Page 128 of Once Upon a Fall

“Fix it up and live there eventually.”

“But what about your job?”

“I’m still going to be traveling some, but a lot of it can be done online,” he says. “I’m tired of living in hotels. I want a place to call home.”

“Home,” I say, tears pricking behind my eyes. I try to blink them away, but it’s not working.

“Home,” he repeats.

“And you’re staying in Autumn Ridge,” I say.

“Rosie,” he says, his lips pulling into that straight line. “I’m not sure how many ways I can tell you this.”

I laugh even as a tear travels down my face. He wipes it away with a thumb.

“I’m sorry, it’s just hard to believe.”

“Believe it,” he says before kissing me gently.

And I do. Or at least, I’m starting to.

Dean

Five Years Later

The prince and the princess lived happily ever after.

I carry a crate of what amounts to a fairly pathetic apple harvest toward the house when Rosie calls out from the back door.

“Dinner’s ready,” she says.

I shake my head and smile to myself. If Rosie’s making dinner tonight, it will definitely be frozen pot pies.

To her credit, she has branched out more with her cooking skills, especially when I have to travel for work. Even though I still make sure there’s a supply of frozen homemade meals in the freezer for her when I’m gone.

I’ve been even more careful about that lately, with only three months to go until baby number two arrives. A boy this time. We can’t decide on a name, and Rosie keeps going back to Milton—a name I’ve already vetoed.

He’ll join his eighteen-month-old sister, Vivian Rose, who has weaseled her way past her mom and out the door, running toward me.

“Don’t run so fast, Vivi,” Rosie calls out.

She runs up to me and wraps her little arms around my leg.

“Want to help me carry these apples in?” I ask her.

She smiles and nods, and I reach into the crate and hand her one of the smaller ones.

She takes it in her small hands as if it’s the most precious thing she’s ever carried and follows me toward the house.

Originally, I planned to get rid of the orchard and figure out what to do with the land, but after it was all dug up and the land was tilled, I couldn’t imagine this place without one. I planted half as many trees as my grandpa had, because I still have an actual job and no desire to become a full-time apple farmer.

Somehow, fifty trees are still a lot of work.

The white siding on the house stands out against the bare hills, with the porch wrapping around the front exactly the way Rosie pictured it the first time I brought her here. Inside, the living room is full of oversized couches, and the kitchen has a large island in the center. And since I do most of the cooking, I made sure it came with considerably more than a microwave.

Rosie handled most of the inside herself. She let me hire out the roof and the electrical work, then fought me on nearly everything after that. The upstairs bathroom is painted a color called Sage Against the Machine, which I still refuse to believe is the actual name.

The barn behind the house is newer than everything else. Autumn Ridge rebuilt it during another barn raising at the end of the following year’s festival—one Rosie wasn’t in charge of this time. Pam had asked her to run it again, and Rosie said no. Then she spent the next three days telling me how terrible she felt about it.