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We tell them about the babies twenty minutes later, once the relationship noise has settled into easy background chatter, once Margo squeezes my hand under the picnic table in the specific way that means now, if you’re ready.
I am ready.
“There’s something else,” Margo says, and the yard quiets by degrees, sensing the shift in her voice. “Something bigger than the relationship, actually.”
She tells them. Plain, steady, the specific calm of someone who’s said this hard thing enough times now that it costs her less each time — pregnant, twins, due in November, and the whole story compressed into three sentences instead of the hour it took the first time she said it out loud. I watch her do it, this specific composure that took months to build, and I feel a rush of pride so sharp it almost aches.
For half the yard, this isn’t news at all. Sloane, Wren, and June already know — have known for weeks, since the night Margo finally broke and told them. Priya and Kara know too, and Delaney, all three of them pulled in sometime around Nationals when hiding it stopped being possible. So half the yard just goes quiet and warm, watching, letting Margo say it out loud to the people who don’t know yet.
The other half doesn’t see it coming at all.
Cash’s face does something I’ve genuinely never seen it do — full, unguarded shock, the spatula actually slipping out of his hand and clattering onto the patio stones. Wyatt goes very still, processing, his usual calm cracking just slightly at the edges. Beau’s the only one of the three who doesn’t look surprised, and when I glance at him he gives the smallest shrug, the specific expression of a man who’s clearly known for a while and simply chose, again, not to say anything.
“You KNEW?” Cash rounds on him, for the second time in one afternoon. “Beau. Come on.”
“I told you I know things.” Beau’s entirely unbothered. “I’m a good captain.”
“This feels like a pattern with you.”
The yard erupts around them — Sloane pulling Margo into a hug, June crying the way she cries at everything, Wren saying something quiet to Margo I can’t hear over the noise, Priya and Delaney hugging each other with the specific joy of people getting to celebrate something out loud that they’ve been carrying quietly for weeks. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, once the shock wears off enough for him to find his voice again, Cash’s voice cuts through everything else, loud and delighted and completely, characteristically Cash.
“I CALL DIBS ON BEST UNCLE.”
“You’re not even related to them,” Wyatt points out.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m calling it now, before anyone else can. Best uncle. I will fight anyone for this title.” Cash points around the yard, daring anyone to challenge him. “I’m serious. I already have gift ideas. I already have a plan for teaching them hockey before they can walk.”
“They’re not even born yet,” Beau says.
“I like to plan ahead.”
“You didn’t even know about this ten seconds ago,” Wyatt says.
“I’m a fast planner.” Cash sets down the spatula entirely now, abandoning the grill for what he clearly considers a more important conversation. “Margo. Theo. I want it on record that I am available for babysitting, hockey lessons, general uncle duties, whatever you need. I’m serious. I’ve been practicing my dad jokes for years without an outlet.”
“That’s terrifying,” Margo says, laughing through tears.
“It’s a gift, actually. You’ll see.”
The whole yard’s laughing again, warm and loud, and I stand there with Margo’s hand in mine watching every single person who matters to us absorb this enormous piece of news and respond, universally, with nothing but joy. Beau claps my shoulder, quiet, steady, a small private nod that says more than any of Cash’s noise could. Wyatt actually smiles — a real one, rare enough that I clock it specifically. Wren hugs Margo a beat longer than anyone else, something private passing between them that I don’t ask about, tucking it away the same way I tucked away her sitting with Cash after the fight.
Later, once the noise has settled into the specific comfortable hum of a barbecue winding down, I sit on the porch steps with Margo, watching the yard — Cash already narrating his hockey-lesson plan to Wyatt, Beau and Sloane tangled together on a blanket, Wren quiet at the edge of things with a look on her face I still haven’t fully figured out how to read.
“Nothing left to hide,” Margo says, leaning into my shoulder. “How does that feel?”
“Lighter than I expected.” I press a kiss into her hair. “I spent so long thinking secrecy was safety. Turns out it was just weight.”
“We’re going to have a whole life people actually know about now.”
“Yeah.” I look out at the yard — the found family, the babies growing three weeks closer to real every single day, a home with a pool and a courtyard waiting twenty minutes from here, a hopeful father-in-law who taught me what generosity actually looks like without strings attached and understands just how much I love his daughter. “We are.”
Epilogue
Margo
My last morning at the Sailmaker starts before my alarm does.
I lie there for a while before I let myself move, staring at the ceiling of a room I’ve slept in for three years, boxes already stacked along the far wall, my life folded into cardboard and packing tape in a way that feels both entirely too fast and exactly on time. Junior year is over. Somewhere in the last four months, I stopped being the girl who managed everything alone and became someone else entirely, and this room watched every single stage of that happen without me fully noticing until now, lying here on the last morning I’ll ever wake up in it.
