions he’s not ready to answer.
She’s hunting cryptids. He’s hiding ghosts. And Willow Grove isn’t done with either of them. Keep reading in Where the Shadows Linger.