Epilogue
Caitlin
Seven summers later
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
We arrive at the summer cottage the same time we do every year, just after the spring chill has faded from the air, but the sea is still too cold to swim in, while the village of Porec is still relatively tourist free, and the only bustle on the streets is from the fisherman heading out to sea in the early morning light.
I always get up early the first few days of the trip to sit on the porch with a cup of tea and watch the ships drift out toward the horizon, savoring the moments of peace before the chaos of the day begins. It’s something I’ve done since that first summer, when we came here fresh from that miserable year that is a dim memory now, but this is the first time Danny has joined me in my early morning ritual.
My brother, like most twenty-year-olds, isn’t big on getting up before sunrise.
“You’re sure you’re going to be okay?” he asks, tucking his sandy blond hair behind his ears. It’s long enough to tie back, but still tangled from sleep at five-thirty in the morning. “You don’t need me to stay a little longer?”
I smile. “I’m fine. Gabe already has Emmie enrolled in dance lessons three days a week, and Ray has his job at the bookstore to keep him busy. We’ll just have to find a way to keep Sean entertained until his friends from school come down in a few weeks, but everything else is under control.”
Danny’s eyes drop pointedly to my swollen belly. “But what about You Know Who?” he asks, our nickname for the unborn baby.
Gabe and I decided we didn’t want to know the sex until our son or daughter was born, which resulted in my brothers coming up with all kinds of nicknames for the baby including Critter, Loin Fruit Number One, and Creature from the Womb Lagoon. Needless to say, I’m glad “You Know Who” is the name that stuck.
“The baby is fine. We’re both doing great, and Gabe is hovering enough for three fathers,” I say. “Go have a great summer with Sam.”
“Did I hear my name?” Gabe steps out onto the porch, coffee in hand. He’s wearing striped pajama pants, and a battered gray tee shirt, with his hair sticking up in ten different directions, and sleep puffing the edges of his bright blue eyes, but he still takes my breath away.
The man keeps getting better looking—or I keep falling deeper in love with him, one or the other. Either way, just looking at him is still enough to make me feel lit up from the inside out.
“Caitlin said you were cramping her pregnant lady style,” Danny says, grinning that wicked grin I would say he inherited from Gabe if they were related by blood.
“I did not.” I shift over on the porch swing to make room for my husband. He sits, and I swing my legs into his lap, knowing I’ll get a foot rub as soon as he finishes his coffee. “I said you were very…attentive.”
Gabe lifts a skeptical brow. “Well, the baby will be born soon, and then I can hover around her crib, instead. Give you your space.”
I shake my head, lips curving. “You know I don’t want my space.” I lean in for a kiss and Danny groans.
“Could you please give it a rest, you two?” he asks. “Some of us haven’t seen our girlfriends since Christmas. It’s not fair to rub your love in everyone’s face.”
“Don’t be jealous,” Gabe mumbles against my lips as he kisses me again. “She has terrible morning breath.”
I pull back with a laugh and slap his arm, careful not to spill my tea. “I do not, you rat. I brushed my teeth before I came outside.”
Gabe grins as he sets his coffee on the table beside the swing, brings his coffee-cup-warmed hands to my puffy ankles, and begins to rub. “Just trying to ease Danny’s pain, draga.” Out of all of us, Gabe has assimilated to our new country the best. We all speak Croatian now, but Gabe is the only one who uses Croatian pet names.
We probably could have gone back to the states several years ago—Gabe’s parents never did turn over that tape, and no charges were filed against me—but we liked our new home even more than we thought we would.
It felt good to start over in a place with history, and a weight to it neither of us had ever felt in South Carolina. We all ditched our fake personas a few months into our adventure—a relief for everyone, especially the kids, who had a hard time getting used to their new names—and Gabe and I applied for citizenship. We have decided to stay in Croatia indefinitely, though Emmie and the boys are still citizens of the United States.
“So have you gotten hold of Sam?” Gabe asks, his nimble fingers working their magic on my aching feet. I never dreamed being eight months pregnant would be so hard on my ankles, but they hurt even worse than the small of my back.
Danny shakes his head, and the smile fades from his face. “No. But I’m sure she’s just busy with finals and other college girl stuff.”
“I’m sure she’ll call soon,” I say, hoping I’m right.
Miraculously, Danny and Sam have stayed together for seven years, maintaining their relationship long distance during the school year, and meeting up on Maui every summer, when Sam goes to visit her mother, and Danny goes to stay with Sherry and Bjorn. Their relationship has lasted longer than a lot of adult marriages. It would be sad to see them break up now, when Sam is halfway through college, and Danny is making enough money as a videographer and extreme sports tour guide to set them up with a nice little nest egg by the time Sam graduates.
