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“I can barely breathe from the elbow jab you gave me, so yes.”
“I can’t believe this is my life,” she said. “It’s like one of those teen shows with superpowers and pretty people. And kissing. Lots of kissing.”
“Happy?” I asked.
“You don’t even know.” Joy lit her eyes. “I have everything I’ve ever wanted. Almost.”
I knew she was thinking about her mother.
“I’m learning to let go. Looking forward to the future. To our future.”
I took stock as the bells of the Saint Louis Cathedral pealed through the spring air.
My friends sat at the table, still laughing over the powdered sugar explosion.
Less than a mile away, the Mississippi flowed, holding secrets and sorrows, buried for eternity. Gone, but not forgotten, like so many people I’d loved.
Hallie stood by my side. My reason for breathing, and the answer to every question I’d ever have.
“I couldn’t be happier,” I said.
And this was only the beginning.
Epilogue
Emerson, Late April
“Are you okay now?”
Michael held out a bottle of cold water, careful not to touch my skin. A hospital wasn’t a good place to set off an electrical current. I took the water, and like the two previous bottles, stuck it down the back of my shirt.
“Childbirth is supposed to be hard on the mother. Not the aunt. If I passed out for this baby’s birth, how am I ever going to manage having any of my own?”
“Knowing you, by sheer will and force of determination,” he said mildly. “We’ll deal with it when it happens.”
“We will, will we?” I grinned at him.
We both knew it was only a matter of time.
“Is there a baby?” Kaleb burst through the waiting room doors with Lily behind him. “Is it here?”
“There’s been a baby for months, and don’t call it an it,” I snapped. Fainting made me grumpy.
“You just did.” Kaleb cocked his head to the side.
Lily sat down beside me and lifted my hair off my neck with one hand, fanning me with the other. “You know Thomas and Dru won’t tell anyone if the baby is a girl or a boy. It’s not Em’s fault.”
“You’re too good for him, you know,” I said to Lily with a sniff, but I winked at Kaleb.
He flipped me off, but he was smiling.
“Why are you so excited, Kaleb?” I asked. “Babies don’t seem like your thing.”
“Neither do cookies, but you don’t complain about those.”
A door opened and a nurse stuck her head out. “Ready to meet your newest family member?”
My stomach tried to take a vacation by way of my mouth. “As I’ll ever be.”
