Epilogue
Jenna
There are seventeen people in the backyard, and I know every one of their names. Barbecue smoke drifts sideways in the June heat, and someone put a speaker on the porch rail.
Three months ago, I ran from a corporate giant. Now, I’m sitting in a wooden chair someone dragged out of the barn, wearing a sundress with no sleeves because it’s June and it’s hot. The patches on my forearms are the palest they’ve been in years, almost the color of the surrounding skin. I’m not tugging anything down. I’m not hiding anything. Shay just handed me a plate of pie I didn’t ask for, and I took it without the old inventory—who gave me this, what do they want, what's the cost—because there is no cost. There’s just pie.
I touch my ring. The wire one, twisted on the porch with his hands the night he saidI need to marry you. I’ve been touching it all day, the metal warmed to my temperature. Going nowhere.
The Stoneridge yard is chaos in the best way. Dorito has been banished to the far pasture after a sequined handbag incident that Maggie is still not ready to discuss. His mother, Cheese Puff, Havenridge’s infamous goat, is equally shameless. She’sbreached the perimeter fence with Biscuit, Dorito’s father, and between them they’ve eaten six napkins, someone’s flip-flop, and a glow stick. It seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the goat.
Ben is at the grill with Jacob beside him, two brothers who didn’t speak for decades arguing about charcoal temperature with the focused intensity of men who’ve made disagreement their love language.
Maggie moves between them, refilling drinks, saying nothing, seeing everything.
The wives are scattered through the yard: Shay near Henry and Max, Kitty on Tom’s lap, Luna tracing something on Angus’s forearm that makes him go still the way only she can manage, Delaney wearing Daniel’s stolen sunglasses. Five couples, gravitationally locked, settled into orbits they’ll hold for the rest of their lives.
And I’m in the middle of it with Pixel on my lap, purring into my thigh, not at the edge cataloguing exits or in a doorway with my bag packed.
I’m just here.
Ethan is at the barbecue with his brothers and his cousins, and he’s laughing, his head thrown back, his throat long and tanned, his glasses catching the sunlight. Tom said something, I couldn’t hear what, but Ethan’s whole body is shaking with it, one hand braced on the table edge. Henry is fighting a losing battle with his own stoicism, and Angus’s mouth has betrayed him completely by cracking a rare grin.
My husband stands in the sun with his brothers around him and his guard nowhere in sight. I did that. Not alone. He played his part too when he chose to stop hiding behind the useful version of himself. But I was the one who askedwho takes care of you?and something in his chest rearranged. The man I’m watching right now is the man who grew into the space that opened up.
But it’s nothing compared to what he gave me. I keep a running catalog because my brain works that way. I’m the data analyst who fell for the man who speaks in acts of service. He gave me unscented soap before I asked. A fortress of people I didn’t know I needed. A wire ring and a name and a kitchen floor I walk on without shoes every single morning because my feet know what my head took longer to believe: I’m not leaving. No one is asking me to.
He catches my eye across the yard, and a whole conversation takes place in the space between us.
You good?
I’m perfect.
Yeah. Me too.
The sun drops lower. The barbecue gives way to chairs dragged into loose clusters, and the beer was replaced with something stronger two rounds ago. Couples lean closer as country music drifts from the speaker.
Ethan drops into the chair beside me, and his warm hand finds my knee. He smells like smoke and sunscreen. Pixel protests his proximity, resettles on my lap, and goes back to sleep.
Gabriel is across the yard, leaning against the fence rail with a drink in his hand and his hat pulled low, turned slightly away from the group.
Tom notices first—the jokester with the sharpest peripheral vision in the family.
“Hey, Gabe.” His voice carries easily across the yard. “You planning to hold up that fence all night, or are you joining the civilized portion of the evening?”
Gabriel lifts his drink without turning. “Fence needs me more than you do.”
“Debatable,” Henry says. “You’re the only Sutton without a date. People are going to talk.”
“People already talk.” Gabriel pushes off the fence and turns. One corner of his mouth kicks up. It’s not a smile; it’s the shield he uses when the teasing scrapes close to real emotion. “I’m fine.”
“You’re moping,” Daniel says from the porch steps, his chin resting on Delaney’s head as she sits between his legs.
“I don’t mope.”
“You’re moping with attitude,” Tom corrects. “It’s the hat angle.”
This is love disguised as teasing, concern dressed up as a joke. I've watched it work on Ethan. I've learned to recognize the moment when the ribbing stops being funny and starts being a search.
