Her jaw goes tight. “How far?”
“Ten miles?”
She slumps. “More walking.”
“There’s an ATV?” Andrew tries. I have no idea where he got an ATV from. Maybe he’s made an alliance with this farm and doesn’thave to pay Howard’s land tax. Then he looks over at me. “But I do think we should walk. We have some stuff I’ve got to bring you up to speed on. Newt, wanna go for walkies?”
But Newt turns away from him and hops up onto the couch in the living room.
Andrew shakes his head. “I thought we had something, Newt.”
“We do have to talk,” I say. Most of it is going to be me apologizing for not letting anyone in, and for not listening to him about going to Fort Caroline. But I want to tell him what happened there, and of course I have to tell him about Henri. My tone seems to be making Andrew anxious, so I try something else to help him understand. “But I do want to see the Kid, Jamar, and Taylor. I missed them a lot.”
Andrew seems to relax, and he puts his hands to my cheeks, smiling again. And that’s how I know he understands what I’m telling him. That he was right. These people are our family.
“They missed you, too.”
“Save all this for the walk,” Niki says, without hiding her annoyance.
After coaxing Newt off the couch, Andrew leads us around back to the new pathway. Niki starts marching down the dirt road and Andrew takes my hand, linking my fingers with his. Then he kisses me on the cheek.
“Welcome home.”
“It’s good to be back.”
The next night is our first night in the house alone together—a little over a year since we left it. I make us dinner and after we eat, we sit on the back deck watching the fireflies by the low light of a kerosenelantern. Newt snores under the table, lying against Andrew’s leg. I take the faded green raffle ticket out of my pocket and put it on the table in front of him.
He grins and takes it, putting it into his own pocket. “Okay. Which movie?”
“Not a movie,” I say. I go inside and grab the last book Niki and I found on our journey to the cabin.A Second Chance at Forever.
I hand it to him, but he shakes his head. “No, this is her masterpiece—seriously, it’s amazing. I won’t paraphrase a word of it.” He turns up the lantern a bit and adjusts his chair. Beneath him, Newt grumbles, then gets up and lies down by the stairs.
Andrew motions for me to sit down and he props his legs up on mine while tilting the book into the lantern light. He begins to read.
Epilogue
APOLLO’S HOOVES CLOP SLOWLY ALONG THE DIRTroad, while somewhere in the woods I hear the snap of twigs as Luna sniffs and hunts. I know she’ll bark before she goes running off, so I let her explore. She always seems to get more antsy around this part of the journey.
It takes five more minutes before I reach the clearing of Andrew and Jamie’s house—which has gotten much wider since the first time I was here about nine years ago.
I let out a sharp whistle. “Luna! Here!”
The black-and-white mutt comes bounding out of the trees, giving Apollo a wide berth because she knows he can get pissy when she follows too close at his legs.
The back door of the cabin opens, and Luna’s butt begins to shake like a counterbalance to her swishing tail. She lets out little whines of excitement, waiting for her command word.
“LUNA!”
And there it is. She bolts across the yard, then clambers up the steps to the deck and jumps onto Andrew, trying to lick his face. Iclimb down from Apollo, leading him over to the well, where I tie him up and bring up the bucket of water for him to drink.
When I get back to the deck, Luna has gone belly-up and stares at me, tongue lolling to the side of her open mouth as Andrew gives her belly scritches.
“One day, she’s just going to stay here,” I say. “Leave me forever for a life in the woods.”
“That’s because I love her so much and everyone at Bittersharp just enjoys the good job she does.”
I scrunch up my face. “Um, would we really say she does a good job?”
