It’s more than enough.
Epilogue
Bianca
A Few Months Later
The soup is not going well.
It’s supposed to be potato leek, which Riley swore was impossible to mess up, but I’ve added too much broth and not enough salt, and the leeks are doing something I don’t think leeks are supposed to do. I stir it anyway. The cabin smells of butter and garlic and wood-smoke, and Chief is lying on his bed by the stove with his chin on his paws, watching me with the calm resignation of a dog who has seen me cook before and has adjusted his expectations.
Rhett is at the table. Whittling. He finished the first piece weeks ago and never showed me what it was, just set it on the shelf above the woodstove without comment. I think it’s a bird. He hasn’t confirmed or denied.
This is a Tuesday in January. Nothing remarkable about it. Snow on the ground outside, the generator humming, the percolator on the counter with the last inch of coffee going cold.I’m in one of his flannels and a pair of wool socks, and my hair is doing something architecturally ambitious that I’ve stopped trying to control. We had leftover chili for lunch. Dr. Theo called to complain about a patient who won’t take his blood pressure medication. Nora dropped off cinnamon rolls this morning and stayed for forty-five minutes, laughing and carrying on about a guest’s wedding and about a bird she saw from the porch.
A normal day. Our normal day.
I’m stirring the soup and thinking about whether I can save it with more salt when Rhett gets up from the table. I hear the chair push back, the uneven rhythm of his steps behind me. He’s had a good leg week. The cold helps sometimes. He says it numbs the nerve enough to take the edge off, which is the most Rhett way of describing a positive that I’ve ever heard.
He reaches past me and sets something on the counter beside the stove.
I look down.
It’s a ring. Small, simple, the gold worn thin in places from decades of wear. An oval stone the color of deep water, set low—a ring that was made to be worn every day. While working. While cooking. While living a life that didn’t pause for precious things.
My hand stills on the spoon.
“It was my grandmother’s,” he says. Behind me. Close. His voice is low and steady. “My grandfather gave it to her the year they built this cabin. She wore it every day until she died.”
I’m staring at the ring. The soup is bubbling. Chief has lifted his head.
“Rhett.”
“I’m not good at this,” he says. “I don’t have a speech. I don’t have a plan. I just know that you’re standing in my kitchen making soup that’s probably not going to be great—”
“Hey.”
“—and I don’t want you to leave. I never want you to leave. I want this. Every day. The soup and the dog and the quiet and you.”
I turn around.
He’s standing there in his jeans and thermal and bare feet on the cabin floor, and he’s not on one knee because of course he’s not. His leg wouldn’t make it, and he wouldn’t perform even if it could. He’s just standing in front of me, close enough to touch, with everything on his face and nothing held back.
I don’t cry.
I laugh.
It comes out bright and sudden, and it surprises us both. Because of course. Of course, he’d propose on a Tuesday while I’m making soup. Of course, there’s no ring box, no dinner reservation, no rehearsed speech. Of course, it’s just him and me and Chief and a kitchen that smells like garlic, because that’s who we are. Two people who fell in love in silence and coffee and firewood and porch light, and this is exactly how it should happen.
His mouth twitches. “Is that a yes, or are you laughing at my proposal?”
“Yes.”
I say it with my soul. Not the way I used to say things—measured, careful, braced for someone to tell me it was too much. I say it the way I mean it.
“Yes.”
Rhett smiles.
