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EPILOGUE

JEFFERSON STONE WENT and stood at the window for a moment. The moody waters of the main body of the lake were swathed in the chill gray cloud of winter, but the water at the edges of the sheltered bays was freezing up nicely.

The wind howled under the eaves of the house and tossed pebbles of slanting snow against the window. Here, inside, the contrast was sharp and delicious. The house was warm and cozy. He could smell pumpkin pie cooking. December would not be everyone’s favorite time to be on the lake, but it was his.

Had December always been his favorite month, with its mercurial weather changes, and with skating on the lake and Christmas right around the corner? Probably it had not been. Once, he had wandered away, like a man lost, from the magic of all those things.

He and Angie had married on Christmas Day. He had offered her the big spring wedding, knowing that dream had been yanked from her once without warning.

But Angie had said no, that wasn’t her dream anymore. She said a big wedding was about a day, but loving each other was about a lifetime. And she had been so impatient! She was not about to wait until spring.

So, instead of a church and a dinner, instead of all those traditions she had once longed for, they had done as his grandmother had once done, and sent out a blanket invitation to spend Christmas with them. It had been like the days of old, the house filled to overflowing with joy and love. The wedding had been a surprise for most of their guests. A few, like Maggie, had been in on the secret.

So, after dinner, with only a few in the know, they had gone outside and lit a bonfire against the gathering darkness. Jefferson stood at the bonfire, down by the shores of the freshly frozen edges of the lake.

He still smiled with remembered delight as he thought of the surprised faces of their friends and neighbors when Maggie’s granddaughter had begun to play the wedding march on her flute. The notes had been so clear and beautiful on the crisp air that it had stunned their guests into silence. And then Pastor Michael had appeared, on cue, in his full vestments.

And then, the music had fallen away, and a pregnant sense of waiting had filled the gathering with a delightful sense of anticipation. Snow had fallen from the limb of a tree and landed with a poof of magic that had drawn all eyes there.

And there Angie had stood, at the edge of the old-growth forest, looking like an enchantment, looking every inch the angel he had always known she was, splendid in a white dress and a beautiful fur cape. Those curls had been sewn with tiny snowdrops, and she had come to him, through a path in the snow, her eyes never leaving his face, holding promises he could not have ever anticipated for himself.

They had spoken their vows on the shores of the lake, and now that spot was, forever, the most sacred of places. He could see it from where he stood at the window, now.

They had lit torches around the lake and strapped on skates, and that was where he had had the first dance with her. That year, the lake had frozen like glass, and they had been able to see the dark water far beneath them as they glided along. They had fire-roasted marshmallows instead of cake, and one of their friends had brought a guitar. They had sat by the fire singing and listening to the guitar and the flute dance with each other as the stars came out. He could not think of that day without his throat closing with pure emotion at how real every single moment of it had been.

Could it really have been three years this month? Sometimes he longed to stop the race of time, to hold each moment in his hand so that he could feel it more deeply, savor what he had been given.

He heard a shriek of laughter and grimaced good-naturedly. He turned back to what he was doing: painting this room a delicate shade of white that had the faintest blush of pink in it.

“It’s the very same color,” he had groused to Angie when she had shown it to him.

“No,” she had said, “it’s not,” and so that had become the color of the nursery. He slid a little glance at the crib he had assembled yesterday and he gulped.

Were they ready for this? Could you ever be ready?

Angie had said to him once, on the most important day of his life, that there was no love without courage. She had said that to choose love, even though it wounded, was the greatest courage of all.

But in a month, they were going to have a baby in this room, in that crib with its bumpers and blankets with vivid pink monkeys cavorting across the fabric as if it was all fun, somehow. Fun? A real, live, breathing, cooing, little girl. He was not at all sure he had the courage for this.

Not just for bringing the baby home, but for the first day of kindergarten, and for wiping away tears because some boy had been mean to her, and for deciding whether she should be in hockey or ballet.

