Page 140

Epilogue
Henley
“Ready for bed, bug?”
I pop my head into my daughter’s room to see her sitting up in bed, bright green eyes shining at me from her freshly-scrubbed freckled face. She doesn’t even have to ask. I know what she wants. I’m going to give in but I have to put up a fight first.
It’s sorta our thing.
“Spencer Rose,” I say shaking my head. “Not tonight, it’s past your bed time.” We named her after her grandfather. When I suggested the name Spencer, regardless of gender, Conner didn’t even blink. We call her Rosie unless she’s in trouble or we’re going through our nightly ritual.
“My bedtime isn’t for another fifteen minutes,” she says, shaking her head at like she’s disappointed in my for trying to pull a fast one on her. She’s three and a half and can tell time. Reads at a fourth-grade reading level and speaks fluent Spanish. Sometimes, I’ll hear snippets of conversations between her and Conner and I have no idea what they’re talking about. But she has friends and enjoys school. She likes playing with her cousins and she sleeps.
The first time she slept through the night, Conner cried like a baby.
“Fine,” I shake my head, like I’m doing her a favor, while I peruse her bookshelf “The Pokey Little Puppy?”
She scrunches up her nose at me.
“The Little Engine That Could?”
She shakes her head.
“Five beds for Betsy?”
She narrows her eyes at me.
“The Giving Tree?”
“Mom.”
The exasperation I hear in her voice is almost too much.
“Fine.” I pull the book she wants from the shelf. “You know, I could just call your dad in here and he can recite to you by heart.”
She shakes her head at me and settles back into the bed. “I want you to read it.” She puts her head on the pillow and looks up at me while I settle in beside her. It’s not the books she wants me to read. Not really. It’s the inscription inside.
“I seriously question the appropriateness of reading The Great Gatsby to my three-year-old.”
“I’m three and a half,” she informs me, taking the worn paperback out of my lap to open it to the first page. “Now read, please.” She tacks on the please because she knows she’s supposed to, not because she wants to. “Start at the beginning.”
I look down at the page she’s holding open for me.
It’s the title page with PROPERTY OF BOSTON CITY LIBRARY stamped across the paper.
Below it is an inscription dated 2009. This is what she wants me to read. This is the beginning. Where her father and I started. Where she began. I read it to her in Gaelic first and she follows along. Conner is teaching her, but it’s a tricky language. She’s frustrated that it isn’t coming as easily to her as Spanish.
Henley –
Is breá liom tú.
Gan ainneoin,
ach mar gheall air.
I gcónaí.—
Conner
“In English,” she says, tracing the letters with her tiny fingers.
“It says, Henley, I love you. Not in spite of, but because. Love, Conner.”
She gives me a smile. Every time I read it to her, she smiles.
Flipping the page, I begin to read and she closes her eyes and starts to drift.