“Ross.”
“I mean it. This apartment isn’t—you’re not living above an auto shop.”
“I don’t mind the auto shop.”
“I do.”
She tilted her head up to look at me. “I’d live in a tent with you.”
“Don’t tempt me. I have one.”
She laughed. The full one this time. The one she’d been learning how to do.
I kissed her on the top of the head. I kept her there for another minute.
Then I led her to the bedroom.
EPILOGUE
SUNNIE: 5 YEARS LATER
The river was loud in spring.
I sat on the back porch of our house with my coffee and watched Brook chase a butterfly across the yard. She’d been chasing it for ten minutes. She’d never once gotten close enough to touch it, and she didn’t seem bothered.
She was three. She had her father’s dark hair and my brown eyes and a stubbornness that belonged to neither of us—she’d come up with that one on her own.
Ross was at the grill. He had been since ten, which was ridiculous because the cookout didn’t start until noon. He liked to be ahead of things.
I rested my hand on my stomach. The baby kicked. I’d been able to feel her for three weeks now, and she’d already decided she preferred mornings, which I appreciated.
“She’s chasing that butterfly into the next county,” Ross said.
“She’s content.”
“She’s three. She’s not content. She’s plotting.”
I laughed.
He came over and bent down and kissed the top of my head, the way he’d done every morning since the first one in theapartment above the auto shop. We hadn’t lived there in four years. We’d built the house the year we got married, on a piece of land two miles up the river from the Alderman cabin—close enough to walk, far enough to be ours.
Trucks came up the drive, one after another.
Suri was first out, with a baby on her hip and a four-year-old climbing out behind her. Kyron came around from the driver’s side with the diaper bag, which he carried the way some men carry rifles.
Behind them, Bishop and Wells and Flint and Cade pulled in one after the other, with their wives and their children spilling out into the yard. There were too many kids now to count. But everyone loved getting together like this. We were one big, messy family.
Brook abandoned the butterfly and ran.
I stood up slowly—pregnancy had stopped being graceful around month five—and Suri met me halfway across the porch. She hugged me without crushing my stomach. She was a pro at the angle by now.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Tired.”
“Three weeks.”
“Three weeks.”
