“I need a minute to catch my breath,” I murmured.
“Here, I’ve got you,” Rory said. He took my hand, and I laced my fingers through his. I couldn’t be sure I was right, of course. Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps our future would look very different indeed. But I knew one thing for sure, no matter what it looked like, I was eager to embrace whatever lay ahead.
EPILOGUE
EIGHT YEARS LATER
“Lolly? Where are you, girly?”Dad bellowed from the kitchen.
“Here. In the dining room,” I called back, putting the finishing touches on the new chalkboard menu. I glanced around in satisfaction. The vinyl booths were freshly updated. The chrome edges on the tables gleamed. Even the warm old pine floors seemed to have a satisfied sheen. The old Eatery—or, should I say, the very first brick-and-mortar Lolly’s Pops location in Seattle—had never looked so good. Last year Rind and Vine had closed down, just in time for me to buy the building back from them. We were almost ready for the grand opening of Lolly’s Pops in Magnolia in just a few days.
“I got the new freezer all set up.” Dad came through the swinging door, wiping his hands on a dish towel. He was older now, almost completely bald, but there was a twinkle in his eye that warmed my heart. He still had a slight limp and a little droop on the left side of his mouth, a reminder of how close we’d come to losing him. Since his stroke, Ramona had kept him on his toes, cheerfully insisting he stayactive and eat “rabbit food” instead of his morning bacon. He complained, but secretly I knew he liked to be cared for.
“That machine’s so fancy you could practically fly it to Mars. Who’s going to help me stock it with popsicles now, though? Where are my helpers?”
“Here we are.” A small dark curly head popped up from behind the counter, closely followed by a coppery one with a suspiciously purple-smudged mouth. “I can be your helper.” Sophia scrambled around the counter in whirl of long limbs and missing front teeth.
“Me too, me too!” Freya was practically hopping with suppressed excitement.
“What have you been doing, you rascal?” I ruffled Freya’s tousled hair. At four she was just beginning to lose her tummy and lengthen out into little girlhood, but her mischievous grin was the same. She kept us all on our toes.
“Sampling the pwoduct,” she said slyly. I peered over the counter at a wrapper from one of our new flavors, violets and local grape juice. That explained the purple ring around her mouth.
“Okay, smarty-pants, no more samples for you. Go help Pop Pop with the new freezer.” She raced off after her sister, legs and bangs flying. I watched them go, heart swelling with joy. Sometimes when I looked at them, I still couldn’t believe it was true, that when I kissed them good night I would wake with them piling on top of us in the morning, laughing and pleading for pancakes with unicorn sprinkles. It was a miracle. It was divine.
I looked around, amazed to be back in this space. It was an unexpected twist, but the right move. In the eight years since I’d opened Lolly’s Pops, we’d expanded from my little green-and-white truck to two popular locations in Tampa and a small fleet of vintage trucks and vans, each one unique. Now we were opening the very first Seattlebrick-and-mortar store. How fitting that it would be here, in this space. I was back, but doing what I loved, something that gave me joy.
From the kitchen I could hear squeals and giggles as Dad tried to corral his helpers’ silliness into productivity. “Mission control to astronauts Sophia and Freya, come in. I repeat, this is mission control,” Dad said in his best 1980s Dan Rather TV-anchor voice. “We have liftoff. I repeat. We have liftoff.”
I smiled. He had his hands full with them, but he loved every second he got to spend with the girls. Tampa was too far away. Rory and I agreed on that. We missed Seattle, but Tampa was home for the next few years at least. Noah was fourteen now, and we both felt we needed to stay in the same city as Noah and Emily until he graduated high school and started making a life of his own. We saw him weekly, and the girls adored him. But in a few years, when he was in college, we were planning to move back to Seattle.
For now, though, we managed as best we could. Rory was still with the team, and I was heading up a small but growing company bicoastally. Dad had agreed to help at this store once we opened, and I’d hired a great manager to handle the day-to-day operations on the West Coast. It was a bit complicated to run a business on both coasts, but I had a good feeling about it. It was going in the right direction.
“Coming in for a landing,” Sophia yelled from the kitchen, making a rocket engine sound.
“You’re coming in hot,” Dad replied. “We have a situation. I repeat, we have a popsicle emergency.”
Freya shrieked with laughter. “Mayday, mayday,” she sputtered.
In the momentary lull, I whipped out my phone and checked my messages. Daphne had sent a photo of herself reclining in a hammock slung between two palm trees as Damien wrapped his arms around her from behind. We’d visited them last Christmas and couldn’t wait toreturn to enjoy their relaxed, beachy life in Costa Rica. I sent a photo of myself, slightly disheveled hair and popsicle-stained apron, in front of the counter with aLook familiar? xoxoxo.
There was also a new email from Aunt Gert, titled “WE HAVE CROSSED THE DRAKE PASSAGE... AND NOW THE PENGUINS!!!” Every email from her was composed mostly of exclamation points and sentences in all caps. They made me smile. She and Eve ended up getting along so well that after Rory and I married and moved down to Tampa and Dad and Ramona had their wedding in Hawaii, Aunt Gert decided to move to Vashon Island. She now lived in a whimsical tiny-home caravan tucked beneath the trees at the back of Eve’s property. As full of salt and vinegar as ever, she had taken over and expanded my edible-flower and botanical garden and would now supply our Seattle Lolly’s Pops location with most of the botanicals for our popsicles. A couple times a year, however, she would leave the garden in Eve’s capable hands and disappear for a few weeks at a time with her retired academic pals. We’d receive emails with photos and updates from her latest fabulous adventures—a Danube River cruise past Prague and Budapest, a blurry photo of herself standing stoically in front of the Taj Mahal at sunrise. And now this. I grinned, imagining her in a full bright yellow waterproof suit, climbing into the helm of a Zodiac boat (she was still surprisingly nimble at eighty-eight) to finally see the penguins. She was following her bliss, wherever it led her. And apparently it had led her all the way to Antarctica.
The doorbell jingled and I glanced up. He still made my heart skip a beat, even now, after all these years.
“Hey, handsome.”
“Sorry, my flight was delayed.” Rory dropped his overnight bag with a thump and wrapped his arms around me, planting a firm kiss on my mouth. He was in town only a few days for the opening. I’d fly back to Tampa next week with the girls. I leaned into his kiss.
“You taste like... goat cheese?” I pulled back, puzzled.
“Oh yeah, I saw Eve on the way in. She sent you this.” He pulled a little packet from his pocket.
“Ooh, Brie. That’s new.” I examined the package. Eve had expanded her goat empire in recent years to include a line of handcrafted goat cheeses. The first few batches had been hit-or-miss, but she’d been improving as of late. Her black pepper and chive feta was spot-on. “She said she’d stop by after the farmers market.” Rory glanced around. “Place is looking great, by the way. How’s my favorite popsicle magnate?”
“Ready to put my feet up.” I stepped back, cupping my rounded belly and laughing. I was seven months pregnant. Already my ankles were swollen at the end of a long day. Maybe it was the result of this being number three.
“And how is Junior?” Rory bent down and pressed a kiss on my belly. We’d chosen not to find out the gender of this child. We wanted it to be a surprise.