Danny shrugs. “Yeah. I’m sure she will.” But he doesn’t sound sure, and I can tell his light, teasing mood is gone for the day. “I’ll go finish packing, then. If you’re sure you don’t need me hanging around.”
“We’ll get by, even though we’ll miss you,” I say, smiling at this tall, muscular man my little brother has somehow become. “Wake Emmie up when you go in, okay? She wants to come with you and Gabe to the airport to say goodbye, and you know it takes an hour for her to get her butt out of bed.”
Danny laughs. “She’s such a slug. I never got to sleep late in the summer when I was eleven. You had me up making breakfast for everyone by seven every day.”
“Poor thing,” I say with mock pity. “But look what a good man you grew up to be, in spite of your summers filled with pain and suffering.”
“Right, right,” Danny says, chuckling as he disappears into the house.
Gabe and I are quiet for a long time after, sitting in companionable silence as the air grows lighter and the ocean sparkles in the first rays of sunlight creeping over the mountains. We watch the water until the fishermen’s boats are specks on the horizon and the only movement is the gentle roll of the waves toward shore.
“What are you thinking?” Gabe finally asks, hands still busy on my grateful feet.
“I don’t know. I’m a little sad, I guess, knowing Danny isn’t coming back from Maui this time. It feels like his life with us is really over.”
“It’s not over,” Gabe says. “He knows he’ll always have a home here.”
I nod, fighting a wave of emotion, refusing to cry before eight o’clock in the morning, no matter how many pregnancy hormones are coursing through my body. “I know. And he’s a pain in my ass. I should be glad he’s finally leaving the nest, right?”
Gabe presses a kiss to my forehead. “I love your good heart.”
“I love your good fingers,” I say, wiggling my toes. “Do I still get foot rubs after You Know Who is born?”
“Of course.” He leans in for another kiss. “I mean, I plan on getting you knocked up again as soon as possible, so…”
“No way.” I smile so hard our teeth bump together through our lips. “I want at least two years between babies. No Irish twins for this Irish girl.”
“All right,” he says, nipping at my bottom lip. “As long as you promise I’ll get lots of practice time in the bedroom. I don’t want to forget how to make babies while we’re waiting for number two.”
I sigh into his mouth, my skin tingling at the thought. “Sounds like a plan.”
We kiss for a long, sweet moment and pull away with twin hums of contentment, and just like that, I’m not worried about Danny leaving any more. My brother will be okay. He has a family who loves him, and even if things with Sam don’t work out, he’ll always have us. He’ll always have a home with me, Gabe, Ray, Sean, Emmie, and You Know Who.
A home full of laughter and love, where it’s okay to make mistakes, and color outside the lines.
Speaking of…
“So how did the job go last night?” I ask Gabe, licking his coffee taste from my lips.
“Perfect,” he says. “In and out in ten minutes and, thanks to a virus unleashed on his computer, Mr. Anic will have a much more difficult time stealing tourists’ credit card information this season.”
I smile, but I can’t help feeling a little jealous. “I want to be busy. I don’t like sitting on the sidelines.”
“You’ve been helping set up a daycare, taking Emmie to a million lessons, and cooking a baby. You’ve hardly been sitting on the sidelines.”
I scrunch my nose and shrug. “Yeah, but you know what I mean.”
Gabe and I are more selective about our targets, and more cautious than we used to be, but tipping the scales of justice back in favor of the underdog is still one of our favorite hobbies.
Gabe squeezes my foot. “It won’t be much longer now. And just think how much babysitting Sean is going to owe us in exchange for letting his obnoxious friends stay here for an entire month.”
I laugh. “All sixteen year olds are obnoxious. They can’t help it. But you’re right. He’s going to have to pay for our pain and suffering. And babysitting will be good for him. I think helping take care of Emmie when she was little made Danny and Ray more empathetic people.”
“And less inclined to accidentally get a girl pregnant,” Gabe says, making me laugh.
“True,” I say. “Changing a few, poop-up-the-back diapers will do that.”
Gabe’s brows lift. “Is that a real thing?”
I grin, launching into an in-depth description of the time I had to cut Emmie’s onesie off of her body to keep from getting the poo that had squirted up to her neck into her hair, laughing as Gabe plays up trying not to gag.
I laugh so loud that I wake the baby, who gives me a strong kick.
“Ow,” I say, still laughing as I smooth my tee-shirt over my belly, glancing down in time to see something small, adorable, and bony ripple the skin of my stomach.
“There’s the little alien.” Gabe lays his hand on my stomach, an awed expression crossing his face as You Know Who rewards him with another kick. “That…never gets old.”
I reach up, patting his scruffy cheek. “Neither do you.”
And then he kisses me, and it is better than our first kiss, or our hundredth, or our thousandth, because every day we spend together proves that some things just keep getting better.
Like wine, and cheese, and a love like the one I was lucky enough to find one hot Carolina summer.
The End
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