"They were fighting about the buttercream because they didn't know what else to do with it."
I laughed. She tucked her face into my shoulder.
She'd been right about a lot of things since September.
She was right about this.
I'd gotten my happy ending. I'd gotten the rose at the fence and the woman in the dress and the yard full of people who'd come because they'd decided some weeks back that this was a wedding the whole town was coming to. I'd gotten the breath in my chest in the place it was supposed to be, and the kitchen with the recipe cards in the top drawer, and the brass lamp on the side table by the leather chair.
From the look of those two walking out of the gate with their shoes in their hands, somebody else's was just getting started.
Epilogue
ASTRID
The river was running behind the back fence the way the river was always running.
I had the back door open at six in the morning. Moose was on the porch with one paw hanging off the top step. The air was cool in the way Hartsdale mornings were cool in May, with the river and the cut grass in it and the small green of the leaves that had come back on the trees over the rose bed at the fence.
The roses were pink this year.
Easton had been gone for two hours.
The truck had pulled out at four. He'd left for work with his coffee already in his hand, his boots already laced, and a hand on the back of my neck before he'd left, the way he'd been putting his hand on the back of my neck since the water tower. He'd kissed me on the top of the head. He'd told me he'd see me at seven the next morning. He'd gone.
He'd left my coffee on the counter.
The mug was the one with the chip at the lip. He'd been pouring my coffee into that mug for three months. I had a perfectly good coaster on the side table in the living room. I had told him about the coaster four times. The mug was on the counter.
Some things never changed.
I drank it standing at the back door with my elbow on the frame.
I had Marjorie coming in at eight-fifteen.
Caldwell had been bringing her in once a month since the December morning he had carried her through my door at seven-twenty. She'd been a healthy cat for five months. Her labs had come back how labs came back for a senior cat that was doing well. She didn't need a monthly recheck. Caldwell knew it. I knew it. Marisol knew it. Joanne at the front desk knew it, and she had stopped charging him for the visits in March, on her own, without consulting me.
He came in anyway.
He would be in the corner chair by eight, half an hour before the appointment, with Marjorie in the carrier on his knee and the coffee Joanne would pour him in his free hand. He would read whichever magazine was on the side table, regardless of how old it was. He would talk to whichever client was on the bench beside him about whichever animal was in whichever carrier on whichever lap. He had been a vet in this town for thirty years. He knew everyone. He had been to the houses. He had named some of the dogs.
He would stay an hour.
I had figured out, somewhere in the second month, that the appointment was not for the cat.
I smiled at the mug.
I went back into the kitchen and refilled the coffee.
Moose came in behind me and lay down on the rug by the back door where Penny's bed had been. Steve was on top of the refrigerator. He had come in the night before and hadn't yet decided whether he was a clinic cat this week or a bungalow cat. I rubbed the top of his head. He pressed against my hand.
The kitchen had its morning shape.
My herbs were on the windowsill above the sink. Easton's grandmother's recipe cards were in the top drawer. Her brass lamp was on the side table next to the leather chair in the living room. My mother's coffee maker was on the counter next to his grandmother's. Penny's collar was on the hook by the back door next to Moose's leash.
I had come back to Hartsdale to start over.
I hadn't expected this.
