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We can’t live the next twenty-seven years of our lives the way we’ve lived the past twenty-seven of them.
“It’s going to be weird,” she says, “not coming home to you and your weird take-out cravings or listening to you ramble on about artists or having someone to vent about my day to.”
“It’s going to be good for you, this change,” I say. The apartment has been eerily quiet the past week and a half as Margaux avoided me like the plague, and now that we’re in a better place, I’m realizing just how much I’m going to miss her.
This change is going to be good for both of us, I know it.
And who knows, maybe it’ll even bring us closer.
“Do you need help?” I point to the totes.
“Ethan’s coming by in a little bit with one of his friends,” she says. “He rented a truck, and they’re going to load up my bedroom furniture.”
“Wow,” I say.
“What?”
“With Ethan’s mom being so generous . . . I just figured she’d shell out for movers or something,” I say before lifting an apologetic palm. “That’s what I get for being presumptive.”
“She’s generous all right,” Margaux says. “But Ethan’s stubbornly independent. He likes to take charge and do everything himself.”
“Well, well, well.” I arch a brow. “That’s going to be an interesting little dynamic for you.”
She chuckles. “To say the least.”
“That and your children are going to be a couple of control freaks,” I say. “You realize that, don’t you? It’s in their DNA.”
Margaux tosses her head back, laughing. “I don’t even want to think about that. I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that I’m going to be a mom. It still doesn’t feel real.”
She rubs her palm against her belly.
“That sweater is clinging to your stomach within an inch of its life. It’s practically see through,” I say. “Let me know when you want to go maternity-clothes shopping . . .”
My sister rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I guess I should do that soon, huh.”
Her phone vibrates on the table, a text filling her screen.
“They’re here,” she says, effectively putting a period on the end of this conversation.
Rising from our chairs, we hug.
I breathe in her Chanel perfume and the faint scent of hair spray and fabric softener, and she buries her face into my shoulder.
“I’m going to miss you,” she says.
“You act like we’re not going to be living in the same city anymore.”
Ethan buzzes below, and Margaux exhales.
“I should let him in,” she says.
“Yeah. You should.” Everything’s happening so fast, but I keep a brave face, knowing this is for the best. I imagine I’ll shed some tears when she’s gone, when her room is an empty echo chamber of Manhattan-size-bedroom proportions.
But just as Rupert once said, Everything always works out. It always, always does. Even when we don’t believe that it can. It just does. Life is funny that way.
EPILOGUE
ROMAN
Three Years Later . . .
“Dad, I’m hungry.” Marabel taps my shoulder. “You said we could get something after we got through security.”
JFK Airport is crammed full of Thanksgiving travelers, a chaotic sea of unfamiliar faces, coffee, and luggage. Overhead speakers play gate changes and announcements every other minute, but it’s so loud in here they all sound like garbled word salads. Thank goodness for texts, or we wouldn’t have learned that our flight was delayed forty-five minutes. Nothing we can do about it, but at least it’ll give us a little time to eat and relax before we cram onto an economy-size jet en route to Cincinnati.
“I’ll take her,” my wife says. She adjusts baby Eames on her hip. “Adeline, you want to come with us?”
Adeline glances up from some Disney show on her iPad. “Yeah, I’m starving. You guys rushed us out the door this morning, so I didn’t get to eat.”
Sloane tilts her head, giving her a stern but knowing look.
“Next time wake up when your alarm goes off,” I tell her.
“You want to take the big guy?” Sloane hands Eames to me, along with his diaper bag. “You hungry? Want me to grab you something?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Just surprise me. You know what I like.”
Sloane smiles. “Of course.”
I watch them walk off, hand in hand—three-fifths of the Bellisario family. Now it’s just the two of us guys—a rare occurrence these days. It’s crazy to think of how much things have changed in the three years since Sloane came into my life.
Sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago; other times it feels like I blinked and everything happened in an instant. From dating, to having Sloane meet the girls, to eventually moving Sloane in with us, then proposing to Sloane, marrying her by the sea in Marseille—with the girls and my mother by our side. Then came baby Eames—his name being a nod to Emma, who was clearly the architect behind the scenes of all this. I’m convinced none of this would have happened if it weren’t for her “signs.”