Was he ready to be a daddy? So much potential for love. And so much potential for loss. And so much potential for the place where those two things met.

Because even now, with his baby girl still safe in the womb of her mother, Jefferson ached with awareness.

That there would come a day, when she might want a long, dress of white or she might not, but there would come a day when she would stand in a place of sanctuary, looking at a man who was not her daddy, with an aching love in her eyes.

The laughter came again, floating up the staircases as if the house was overflowing with it.

Jefferson contemplated that. His house, once a lonely fortress on a rock, was filled with the sounds of his friends and neighbors, gathering from far and wide to celebrate Christmas here at the Stone House. It was remarkably easy to breathe new life into an old tradition. But then, really, Angie made so much look remarkably easy.

Angie had never returned to teaching home economics in high school. Instead, after they had married, she had started an organization called Prom-n-Aid.

She remembered, so clearly, being the child of a single parent, unable to afford what other girls could have. Trust Angie to turn this into her gift to the world. She proudly headed an organization that did not give girls dresses, but showed them how to create them.

“I don’t just want to give them a dress,” Angie had told him in that earnest way of hers. “I want them to discover the power of their own creativity—their ability to use the force of creativity to make the world match their dreams.”

But really, for all those words, it was just a variation on love.

It had grown unbelievably. Angie taught seminars to teachers and clubs all over North America, showing them how to get sponsors to donate everything from thread to tiaras, how to reach out to the girls who needed this the most.

“There you are!”

Jefferson turned slightly. His wife—would he ever get accustomed to those words in relation to Angie—was glowing. For some reason, pregnancy had made her hair even curlier. How he loved the wild chaos of her hair. The maternity dress was of her own design, proudly hugging the huge roundness of her belly. She had been talking lately about starting a maternity division of Prom-n-Aid.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered of the color.

“It’s the same as it was before,” he said, just for the sake of argument, even though he could clearly see it wasn’t. The new shade had a delicacy and warmth that the old one had not had.

“Are you hiding?” she demanded, ignoring his invitation to argue with him, her eyes twinkling with the knowledge that she had his number.

“No. I just wanted to finish it, in case.”

She did not accept his answer, watching him.

“Maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe I’m hiding.”

“Why?” she whispered.

He put his hand to his face and pinched his nose at the bridge, as if he could stop the emotion he was feeling. “I don’t want everyone to see how scared I am to have this baby.”

Angie came and tugged his hand away and looked at him in that way of hers that made him feel as if he was the strongest man in the universe.

And just like that, something flared between them, the something that never cooled or grew old. That allowed his wife to wrap him around her finger!

He carefully balanced the paintbrush on the open tin and left his hand in hers.

He heard the noises from downstairs again, and Maggie’s laughter rose, joyous, above the others. She was so happy for him. They all were. It was as if he and Angie’s love had become a part of the house, and it drew people here, into its circle. This is what love did.

It expanded. It gave back. It served.

It made the world better in ways that were too numerous to count, in ways that were as infinite as the stars in the sky.

Suddenly, he didn’t feel afraid of having his own little girl at all.

Suddenly, he knew the biggest truth. His wife, his beautiful, wise, funny wife, could be wrong sometimes.

She had said, on the day she had come back for him, on the day she had refused to sacrifice him to the abyss of loneliness he would have chosen, that there was no love without courage. She had said to choose love, even when it wounded you, was the greatest courage of all.

But now, Jefferson saw a deeper truth.

It wasn’t the greatest kind of courage, after all.

Choosing love was the only kind of courage.

“Are you ready?” Angie said.

She could have meant anything. Was he ready to join the others? Was he ready for Christmas dinner? Was he ready to welcome a baby into their lives?

“Yes,” Jefferson said. He said it to the bigger question, the one that required the only kind of courage.

He said yes, again, just as he had three years ago, to the force that humbled a man completely, that was so much larger than anything he could ever be, that had plans for him that were so much bigger than anything he could have ever planned for himself. Jefferson Stone said yes to love.

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