EPILOGUE: TWO SUMMERS LATER
I’m Getting Married in the Morning [Make that Last Year]
CHERRINGTON DOWNS STATION, VICTORIAN ALPS, AUSTRALIA
Because we want to know whether our hero and heroine are living happily ever after, right?
“Uncle Henry! Aunt Eliza!” Our niece Matilda galloped across the stable yard atop Gypsy, both of their manes fluttering back in the December wind. The sight made my heart sing. I’d had no idea I could love a teenager so much until I met Henry’s niece, who was now grinning as she passed at full speed. “I’ll just take Gypsy for a sprint and then come back. I want to tell you something.”
Her voice faded as she rode away into the hot summer day toward the stream where the cattle were watering for the morning. I was slowly getting used to this December-is-summer thing. Henry was in from the range for an hour, and I was letting the sun warm both me and the baby. Could she really be three months already?
“Matilda’s happier since you came,” Henry said. “She needed an aunt.”
“I needed a niece.”
“You got one, and a daughter in the bargain.” He leaned over my shoulder and gazed at Johanna, still so tiny and sweet and named for his late mother. “I’m glad you taught Matilda to ride. It’s taken her mind off the distractions of being a teenager. Her parents can’t thank you enough. Their cell phone bills have been cut in half.”
“Gypsy took to her like a frog to water, and vice versa.” I probably should have trained Matilda on a different horse from the stable, rather than Henry’s personal favorite, but the two had hit it off so well. “Do you regret losing your horse?”
“How could I when I’ve gained so many other things?” Henry reached over and brushed a stray strand of fair hair from the baby’s forehead.
“Careful. You’ll wake her.”
“I like her when she’s awake. Jojo laughs when her daddy makes faces at her.” He made one now, even though the baby’s eyes weren’t open. Now he was just making me laugh.
“Yes, but then you hand her back to me, and I get to try all manner of methods to convince her to sleep again.”
“You’re a doctor.” A twinkle lit his eye. “It should be no problem.”
“Doctor of linguistics is not the same as sleep doctor, my darling.”
“I’m of the opinion you can do anything, my darling.” He pressed a kiss to my head and then my mouth. I never got tired of that.
He placed an arm ’round my shoulders and pressed a kiss to my temple, and we both leaned back against the trunk of the tree in its dappled shade. I breathed in his scent, and thanked the heavens above for sending me him. It couldn’t be chance that of all the bus stations in all the towns in all the world, he’d walked into mine.
He toyed with a strand of my hair.
“Speaking of your doctorate, have I ever told you how much I loved watching you receive your degree, with those long black robes poking out, our baby attending your hooding ceremony right in your belly?”
“She kicked all through it.” The baby and the graduation had been serendipitously timed together so that my parents could come for both with just one trip—and Polly, too, Jojo’s godmother, although she sort of wished we’d tell Jojo she was the fairy godmother instead. We said no. “My mother claimed she saw a flutter of my graduation robe due to an errant foot.”
“Will they come for Jojo’s first birthday?”
“If not before.”
“Your dad is legend. I talked to him earlier today, and he’s hundred percent on the roll-out the breed nationwide in the States.”
“So you’re a go for next month?”
“All set.” Henry exhaled. “I couldn’t have done it without your dad’s cattle association contacts in America.”
“He had a vested interest in helping you—his daughter’s future was on the line.” And a very wealthy line it was set to become, from what all the business analysts were saying. Henry and my dad were set to turn a multi-million dollar operation into some serious money.
“Let’s not forget my daughter’s future.” Henry leaned in and placed a soft kiss on Johanna’s forehead. “Did I tell you? I’m going to put a swing, right there in this gum tree for her.” He pointed to a sturdy branch that would be perfect.
I pictured pushing Jojo on a swing and remembered pushing Sylvie on the swings when she was little. I heard from her father now and then, and I was set to send Sylvie a Christmas gift, paper dolls. I’d never forget how much I loved her, to the point of thinking I might never love any other child so much as I did Sylvie; but now that I had a child of my own, I realized that love didn’t divide, it multiplied.
Matilda came riding up, both horse and rider breathing heavily. She swung her leg over the saddle and flung herself down next to us, her hands on Gypsy’s reins to steady her.
“I’ll go rub her down in a second, but I wanted you to see this.” Matilda pulled a phone out of her pocket and opened the screen to a familiar-looking page—GossipMonger.com.
I balked.
“Oh, no, Tildie,” Henry said, swiping the phone away. “I thought we’d cured you of your celebrity gossip addiction.” Henry palmed it, acting like he was going to chuck it across the stable yard. “I’m going to have to—”
“No!” She lunged for it, jostling the baby, and rousing her. I settled Jojo quickly again, though. “I promise I’m not wasting time on it anymore; I only get an alert if certain names pop up in the news.”
Henry aimed a skeptical eye at her. “Names like what, exactly?”
“Just look at it, Uncle Henry. Please? It’s someone I think Aunt Eliza knows.”
He relaxed, since he’d only been teasing anyway, and looked at the phone. I peered over his shoulder.
Holy cats. He’d already scrolled past the headline, but there was a picture of Monique-Noelle draped all over a famously profligate Hollywood actor.
“How exactly did you have this name on your alerts, Matilda?” Henry flipped off the phone but kept it at his chest, as if holding it for ransom until she answered.
“My fault,” I said. Maybe unwisely, I’d told and retold Matilda the story of Henry’s and my courtship as many times as she’d asked to hear it—which was a lot, so she would obviously recognize a fluffed-up name like Monique-Noelle. “Sorry. When telling our love story, I should have changed a few of the names, to keep the guilty off Matilda’s radar. Too late.”
“Well, it looks like your boss finally got everything she ever wanted.” Henry now knew the full horrors of Mo-No’s treatment of others, as I’d had a chance to mention them over the past year or so. Whenever we saw someone acting imperious, we’d whisper Mo-No to each other.
“You know what this tells me, Aunt Eliza?” Matilda took her phone back. “Be careful what you want.”
“Good takeaway, sweetie.” And a smart statement to make if she didn’t want Henry to rat her out to her dad for looking at gossip sites.
“Well, see ya.” Matilda pocketed her phone and led Gypsy away to recover from their good run. “Bye, Jojo,” she called over her shoulder as she entered the shadow of the open stable door.
“She’s going to be fine,” Henry said.
“She’s going to be great,” I said.
“Did I tell you? Jojo said da the other day.” He reached for her forehead again, but I was too quick. “Seems she likes me best.”
“She’s not the only one.” I kissed his neck a little, since it was so close to me. “But, bad news. Because of my degree from the University of Melbourne—”
“Locals call it UniMelb.”
“Gesundheit.” I had to needle him back. “Because of my studies, I happen to know, there’s a reason mama is the same word for mother in nearly all languages; daddy, too. Those are the first syllables a baby learns to babble, whether they speak English or Italian or Japanese or Icelandic as they grow up.”
“Or Australian?” he asked archly. He’d indulged my imperious, Mo-No tone for a minute but chided me for it now.
I lifted my chin, angling my face toward his.
“Even Australian,” I whispered, pressing a kiss to my fair Aussie’s waiting lips.