by Holly Rayner
If anything, the extent to which she was overwhelmed by how different everything here was seemed to amuse them. She and Dylan were welcomed. Completely. Unconditionally. And before long, Dylan had made fast friends with his honorary cousins, and was lost to the depths of the palace, as they showed him (and Milo) their favorite nooks and crannies.
The day after their arrival, Kehlan’s family also seemed intent on celebrating his 35th birthday with all the pomp and circumstance they could, and discussions over the preparations went on all afternoon. At one point, Kehlan asked her if she wanted to leave, since they were all deep in the weeds of arguing over the best way of honoring their “long-lost” cousin, and they kept slipping into Arabic, so that Paige could only really understand a sentence every minute or two.
But Paige told him she would rather stay. If anything, this discussion helped her to understand them better, as they were letting their true selves come out. Some of them were fiery, and passionate about expressing their opinions. Some of them waited patiently, before springing their opinion out when it seemed least expected and causing a stir that Paige didn’t need to speak Arabic to understand. Some of them seemed to rely on position, speaking quietly, but with an absolute authority that they would be listened to when they did.
Paige found, the longer she listened to these people she had never met and speak to each other in a language she could not understand, her affection for them grew. She almost could have laughed, then and there, for reasons that would seem inscrutable to the relatives. All this time, she’d sort of seen Kehlan as this far-flung wanderer, cut off entirely from any sort of home. She’d felt like she was taking him in and providing him with a family, what with the way the whole town of Stockton sometimes felt related, and with the way she came with a son, and with parents who were quick to bond with Kehlan.
But Kehlan was bringing his own set of complex, but nonetheless strong and important relationships with him. Just because he didn’t come with parents or siblings didn’t mean that she didn’t have a whole new family that she was getting in the mix as well. It was an unexpected boon. Unfair, she thought, that it was Kehlan’s birthday and she was the one who was getting such a big, complicated present.
But still, it felt right. It felt balanced. And, by the time the informal birthday celebration committee dispersed, Paige felt rather differently about the whole trip than she had when she had first gotten off the plane, overwhelmed and anxious.
And it was just as well, because the most difficult part of the trip stood before them.
The royal cemetery was within the grounds of the palace. Traditionally, cemeteries in the region were not particularly extravagant, as burial itself was not considered as central to honoring the dead as it was in other countries. But in the royal cemetery, it was a different matter. Here were the members of the royal lines, stretching back hundreds of years. The two had to walk through all the history of all Al-Derra’s royal family to reach their destination, and as they did, Paige began to feel further and further out of place.
She could only tell that they had reached Kehlan’s mother’s grave by the fact that it was the last one, all the way at the end. And, of course, by the way Kehlan stood, transfixed with grief, when they reached it. She stood next to him, sliding her hand into his as he looked at his mother’s grave.
It had been long enough, now, that he had shaken off some of the constant pain that had been over him in the early days. Paige, herself, found it hard to relate. She’d never lost anyone that monumentally important to her. Never had she gone through what Kehlan had gone through over the past ten months. Losing the last member of his immediate family. Losing his mother. She couldn’t imagine.
They stood in silence for a long time, the quiet interrupted only by birdsong, and the occasional rustling of the huge row of bougainvillea flowers in the wind. This was a peaceful place. Paige didn’t want to rush him. She simply waited.
“I wish she could have known you,” he said at last.
She gave his hand a squeeze.
“Me, too. But I get to see her in you. So I feel like, in a way, I’ve gotten to meet her.”
He smiled a soft, sad smile.
“That’s not unlike what she said, at the end.”
After a moment, he released her hand, and draped his arm around her shoulder, bringing her in close to him.
“There’s so much I wish we’d done differently, Paige. So much time that we wasted. If I had known that it would run out…”
She didn’t have anything that could make it better. There were no words that could bring his mother back or change the past.
“I know. But you did the best you could. And I know, if she was anything like you, then she did, too.”
She didn’t know if that helped. She hoped it did.
Kehlan nodded solemnly.
“I haven’t told my cousins yet, but I want to do something in her honor. I can’t be the dutiful prince, making all the appearances that she always wanted me to, and I’m happy to think that she was okay with that. At least, in the end. But I still want her legacy to carry on.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I was thinking of starting a foundation in her name. We don’t need the wealth she’s left me, so I was thinking I would reinvest it in the community. In Al-Derra.”
It was like a night and day difference, when Kehlan began to talk about his plans for the foundation. Kehlan was, Paige thought, in his heart, a man of action. And he’d clearly been thinking about this for some time, considering the best way of going about it, and how he could do the most good for the country.
