EPILOGUE
TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER
WE LEFT KRISTA’S HOUSE, WAVING furiously, promising my half brother that we’d be back to watch his eighth-grade graduation. If life had taught me anything, it was that people needed one another, and Trevor was my family. I’d make sure he knew he had me even though we lived states away from each other. I made time for him. Called him on unimportant days, because those phone calls meant more than the others. I’d never want him to feel as if it were him and his mom against the world. Not when I had enough love and joy in my heart to fill in the cracks of his own.
“That was nice,” Hudson said as we backed out of the driveway.
“It was,” I replied, feeling lighter than I’d ever felt before. The past year had been a healing one. Hudson and I moved into the back part of the bed and breakfast where we were separated from everyone else, but able to run things. For the first time in my life, I was taking things slow. Enjoying little moments rather than running from them. Hudson worked out of his shed, creating art when he wasn’t working on the house, and I made a little office upstairs that overlooked the lake where I could edit the projects that were emailed to me.
It was more than enough for me. I didn’t need to flee. I didn’t need to start over again and again. If I needed to be on set, then I only chose projects that were close to home.
Home.
Like the white oak out back, I was beginning to plant my roots firmly into the ground.
Mom got engaged to the man she’d been dating, and was knee-deep in bridal magazines as she planned the wedding of her dreams. It was funny listening to her fret over what colors they should use. She insisted on pink and silver, but her fiancé Jerry gagged at the thought.
If he hadn’t realized it yet, he’d soon realize Mom always got what she wanted.
Silas spent half the year in LA, and the other half in Florida. It was good for his restless bones to be able to come and go. The three of us saw more of each other than I’d ever thought we would. We were peas in a pod. Finally settled into the circle we were always meant to be. Not to mention, he started dating someone who I felt was giving him a run for his money. Martha took right to her, dishing out all of Silas’ dirty laundry.
And when they’d go home, Hudson would pull me against him and give me that look. We couldn’t stand not touching each other. It was like we knew we had so much time to make up for. All those years of longing taking form in the shape of our kiss.
The same look he gave me before putting the car into drive.
“We still have a few hours until our plane leaves. Want to go back to the hotel?”
I didn’t know why he thought he had to ask.
AFTER RETURNING HOME, WE FOUND Mom sitting on the floor in our living room, playing with our daughter Ellie.
It was still surreal being a mother, even one year after she took her first breath. I never thought I’d have a life like this, with a husband and a child, and a feeling so big and so full in my heart that tears welled up from time to time.
But when he looked at her… when he held her in his arms late at night, rocking her to sleep, unknowing I was listening on the monitor, I’d hear him whisper to her, “No matter what, I will always be yours. Always be by your side.”
It was those moments when I felt the pulse of this world. When everything I’d ever been through… everything Hudson had ever been through, all came full circle. We built a home from the wreckage of our pasts, and it was stronger than any metal.
Everything that happened… losing Hudson. Finding Silas, it was all meant to be. Our roots ran deeper than we’d ever understand, connecting us together in a perfect trifecta. He was my river, silent and steadfast, and always to be counted on. Silas was my forest, wild and untamed, and always offering an adventure.
And I was their root, my own root, planting my feet happily into the ground.
“So what now?” Hudson asked as he kissed me on the head and sat beside me on the couch.
I pulled the test I’d been saving the last few days, waiting for the right time to tell him, out of my pocket and handed it to him. “Now, we start prepping a new nursery,” I said, smiling like a fool.
He grinned, and I realized his smile was the north star, and I was finally on the right path home.