Epilogue
Ryan
If I’d been worried about the ghosts of her lost family haunting her in this house, her childhood home, then I was wrong. Chelsea does nothing but smile, a giddy, in love forever, on the verge of laughter bubbling over at any second kind of smile. She moves through the rooms as if she’s visiting with family, talking to those ghosts, communing with them, feeling them and at peace with them, if not over the loss.
The sadness is still there. It still shreds my heart when I see her tears. But it’s not like her mother’s sadness, despairing and hopeless. I make sure of that. Since I moved in with her, it’s my job to give her hope, which in our case is the same thing as all-consuming, head-over-heels, crazy forever love. Every time I see a real smile on her face it shoots fireworks through me because it means the hope is alive. It means our love is the best healing balm possible. Since the shrinks agree with us, we’ve put them on hiatus.
Knowing her father, mother, and brother are all together now gives her comfort, or so she tells me. I believe her because I feel it when I kiss her, when I hold her, when I lick her and join with her in an enthusiastic attempt to make babies so she won’t be alone, so she’ll feel like she has a family again and it’s not just me and my family, but someone connected to her by blood, DNA, and those kick-ass genes of hers.
Any kid we make is odds-on favorite to be some motherfucking tough-ass genius athlete. Or not. It doesn’t matter a whit to me as long as Chelsea is my baby mama.
But she insists she’s not alone because no one has ever been closer to her, understood her more than I have—except maybe Gramps.
The best thing about living in Chelsea’s childhood home is that it’s next door to mine, and to my Gramps who’s still kicking at the ripe old age of eighty-two. He says he’s out to hit a hundred, needs to make it to one-hundred-point-seven-years old to break his family’s record for longevity. There’s a pool at Mike’s bar and I have a hundred point seven dollars on him to make it.
Today is Chelsea’s twenty-third birthday, January 8th,and despite it being in the thick of the hockey season, tonight I’m throwing her a surprise birthday party, right here at home around the dining room table. The kitchen rehab barely completed in time, she insists on cooking dinner and I don’t know how to stop her. We’re both sick of takeout after two months without a kitchen.
Somehow I arrange for our birthday party guests—my family including Maggs and Levi, and friends including Eli, Pink, and Ham—to quietly wait in the living room without her knowing it. If she wants to stay in and cook, fine. I keep her in the kitchen, don’t let her leave while the crowd assembles without a sound.
“Why are you standing there watching me? Don’t you have anything else to do?”
“No. This is my favorite thing.”
She smiles as she puts the pan of lasagna on the table set for two. It smells good. She turns to me.
“Don’t touch it. It needs to cool for a few minutes.”
“Good. That’ll give us time for your birthday surprise.”
She bellies up to me, her eyes alight. “What do you have for me, big boy?”
“Not that—I mean that’s later.” I hold her in my arms and she kisses me. I figure this is as good a time as any, so I turn and let out a whistle. She laughs and claps her hands over her ears, but I don’t let her out of my arms.
“What did you get me? A dog? A puppy?”
And I don’t miss the excitement in her eyes at the prospect. Fuck. Maybe I messed up. But I can still get her a puppy—for Valentine’s Day. Done.
“No—” I don’t get any further as the family and guests thunder into the kitchen behind Maggs, loud and singingHappy Birthday. Maggs carries the cake lit with twenty-three candles.
I have to hand it to her for getting them all lit so fast. But mostly I keep my eyes on my best girl’s face, watch it melt with joy, try to still my heart when the tears come. Try not to cry myself for all the sadness, all the loss she’s suffered.
She’s a miracle because she’s whole. And it’s my life’s mission to keep her that way.
I present her with a diamond engagement ring for her birthday gift. I do it the old-fashioned way, the way I know her parents would have loved, the way I know Jason would have approved. The way Gramps advised me to do it. On one knee, with a solemn half smirk and a twinkle in my eye thinking about the honeymoon. She cries and kisses me and squeals with disbelief.
When our guests leave and we settle down for the night in bed and she’s alternating her gorgeous eyes between me and the ring, the smile never leaves her face.
“Your cheeks must hurt by now with that grin,” I say.
“Look who’s talking. I never would have predicted you were the moon-eyed, goofy-smile type a few months ago.”
I scoff. “Hell, a few months ago who would have guessed I would voluntarily get engaged?”
She hits me with a throw pillow.
“Voluntarily? Is there such thing as involuntary engagements?”
“Sure. First you have your shotgun engagements. Then you have your drunken haze Las Vegas engagements—”