A Baby at the Lighthouse Keeper’s Door – Extended Epilogue

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Two Years Later

Jasper Rede had handled worse situations than this. He reminded himself of that in the hallway outside his own bedroom door, where he had been standing for the better part of an hour with his hands clasped behind his back.

Beyond the closed door, the doctor moved about the bedroom with brisk, low-voiced purpose. There were other sounds too, someone moving a water in a basin, Delia’s voice issuing practical commands that no one dared refuse, and Elara.

Elara made a sound he had never heard from her before. Jasper closed his eyes. Beside him, Nolan sat on the narrow bench against the wall with his forearms braced on his knees. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow, though he had done no useful work that Jasper could see. Neither of them spoke. They had been partners too long for speech to improve anything.

Another sharp sound came from the room. Jasper took one step toward the door.

Nolan caught his sleeve without looking up. “Don’t,” he said, and Jasper listened to him. He remained where he was.

The hallway smelled of boiled linen, lamp oil, and tea gone cold on a small table near the stairs. Morning light lay thin along the floorboards. The house had never felt so narrow to him, though it was larger than any place he had lived before marrying Elara.

Two years had changed a great many things. Selkirk & Rede still occupied the narrow building two blocks from the boarding house, though the office had grown busier than either of them had expected. Three cases were open that month alone, one involved a missing set of timber contracts, one a widow being cheated by a cousin, and one a packet of railroad correspondence Mr. Fenn had brought that morning with his usual air of legal inconvenience. The old man had come for business, but like everyone else in the house, he had stayed for the baby.

At the bottom of the stairs, Teddy shouted something about biscuits. Jasper opened his eyes. His boy was three and a half now and had been informed after breakfast that the baby would likely come that day. Teddy had accepted this news with such interest; he set about demolishing the kitchen with the unfocused energy of an older brother about to meet his younger sibling.

Through the floorboards, Jasper could hear Frances’s patient voice. “No, Theodore, the flour is not snow.”

A pause.

“No, not even if you say it kindly.”

Frances Rede had come from Portland three weeks ago and had made herself necessary within half a day. Teddy adored her with a devotion that had only increased when she allowed him to help knead dough and didn’t flinch when he wore half of it.

“But I’m waiting very, very, very hard.” Teddy made another announcement.

Nolan bowed his head. “A noble effort.”

Jasper let out one breath that was almost a laugh. Then Elara cried out again, and the sound cut the small humor from him cleanly.

A small footstep came up the stairs behind him. Delia appeared with a cup of tea nobody had asked for and her daughter settled on one hip. Little Marianne Crieff was eight months old, round-cheeked, dark-haired, and already in possession of her mother’s expression of mild contempt for a poorly organized world.

Delia held the cup out to Jasper.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“Drink it.”

Delia shifted Marianne toward Nolan, who accepted his daughter with care. Marianne immediately seized his collar and glared at Jasper as if she had suspicions about his general competence.

“Any change?” Delia asked.

Jasper looked toward the bedroom door.

Delia’s face softened, but only for a moment. “She is strong,” she said. Practicality returned immediately, snapping sentiment into line like a military officer. “And if she hears you pacing a groove into the hall boards, she will get up from that bed merely to scold you.”

Jasper glanced down and realized he had been moving. He stopped.

Delia gave a satisfied nod. “Better.” Without knocking, she opened the bedroom door and went inside.

Jasper watched her go and felt marginally better about everything. “She should have let me in,” he said quietly.

Nolan’s humor faded. “Elara?”

Jasper nodded.

“She knows you’re there,” Nolan tried to comfort him.

For a while, they sat in silence. Below, Fenn’s voice rose faintly from the sitting room, dry and precise even through the ceiling. Ormond answered him, softer, older, but steadier than he had been two years before. The two men had become, improbably, friends. Jasper had never understood it entirely, though Elara claimed it made perfect sense. Both had spent too long hiding from the same truth and had now chosen to torment one another with tea, chess, and moral improvement.

Fenn still came by the office too often to pretend it was only business. He complained about the clutter, corrected Jasper’s filing, offered Elara legal advice she hadn’t requested, and brought Teddy small wooden puzzles that always proved too difficult for everyone except Teddy and Fenn.

Ormond, meanwhile, had grown calmer. His testimony had cost him dearly in reputation, but he seemed lighter for the cost. There were men in Harrow who still crossed the street rather than greet him. There were also women who brought him pies and shirts to mend, and ailments they had suddenly decided no other doctor understood.

People were strange creatures, Jasper had learned. They could ignore weakness for years and forgive that same weakness in an afternoon, provided the afternoon had enough coffee in it. His thoughts moved, as they often did when the house went still, to Hugh Selkirk.

Hugh’s release date was three weeks away. He had written from prison the previous month. Three sober sentences, nothing excessive, asking if he might see the baby when he came out… if Elara allowed it, that is.

Elara had sat at the kitchen table for nearly an hour with the letter before her. Then she had written back one word. Yes.

Jasper looked toward the front windows at the end of the hall. Harrow went on outside. Wheels rolled over damp ruts. and the river moved beyond the buildings toward the sea. Farther still, though he could not see it from here, the lighthouse kept its watch at the headland. The light still burned.

