should have been wood. Edward would fix all of these things.
I sat there for a heartbeat but rose in the next and went to the front door. The instant I opened it, I felt relief. Breathing in the cool air, listening to the night sounds, I reached out. Here were my woods, the distant gurgle of my river, my creatures, my Devon.
But my alone space wasn’t out there, either. It struck me that being alone just didn’t do it for me anymore. My happiness involved others.
Short term, that meant Grace, Chris, and Michael Shanahan. Long term, it meant Lily. I wanted to be happy, really I did and, yes, I could find happiness here, in this house, with Edward. Whether I had the right to it was something else—but even that wasn’t the immediate problem.
Confused, I remained at the open door looking out at the street. There were no lights, no cars, no human sounds other than Edward’s footsteps when he approached.
“Do you have neighbors?” I asked.
He came up beside me, a tall, warm presence with his arm brushing mine. “One,” he said. “The house is farther down the street. It’s a biggie, impressive since they’re retirees. This is their summer home. They also have places in Palm Springs and Vail.”
“Must be loaded,” I said and stood straighter. This was the last piece, I realized, the only other qualm I had. Trying to put it into coherent thought, I looked back at the living room, the stairs, and the library. By the time he was done, Edward’s house would be as impressive as anyone’s in the town.
It was light-years removed from my tiny cabin, my modest life, even my pickup truck. I had chosen this lifestyle for a reason. The last one, fully loaded, had been a disaster.
I looked up at him. His face was shadowed. With the lights flanking the front door either non-functioning or simply not on, the glow of the moon on the edges of clouds had too big a job. But I could see he was looking at me. So I said, “We had a three-car garage once before. Is that a bad omen?”
He didn’t frown or flinch, didn’t seem to spend a single second weighing the matter, but said with utter calm, “Absolutely not. Our lives, our minds, our dreams are different now. They have nothing to do with the way we were. They aren’t even about the way we are now. They’re about the way we want to be.”
There it was again, the issue of hope. That was what my mother’s love gave me. It was what Liam’s arrival had brought. It was what my friendships here in Devon added.
With that realization, the final piece very softly clicked into place. I still had issues with me. But other people did not. They saw me as I was now, even as I might be in the future, not as I was back then. At some point, I had to hear what they were saying.
Only when I was silent did Edward show the slightest doubt, but it was more about wanting my agreement. No dictator, my Edward, no philosopher spouting lofty sayings. We might have failed to communicate after Lily died, but that wasn’t the way we wanted to be.
“Aren’t they?” he asked—our lives, minds, and dreams about the way we wanted to be.
Turning into him, I slipped my arms around his waist. I inhaled deeply, and, when his arms closed around me, exhaled into a smile. “They are.”
EPILOGUE
Six months later, we were still in Devon, still together, still in love. But love was like wrinkles on the faces I made up. They could be frozen, peeled, and pulled tight. They could be moisturized and concealed. They could be minimized by drawing attention to other features, say, cheekbones or eyes. But they were the price of living, and they never fully disappeared. The older the face was, the more we had to work at keeping it smooth.
Same with love. Edward and I loved deeply. After losing track of that once, though, we were leery of kinks. And they did come. Take the third of October, the anniversary of Lily’s death. Each year since moving to Vermont, I had driven down to Massachusetts to be with her on that day. This year Edward came with me, and much as we tried to be upbeat, the old litany of what-ifs was a shadow that followed us the whole way. We were silent in the car going, silent at