She was a little surprised, with how much it must have been on his mind, that he’d never mentioned it. But she knew that, sometimes, things can be too close to the heart to put into words. And she had learned over the last ten months that, from time to time, Kehlan could store things up and keep them to himself until he was ready to share them with the world.
It was a quality that he had inherited from his mother, from what she’d heard.
It took him a while to run out of steam, by which point he was deep into the minute details that would need to be worked out. And when he did, he looked down at Paige.
“What do you think?” he asked.
She leaned up, kissing him softly.
“I think it sounds like a wonderful idea.”
He nodded.
“I’ll announce it at the party tomorrow.”
They stood a little while longer before heading back in towards the house. The sun was heading towards setting, casting all the world around them in a beautiful golden light. The familiar feeling of Kehlan’s hand in hers, and the new feeling of the evening desert breeze commingled to make her feel warm and safe, but also excited. As they walked, Paige felt as though they were walking away from the past and towards the future, together. And it was a future she was very much looking forward to.
Epilogue
Two Years Later
Kehlan
What a difference two years made! As Kehlan stood in front of Stockton City Hall, he couldn’t help but think back to a time before he had met Paige. It felt so distant. It felt like a life that had not really been his. Not the way that this life, and this woman, and this family was.
The best big changes are those that don’t really feel like changes at all. When he had finalized his adoption of Dylan, for instance, four months ago. It was an important moment, and had involved a great deal of very official-looking paperwork, but it hadn’t really changed anything. He had thought of Dylan as his son for such a long time already, that it was just putting down on paper what they all knew to be true.
And today, when Paige would officially become his wife, was exactly the same kind of happy confirmation. It changed nothing in his heart or his mind, so there could be no nerves. There could only be celebration.
She was already the light of his life, and an essential, integral part of everything that he did. His work at the clinic in town, both
caring for the people there, and expanding the practice so that he could better serve them, would have been impossible without her. Not necessarily because she helped out with it in any concrete way, but more because she was the cornerstone that made him as a person function and flourish.
Likewise, he knew that he was essential to her, even though he was really only a sounding board for her many ideas and projects, first in taking a more active role at the Coffee Cup, until it had been a natural transition to buy out the old owner when she decided to move away, and put Paige entirely in charge of the place. Then, in how she had transformed it to not only be a destination for local, farm-to-table dining in rural Washington, but also into a kind of community meeting center and visitor information center for their growing tourist trade in the area.
His fiancée had big plans. She had plans for Stockton, and she had plans for the Coffee Cup, and she had plans for everything around them. How he had enjoyed learning that about her over the last two years, and how he had enjoyed watching her learn that about herself. He had watched her, month after month, clear away the exhaustion that had come with always being in a desperate rush to keep her little family afloat, to being supported enough to discover what those dreams even were, and put them into action.
There were so many great things around there to see, she had explained, that Stockton made a natural point for tourists to stay in and explore from. It was criminal that it hadn’t been developed as well as it could have been, and Paige was determined to see that that changed. And, along with that change, would come more jobs, and more people, and a younger population that would carry Stockton into the future. It would be a life’s work to see that Stockton survived, but it was a life’s work that she was happy to dedicate herself to.
She’d transformed, but not in a way that made her seem any less like the woman that Kehlan had first met. If anything, she was more like herself than she had been two years ago. And, Kehlan thought, he was more like himself as well.
“Now, scoot in a little bit closer! A little bit, just a little bit more…”
Kehlan did as he was told and obeyed the geriatric photographer—a patient of his, as so many people in town were. A little hard to hear on a day like today, when everything was so exciting and Kehlan felt as though he were barely still connected to the world. Only Paige’s hand in his kept him from floating away to cloud nine itself.
But Kehlan had to hand it to Jim, their photographer; getting everyone from both sides of the family into one picture couldn’t be an easy task. Kehlan wasn’t sure how they were all going to fit into in the newly refurbished city hall, with so many cousins and aunts and uncles from Al-Derra having flown in, as well as so many of the townspeople of Stockton who had watched Paige grow up, insisting that they be present. They had tried to emphasize that, while everyone was welcome at the reception, the ceremony itself couldn’t quite accommodate those kinds of numbers.
But the people of Stockton, as they so often did, decided not to listen. It was a trait they all shared as a town, and one that Kehlan had grown to enjoy. And even with the logistical problems it made for them, it was still good to feel the support, when he had been a stranger there just two years before. It felt like the town was theirs.
Of course, the most important people were there. Hayley and her husband, complete with Hayley’s new baby bump, were back in Stockton on a rare visit. Paige’s mother and father. And Alvin, who Kehlan had unexpectedly found himself growing close to as a kind of surrogate father figure of his own over the past two years.
