Word Count: 1315
Last Revised: 8/29/08

Epilogue

“I swear to god, I’d better not hear the birthday song again. I’ve already heard it five times today,” Aelissm grumbled as she poked her nose over June’s shoulder. They were standing in the kitchen of her grandparents’ cabin, icing her birthday cake. She lifted her gaze to the window above the counter to see Luke and Pat trudging down the hill from her cabin and smiled. “I suppose I should be grateful. I did get the snow I asked for, although I don’t recall wishing for two feet!”

“Your birthday is the day before Halloween, Aeli. We always get our first big snowstorm around Halloween,” June replied. “See, I usually get the first snow on my birthday. But you never hear me complain about it.”

“Because the first snow is usually only a dusting!”

“Be quiet and quit complaining or I won’t let you help finish icing your cake.”

Obediently, she took a step back and smiled demurely at her best friend. The last thing she wanted to do right now was sit down while June and her grandparents got everything together for her birthday dinner. She had to do something or the nerves would overtake her. It may have been her birthday, but she had a little surprise for her husband. Her lips lifted higher when she again looked out the window. They’d been married for just over a month now and her appreciation for him had only grown in that time. Loving him, unlike what she’d once feared, was not a mistake. Marrying him after so short a courtship hadn’t been a mistake, either.

Oh, and what a beautiful ceremony it had been, too. As he’d wanted, they’d been married beneath a grove of shivering gold aspen. The grove they’d chosen had had some people wondering at their sanity and others shaking their head in amusement. Most of their guests had arrived on four-wheelers. She and Pat had, too. June had taken pictures of the little turn around in the road leading to the sheep field and the memory of it, packed with dirt bikes and four-wheelers, still made her giggle. Everyone had had to walk a quarter mile to get to the grove at the top of the last hill before the road dropped in to the sheep field, but not one of them had complained about that. By a miracle, her gorgeous, full-skirted, white wedding gown had made it there with out a trace of dirt.

She glanced at the new photo on the wall behind her. Pat had been drop-dead gorgeous in his midnight blue tux. She hadn’t looked too bad either. The strapless bodice had shown off her neck and shoulders marvelously. June had taken that photo, too, of the wedding kiss. The smile on their faces hadn’t faded.

“It was a beautiful wedding, Aeli,” June remarked. “And it suited you both.”

“Not every little girl’s fantasy, but I liked it.”

Just then, her grandparents came in. Both their coats were dusted with snowflakes. Her grandfather had an armload of logs for the fire and her grandmother had a sack of groceries and the mail.

“I thought I’d bring it up,” Marge said. She handed a couple of envelopes to June and a larger stack to Aelissm. “I can finish up the cake if you girls wouldn’t mind helping your grandfather with the wood.”

“Sure thing, Grandma,” June said.

She scooted out the front door just as Pat and Luke arrived with the board games Aelissm had sent them up to fetch. She greeted them both with a smile, though the one she gave her husband was considerably hotter. Holding up the mail, she asked, “Want to help me go through this in a minute? Looks like it’s mostly cards and congratulations.”

“Sure, but didn’t I just hear Grandma ask you and June to help with the wood?” he asked.

“That’s why I said, ‘in a minute’. You and Luke can help, too. Five people will make it quick and easy.”

They each brought in a load and stacked it beside the stove in the corner of the living room. Aelissm paused to admire her gandparents’ cabin. She’d always loved the open layout. The living room and dining room made up the front half with the kitchen attached to the dining room. Only the bedroom in the back corner, the little pantry and the bathroom were closed off. Like her cabin, it was efficient to heat, even with the big front windows that looked out over the clearing all the way to the mountains south of the mouth of the Northstar Valley. Aeli narrowed her eyes. The clearing wouldn’t be clear much longer. It was already carpeted with sapling lodgepole pines ranging from two to three feet tall.

“You know, I’m a little surprised that I’m not sick of being happy all the time,” she remarked. “It’s not like me at all.”

“Hush up and help me open all this,” Pat said.

She joined him at the dining room table. They made quick work of the pile. There were a couple of bills and a lot of cards offering congratulations, gift cards and money. The last envelope Pat handed to her to open. When she saw the name and return address, she shook her head and smiled. Six months ago, seeing Adam’s handwriting had made her cower. Now, she looked forward to hearing from him. She took the letter opener from Pat cut the envelope open.

“It’s an invitation,” she said, opening the card. “Adam and Amber are getting married in the first week of June, down in Yellowstone.”

Frowning, she counted on her fingers. November, December, January… June. Eight months. “I’m gonna be huge,” she muttered.

“What did you say?” Pat asked.

She looked up, blanching. He watched her with a frown of confusion. “Oh, dear. This isn’t how I was planning to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Well, you remember that night on our honeymoon… we, uh, got a little rambunctious and something broke?”

“You’re pregnant,” he said.

She nodded shyly, acutely aware of the five pairs of eyes on her. “According to the little stick I peed on this morning.”

“But you just went off the pill before the wedding.” Pat sat back in the chair, resting his hands on his thighs. “Wow. We’d talked about not waiting too long to have kids, what with me being so old, but…. Wow.”

“Hey, twenty-nine, isn’t old, Mr. O’Neil,” Aeli remarked. “And I know we were thinking of starting our family in a year or two, but apparently Mother Nature had other ideas.”

“Well, seems to me that starting a family around here doesn’t follow tradition any more than anything else does,” he replied, glancing at June and Luke.

Aelissm laughed. “I really had planned to tell you differently. And it’s still really early. Anything could happen.”

He leaned across the table, took her by the chin and kissed her. “I sincerely hope not. Grandma, can we have some glasses of juice for a toast, please?”

When the glasses had been distributed, Pat raised his, grinning. The only time she’d seen that exact smile had been on their wedding.

“June, get a picture of him, will you?” Aeli requested. “He’s smiling like an idiot again and I want proof.”

Everyone chuckled. June obliged and Pat patiently waited for them to stop laughing.

“Here’s to my beautiful wife,” he began. “Mrs. Aelissm O’Neil, the woman who showed me life wasn’t over. And the woman who’s currently in the process of making me a father, something I thought, not too long ago, would never happen for me.”

They all drank to that and Aelissm felt her face warm.

“Here’s to my husband, who taught me what real love is.” They drank to Pat, to, before she added, “And to breaking traditions. Because this family seems fond of it.”