“Yeah, I figured it’d be just a negative when I got home as it was this morning, why?” She squints at the test in the dim light of the backroom.

“Ohmygod. Oh my God, Raine!”

“Tomorrow, you call the doc.” I press my lips to hers and push her toward the little space we turned into her office. I need my wife now and I’m taking any chances on getting interrupted. “And switch to decaf.”

EPILOGUE 2

Five Years Later

April

“Never thought I’d see the day.” Maggie says what we’re all thinking.

“It is possible that hell has frozen over,” May-Ellen, my mother-in-law chuckles lightly, bouncing her grandbaby on her knee as she watches the sight unfolding before us.

“With the winter we just had, that’s the only explanation.” Howard says seriously, his hand over Grans as they sit together on the swing.

It’s a mixed group of us, gathered around the duck pond on Hart’s Gulch, sitting in folding camp chairs or on blankets spread out by the shore.

Gran and Howard have taken over the two-seater yard swing in the cleared area by the fire ring that Cane built near the edge of the pond a few years ago. Robin Diaz is on a blanket with Ginger Jones, a couple of toddlers wracked out between them.

Kids are running everywhere, some of the older ones are racing kayaks from one end of the pond to the other, I think Jackson Jones is helping the men with their project.

It’s crazy to see us all together like this, multiple members of four families that have been on opposite sides of a feud for three generations, but there’s nothing like raising kids in a small town to cut through old bullshit, I guess.

We’re out here with the kids, enjoying a summer afternoon on the pond with the kids while we wives keep an eye on our husbands to make sure they make actual progress on their project– a tree house that Cane promised to the boys that’s become a group effort among the dads of the Ridge.

With Terra Hawkins running the only daycare center and preschool on the mountain, our children have known each other since they were babies.

That’s how Birch McAllister’s son ended up making friends with Cane’s oldest boy and our oldest is now bffs with a Diaz kid.

Of course, Terra and Zephyr had already broken the feud lines and it’s no surprise that the Hawkins twins are inseparable from the Damiani girls and Basil Jones has already declared that she will be marrying Mesa Diaz’s boy.

I guess it was inevitable that our kids would end up forging deep friendships– even bonding over the old lore and gossip that once kept these families apart.

I watch with pride as my husband supervises the construction, explaining the plans to Mesa Diaz and Cane, who are manning the power tools as Birch McAllister and Hayle unload the lumber that Birch donated from the mill.

We have two of the McAllister families at the Gulch today, my husband and both his brothers, Mesa Diaz and his brother, Glen, and Ginger and Current Jones volunteered to fire up a set of well-seasoned Dutch ovens and are busy cooking a proper feast for the crew when the work day is finished.

Zephyr and Terra took a string of little ones out to the old greenhouse where Zephyr still tends a small garden that’s open for the whole family to use now and with our two and half year old entertained in his grandma’s lap, it’s easy for me to lay back on my chair with my hand resting over my stomach where our daughter is growing, and think about all the promises that have been kept since I came to the mountain.

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