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Epilogue
DELILAH
“Shouldn’t we cut a ribbon or something?” I asked, watching the last truck roll away. It reached the end of the driveway and turned westbound, disappearing from view beyond the gates. “I mean, this is a pretty monumental moment!”
I turned back to where Liam held Jace in his arms, and Duncan held Courtney. Julius sat behind them in the tall, cool grass, which by the end of the summer looked lusher and greener than ever before.
“We could cut something if you like,” Liam shrugged. “Whaddya got?”
Behind them, the mansion wasdone. Not just as in “still a few things to button up” done, either. More like the way an expensive bottle of champagne gets smashed to smithereens over the ass end of a freshly-launched ship.
“Got any expensive bottles of champagne?” I asked smartly.
“Probably not,” said Julius. “Unless Evan sends some of those next.”
Evan was Evan Andliet. We were on a first name basis with the tycoon now, and with good reason. The trucks had started coming the very next day, right after he and his fleet of black sedans had pulled out of Southold. And they hadn’t stopped since.
“He put a whole wine cellar down there,” said Duncan. “Might as well fill it for us, too.”
“The wine cellar was already there,” said Julius. “Remember? It was a bunch of termite-infested wood-pulp and broken glass when we first moved in.”
Truck after truck they came: at first the designers, planners, and architects. They were followed by project managers and general contractors, who negotiated entire crews that somehow worked simultaneously on the mansion like it was a great, beautiful symphony.
All on Evan Andliet’s dime.
They gutted the place where it needed to be gutted, and preserved the history wherever it could be saved. They ran new electric, new plumbing, new HVAC. They polished the floors and painted the ceilings and put in all new fixtures and finishes, while the guys worked on expanding their Shop and the nanny and I took care of Jace and Courtney, who seemed fascinated by the whole thing.
Because oh yes, we had a nanny now. And that’s because going back to medical school at Stony Brook was a full-time gig.
“Should we ask for advice then?” asked Liam. “I mean, someone like Evan Andliet probably knows a thing or two about stocking a wine cellar.”
“The moment you make that call a truck will show up the very next morning,” Duncan advised. “You know that, right?”
“Oh I know,” Liam smiled.
“He’ll have the whole basement stocked so fast it’ll make all our heads spin.”
It was mind-boggling, just thinking about the sheer amount of work that had gone into building this place up over the winter. And when the snows melted and spring came? All new landscaping crews began clearing the grounds. They mended fences, trimmed hedges, restored trees. They fixed the cracked paths we didn’t even know existed because they were buried by so much overgrowth, and got the fountains running again. They even planted all new flowers to make the eight-acre estate as beautiful on the outside again as it was on the inside.
And we all fell in love with it, the children especially.
“Thefinaltruck, leaving the property,” I sighed wistfully. “The last project, totally completed.”
“Ah, don’t sweat it,” Liam grinned. “There’ll always be another project.”
Jace suddenly reached out for me, calling me by name. I hugged him tightly before planting three kisses on each cheek, as was our custom.
“That reminds me,” said Liam. “We uh, have something to talk to you about.”
I set Jace down, so he could run around in the grass. Immediately Courtney wanted the same thing, wriggling her way out of Duncan’s arms.
“Go on then,” I told them fearlessly. “Shoot.”
“Well you know how I’m Daddy Duncan,” Duncan said wryly.
“And a finer name you’ll never have,” Liam snickered.
Duncan rolled his eyes and ignored him. “And he’s Daddy Julius, and that giggling idiot is Daddy Liam.”
