As Iris leads her through the house, showing her the renovations she’s done to the kitchen, the yard, the carriage house—thank god I made the bed yesterday—Patty asks basic questions but offers no judgment.
When the tour is finished, Iris asks, “Do you…want to stay and have breakfast with us? I’m pretty sure Oliver bought way too much food.”
Patty considers this. “Maybe next time I’m in town. I’ll call first. You seem…busy today.”
Back out on the porch, Patty shakes my hand and then gives Iris a very unexpected hug. Over her shoulder, Iris shoots me a shocked look.
I have no idea what’s happening, but it must be some kind of miracle.
After Aunt Patty leaves, Iris and I take our breakfast to the back patio, next to her MiMi’s rose bushes.
“I guess Auntie had a change of heart?” Iris says.
“Maybe Skylar talked some sense into her,” I offer as one theory.
She spreads cream cheese on the bagel and devours it happily. “We may never know.”
Her freshly washed hair shines in the morning sun, and her face is scrubbed clean, makeup-free. The freckles on her nose and along her neck stand out, and she looks comfortable and satisfied.
“Thank you for breakfast. And coffee. And for letting Aunt Patty give you the once-over. And…for all the other stuff.”
She looks like an angel one second, then like a devil the next second, as she reminds me of all the ways we destroyed each other last night.
Iris is beautiful, the most beautiful creature I’ve ever met. Inside and out.
“You’re welcome, Biscuit.”
She shakes her head. “Ridiculous.”
Iris can keep saying that. I hope I hear it a hundred thousand more times, on a hundred thousand more mornings just like this one.
Epilogue
Two yearslater
Iris
We wanted to marry two years exactly after the day we met.
But that would be at the height of the Dogwood Festival, so we scheduled our nuptials the day after the festival ends, after the tourists have gone home and everything has returned to normal, mostly.
The wedding takes place in the backyard of MiMi’s Bed and Breakfast, with Aunt Patty officiating. She’s relinquished her emotional stranglehold on the property. I like to think she sees what I’ve done with the place and that I’ve made MiMi proud, wherever she is. She’s still Aunt Patty and still asks lots of judgmental questions. But at least we’re talking. And she must like Oliver enough to perform our ceremony.
Finn, Oliver’s brother, built an arch for us on the back patio out of fallen logs he cleared out after the big storm that hit last fall. He’s turned out to be a godsend for our little town.
I don’t have any attendants, but Skylar and Maddie have been there through the whole planning process. Of course, Maddie loves to tease me that I didn’t use her matchmaking services to find me a husband, but she adores Oliver anyway.
When Maddie and Ewan renewed their vows on the beach last month, Oliver gifted them with a beautiful handmade bowl.
And speaking of handmade, my now-husband did run into a little bit of luck after backing out of the lease agreement with Pete. Turns out that the national chain juice bar closed, and there was another vacancy in town. Oliver moved right in, and it works perfectly as a gallery. Finn also helped him build a classroom in the back, and the waiting list is months long.
As for Skylar, her store, Raven Books, Music & Sundries, is the first bookstore to last more than a year in our little town, and, as far as anyone can tell, it’s doing brisk business. The place fits in pretty well, with poetry readings once a month, book clubs every weekend, knitting groups, witchy groups, and regular meetups with the tabletop gaming crowd. Finn buying that building from Pete certainly helped reduce her rent from several thousand dollars a month to, well, nothing.
I’m proud to know and love every single person in my little group that we’ve assembled here today for our wedding.
Oliver dances with me under the moonlight, long after everyone has gone home.
“That’s one advantage of having Skylar make a playlist instead of hiring a deejay,” Oliver says, with his arm hooked around my back as we sway together under the flowered arch on my back porch. Our back porch.
