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“Good, because that’s the moment I realized I wanted to spend the rest of my life figuring you out. Why the hell do you think I keep talking about our kids? To me, they’re a foregone conclusion because I can already see them—a passel of terrifyingly brilliant geniuses ready to take on the world. You know by now how important it is to guide that kind of genius so that it’s used for the greater good, and that’s what we’re going to do. We’ll teach them to be like their mother, because she tries to make the lives of the people around her better.”
The way he put it made me want to laugh, but instead I found myself shaking my head. “How can you talk about kids when you saw what kind of freakshow upbringing I had? What kind of mother would I be?”
“Eden, look at me. Better yet, look at yourself.” He backed up a couple inches to turn the rearview mirror in my direction. “What do you see?”
Instead of looking at my reflection, I looked at his. “You should know that in my sophomore year I wrote an award-winning essay on the power of persuasion when it came to morale-boosting exercises—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, you’re too smart to fall for that kind of bullshit. Just tell me what you see already.”
I sighed to let him know I was doing this on sufferance, then looked at myself. I almost wished I hadn’t. That foul-smelling water tank really did a number on me, from flattening the right side of my hair to discoloring my already-bloodstained blouse.
“I see a woman who looks as bad as she smells.”
“I see the most beautiful, gifted, strong, terrifying, dangerous woman I know, or will ever know, because they broke the mold when they made you, Eden Steadfast. There is no one else like you in the world, and believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve checked.”
“You’ve checked?” An absurd rush to cry hit me, tingling my nose and making my huff of laughter sound like a sob. “All over the world? Really?”
“Damn straight. I’ve been looking everywhere for you—from coast to coast on this continent, all over Europe and all across the Middle East. But you, the most perfect woman for me, weren’t in any of those places. No, the woman who’s perfect for me was right here in my old hometown. She’s sitting next to me right now, trying not to cry because I’m telling her that I love her with everything in me, and there’s no way she can escape that even if she wanted to, because I’m done looking. I found my perfect in you, genius, just as I hope you’ve found your perfect in me.”
“I have.” Happiness surged, the purest I’d ever felt, and I leaned in to kiss him once more. Love. Helovedme. He said it, and suddenly I could feel it in his every touch, see it in the eyes that caressed over me like I was something precious. This man loved me, challenged me, made me laugh and completed me in ways I would probably still be discovering when we were ninety.
If Luke was what I deserved after spending a lifetime in hell with my father, then maybe, just maybe, karma wasn’t such a bitch after all.
Epilogue
One month later
“This is a mistake.”
“So you’ve said for the past three hundred miles.”
From the passenger seat, I gave Luke my strongest side-eye. “We should be spending our honeymoon on a beach in Saint-Tropez instead of driving to the most hideous place on earth, also known as Gobbler Gulch, Kentucky.”
“Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have booked our flight out of Louisville. Oops. My bad. I promise, we’ll be winging our way to France right after we make a quick little trip to Miss Ramona’s.”
Oops, my ass. “You can’t just drop in on people, monster. It’s rude.”
“Don’t worry, she knows we’re coming. Apparently we need to be prepared for a formal tea to celebrate our nuptials. You’re up for that, right?”
I sighed, resigning myself to my fate because this was obviously something he felt I had to do. Once Luke got something in his head—especially when it came to taking care of my wellbeing—I’d learned it was almost impossible to talk him out of it. “If I weren’t up for this whole silly visiting-Grandma business, I would have told you to turn the car around three hundred miles back. Oh, Lord,” I muttered, seeing the ridiculous fifty-foot sign of a cartoon turkey with one wing up in a stupid wave, welcoming travelers to Gobbler Gulch. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“The only good thing about Gobbler Gulch is seeing it in a rearview mirror.”
“Then you have something to look forward to.”
Ugh. “Oh look, there’s the town square where Klaus von Krummacher erected a statue of himself so he could make everyone celebrate his existence.” Slowly we rolled past a seedy-looking patch of earth that had a few trees shedding the last of their leaves. In the center of the square was the statue, and suddenly I grinned. “Either it’s got heavy frost on it, or it’s covered in bird poop.”
“It’s almost fifty degrees out, so it’s not frost.” Sharing my amusement, Luke turned onto the road that headed toward the highest hill in Gobbler Gulch, where every townsperson could see the arrogant Georgian mansion sitting on its crest.
The von Krummacher estate.
Clearly, the visual statement of being above mere mortals had been vitally important to my ancestors.
Yuck.
“Gotta say,” Luke said, turning the heat down as we approached the house, “it’s hard to believe that of all the von Krummachers who carved out civilization in this corner of the world, only you and your grandmother are left.”