Jasper thought of Victor Rathburn in prison, of Shard and the men who had followed orders until judgment finally caught them. There had been appeals, protests, statements carried in newspapers by men who had once dined at Victor’s table and now claimed never to have trusted him. But the convictions had held. Victor would spend what remained of his life behind bars, and so would Shard. For that, Jasper felt no pity at all.

He felt only gratitude that the rooms of this house were full of living noise. And just then, a new sound tore through the stillness and brought Jasper back to the present moment. He stood. Nolan rose too, Marianne balanced against his shoulder.

The sound was small and indignant, loud enough to command the whole house. Jasper forgot how to breathe. The cry came again, furious at the indignity of existence.

Downstairs, Teddy shouted, “Is that the baby?”

The door opened. The doctor stood there, sleeves rolled, spectacles low on his nose, looking tired and pleased and entirely too calm for a man who had just brought yet another life to the world. “Mr. Rede,” he said. “You may come in.”

Jasper was through the door before he quite remembered moving. The room was warm, lamplit despite the morning, the curtains half drawn against the pale glare from the street. Delia stood near the washstand, face flushed and eyes bright with joy. The doctor moved aside.

And there was Elara. She was propped against the pillows. Her hair was loosened from its braid, and her face was pale with exhaustion and damp at the temples. She looked wrecked and fierce and so beautiful that Jasper stopped two paces from the bed because the sight of her struck him with an almost physical force.

Her eyes found his. She said nothing. He doubted she had strength left for speech. But she smiled. It was true happiness, pure and tired and shining through everything she had endured.

Jasper crossed the room and sat carefully on the edge of the bed. “Elara, my love,” he muttered.

Her eyes softened at the sound of her name. She shifted one hand weakly toward him, and he took it between both of his.

“You are well?” he asked.

Her mouth curved faintly. “Very,” she whispered, which was almost certainly a lie, and entirely like her.

“Congratulations.” Dr. Mercer turned from the little bundle in his arms. “You have a son.”

Then the doctor placed the child into Elara’s arms. He was small, red-faced, and angry at the world, wrapped in clean linen with one tiny fist free of the folds. His mouth opened in protest, then closed again as Elara drew him close. She stared down at him with a wonder so naked Jasper felt his chest ache.

He leaned closer. The baby’s face was creased with outrage, his hair dark and damp against his head. One hand emerged from the linen, fingers opening and closing restlessly.

Elara gave a breath that might have been a laugh. “He’s so angry,” she gasped.

“He’s had a difficult morning.” Jasper bowed his head and kissed her temple. “All though you were magnificent.”

Her eyes closed briefly, and for one moment she leaned her head against his shoulder. Jasper held perfectly still, afraid to disturb the fragile arrangement of wife, child, breath, and miracle. But the baby stirred either way.

Elara looked down again, and the expression on her face pierced him more deeply than any grief ever had. He had thought joy would feel lighter. Instead, it felt enormous, heavy as a vow and bright as a struck match in the dark.

“Teddy!” Frances’s voice came from the hall. “Gently, my lamb.”

The door burst open. Teddy came in anyway, though his speed reduced only slightly upon seeing his mother with his little brother, the doctor, Delia, and Jasper’s face. He stopped at the foot of the bed, curls wild and one cheek marked with flour. “I heard him,” Teddy announced.

Elara’s smile widened despite her exhaustion. “Did you?” she asked.

“Yes.” He came closer cautiously, then stood on his toes to see. “He is small,” Teddy said.

“You were small once,” Jasper told him.

Teddy looked doubtful. “Was I loud?”

“Very,” Elara said.

This appeared to please him. Frances came in behind him, breathless but smiling, and rested one hand on Teddy’s shoulder. Nolan hovered in the doorway with Marianne in his arms, and Fenn’s head appeared briefly behind him before Delia ordered everyone not immediately necessary to stop crowding the threshold.

Teddy climbed carefully onto the edge of the bed when Jasper lifted him. He peered at the baby with such curiosity, his eyes widened. “What’s his name?” he asked.

Elara looked at Jasper. The question should have required discussion. They had spoken of names in passing, lightly, never deciding on one. But looking at the child in Elara’s arms, Jasper knew.

“Everett,” they said, almost at the same moment.

“Everett…” Teddy repeated thoughtfully.

The baby opened his mouth and cried.

“He likes it,” Teddy smiled.

A laugh moved through the room, quiet and relieved. Elara leaned back against the pillows, spent but beaming. Jasper shifted closer, one arm around her shoulders, his other hand resting lightly over the linen that held their son. Teddy nestled beside them, one small hand resting carefully near the baby’s feet. For a moment, they were gathered there exactly as Jasper had once been afraid to imagine.

Elara turned her face toward him. “Jasper?”

He looked down at her. She didn’t need to say more. He bent and kissed her gently, mindful of her weariness, of the child between them, of Teddy watching with frank interest. Yet even gentleness could carry fire. Her fingers caught weakly at his sleeve. Outside, Harrow carried on. But there, in that crowded room above a street full of ordinary life, Jasper held everything he had once believed he would never have.

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Grab my new series, "Brave Hearts of the Frontier", and get 5 FREE novels as a gift! Have a look here!

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