But fit they did, if barely. They filed in, one after another, following in behind the couple as they made their way to stand in front of the officiant. It took a comically long amount of time, and the room began heating up more than was comfortable.
“I’m glad we took pictures before the ceremony,” he heard one of his aunts say. “My makeup is melting off. I thought they said that early spring would be cold here!”
Kehlan smiled to himself. It had been unseasonably warm here, in an unexpected twist. It was almost like the climate itself was welcoming his relatives and making them feel more at home in Washington. At least, that was how he planned to spin it for his family when they inevitably began complaining about the heat three drinks into the reception.
“Is everyone here? Can we get started?”
The officiant was a woman who Paige had known all her life, and who Kehlan had gotten to know through Paige’s dealings with the town to get her tourism initiatives supported and promoted. She had a slightly crotchety way about her, but at the same time, had a heart of gold that you could see when she let a smile slip out.
“Okay, then—let’s get on with this, before we all get heatstroke.”
The couple spoke the words, and they meant them.
“And do you, Kehlan Ibn Buis, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”
“I do.” And he deeply and truly did.
Paige
Between the out-of-towners and all the interested parties in Stockton, the Coffee Cup was going to be stretched beyond capacity for the reception. Paige had known this in advance, but she still couldn’t possibly imagine having it anywhere else. This was the place she had first met Kehlan, and where they had spent so much time together.
There had been a time in her life when she had felt like she was trapped in the little diner; that it was a prison she’d walked into of her own free will, but would never be able to leave. But that had all changed when she had met Kehlan, because if she had never worked here, if her life hadn’t gone just the way it had gone, she’d never have met him. So she couldn’t regret anything, and it felt like the least she could do to develop the Coffee Cup, if for no other reason than to thank it for bringing this man into her life.
Luckily, the small restaurant had a large lawn out back, and she’d arranged for large, translucent tents to be rented and set up, with twinkling lights around them and tables set up beneath them. There was a dance floor, and a band, and all the other things that any good reception should have. It had been a herculean effort to organize it all, but she had had her sister’s dedicated help, and now, seeing all that effort coming to fruition, she was glad she had put the work in.
It was perfect. Everything was perfect. The music, the food, the dancing, the people and their conversations. If she felt like a laugh, she could always find her way into earshot of one of the elder townspeople trying their best to make polite conversation with some distant cousin of Kehlan’s. Everyone was trying so hard, and believing that they understood the other. But as someone who knew a little of both cultures, she could see that good intentions were as far as the communication often got.
There were a few little mishaps, but nothing serious. Only stories that Paige knew that the town would tell for years—that would become a part of the town’s history. That crazy big wedding with all the outsiders.
She loved it, and she loved that it was hers. She loved this man, and she loved his love for her. She loved his love for her son, and for her town. And she loved his dedication to the foundation he had started, and allowed to blossom overseas in his mother’s name, back in the home that had given him to her. She loved the way it felt like he had grown into himself more and more over the last two years they had been together.
Their first dance was a fun one. It was one way that they had departed from either available strand of wedding tradition and done their own thing. Paige had been nervous, contemplating dance lessons and choreography and the sheer difficulty of learning something so new to her in the middle of all that planning. But, as he always did, Kehlan helped her think it through, and in the end, they ditched all of the expectation and tradition and worry.
Instead, they just danced to the song he had sung to her on open mic night, and moved in a way that expressed their joy, and brought that joy to others. When the rest of
the party joined in, and Paige looked over the scene and saw such a varied mixture of different styles and ages, and with everyone dancing in spite of these differences, she couldn’t have imagined it going better.
The other big effort had been the food and drinks. This was her area, and she was happy to find the absolute best possible collection of locally sourced dishes for all their guests. Much of it was based on the Coffee Cup’s menu, just dressed up a bit, since it was hard to improve upon something that she’d spent the last several years of her life slowly perfecting.
The drinks were a collection of the best of all the vineyards and breweries in the area. Paige had tried all of the products she served their guests that night, and felt confident that what she was providing them was the best of the best.
But she wasn’t partaking along with them tonight.
There was a lot going on, and Kehlan didn’t notice immediately that no champagne, or wine, or beer or cider came anywhere near her lips. But when he did finally notice, the dawning realization was every bit the surprise she had hoped it would be.
He led her back to a private area behind one of the tents. They could still hear the music and the crowd, but they felt alone, sheltered from the crowd.
“You’re not drinking,” he said, his eyes alight. There was supposed to be a question in there, but he was having a hard time articulating it in his current state.
She returned his beaming smile.
“No,” she said, with a knowing grin. “I’m not.”
He laughed a laugh of pure joy and scooped her up into his arms, spinning her around before setting her down with a kiss.
