Rumi’s hands go to her mouth as her eyes take in the room, and I wrap my arm around her, pulling her into Evee and me.
Knowing Rumi lost all of Evee’s things in the fire too, I might have gone a little overboard with replacing it all.
But I couldn’t help it.
These two deserve the entire world, and I vow to do everything in my power to give it to them.
“Do you like it, Evee girl?” I ask her, bouncing her in my arms. She’s more awake now as her eyes roam the space.
I wanted the nursery to feel like you were walking into Rumi’s book, the sage green walls wrapping the room in warmth, the hand-painted vines and animals Emerson did to make the space feel even more playful. A rug in the shape of a rainbow in the center of the room ties everything together, and the wooden crib is filled with rainbow-striped pillows and every stuffed animal I could find at the store.
“Okay, well we’re going to have to find another place for those if we want Evee to have any room to sleep,” Rumi says with a laugh, her eyes glistening as she turns to me. “I didn’t realize how closely you were listening when I told you about all my ideas for the book.”
I look down at Rumi, watching as she wipes her eyes, a smile on her face as she notices frames lining the walls. “Oh, those are for the book pages. Thought it would be a nice touch.”
“Jack,” she breathes, looking up at me. “I can’t believe you did this.”
I press a kiss to the top of her head. “Well believe it, baby. You and Evee deserve the best, and I plan on spending my life giving it to the two of you.”
We both look around the room in comfortable silence, only Evee’s claps and squeals filling the air, and I notice Rumi looks at the wooden plate above Evee’s crib—it’s blank for now, only because I didn’t know her middle name.
“Oh, Emerson is going to finish that, but I need Evee’s middle name. We wanted to put both on there. And I wasn’t sure if you’d want it to say ‘Evelyn’ or ‘Evee’.”
Rumi rolls her lips together, like she wants to say something but doesn’t know how.
After a moment, she finally says, “Her middle name is Jade. Evelyn Jade.” It comes out as some sort of admission, but I’m not sure why.
“Okay,” I say carefully. “I’ll let Emerson know.”
Rumi shifts her weight back and forth on the balls of her foot. “I didn’t realize it until recently, but I named her after you.”
There’s no way I heard her right. “What?”
Rumi lets out an exhale. “The night of my accident, I saw you but I didn’t remember. Or, I thought I didn’t. But, when the nurse asked me for her name, I knew it was going to be Evelyn. I had that name picked out for most of my pregnancy, but I was between a few middle names.” I nod my head, watching her as she looks at Evee and then to me. “But for some reason, I knew her middle name was Jade. And now, I know why.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because of your eyes. Some part of me remembered them, remembered how they looked at me, how they made me feel like everything was going to be okay, that I was safe.”
“Evelyn Jade,” I whisper, absorbing Rumi’s words.
She named her daughter afterme.
She rememberedme, remembered that I saved her.
But she was truly the one to save me.
EPILOGUE
RUMI
“Come on, lovebug,”I say to Evee as I get her dressed. She’s moving and grooving, having taken her first steps only a few weeks after we moved in with Jack last year. Now at two, we can’t let her out of our sight for more than a second before she’s wreaking havoc somewhere. “We can’t be late.”
“Are my girls almost ready?” I hear as Jack peeks in through Evee’s bedroom door.
It’s been a year since the fire and a little less than that since Evee and I officially moved in with Jack.
And it’s flown by.
