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Epilogue
Three months later, Maggie was back in Dani and Levi’s barn, standing under the million twinkle lights. This time, however, it was for her own wedding. It wasn’t the large Texas wedding she’d had in her little girl dreams with the fairy princess dress, a crystal tiara holding a chapel length train to her head that would billow for a mile behind her, the minimum six bridesmaids – all in blush pink, of course, the ride to the chapel in a horse drawn carriage, and the sit down dinner afterwards for at least 300, but it was so much more.
Maggie’s dress was a simple, Empire waist gown à la Pride and Prejudice, with lace panels in front and back and a few sparkling crystals surrounding the low-scooped n
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Dani felt icy fingers of foreboding skittering up her spine as she reached for the cold metal handle of the break room door. She shivered. Shake it off girl! Everyone’s stable, that’s the only reason you’re able to grab a few minutes! She whipped the mask off her face as she dropped into a chair. She was eight hours into her twelve-hour shift in the CCU and had been running non-stop. Her feet were throbbing, and she had an ache building behind her eyes. She smiled thankfully at her friend, Kim, who pushed a 44 oz Diet Dr. Pepper in her direction across the table. “You’re a lifesaver!” Dani said, taking a large gulp of the icy drink. Since she didn’t drink coffee, Diet Dr. Pepper was her main vice. To her ongoing dismay, the break room soda machine didn’t carry them, so she went without unless she was able to sneak downstairs to the cafeteria. “This is the first time I’ve been able to take a break all day. How did you know I’d be here dying for one right now?” Kim chuckled. “Brandon s
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After Levi typed the last figures into his spreadsheet and emailed it to his assistant, he spun around in his chair to look at the view. The setting sun glinting off the neighboring metal and glass towers was dramatic, but nothing beat a sunset on the farm. Watching that large red-orange ball dip behind the barn and then the trees, the whole sky turning red then purple as a bruise until everything was left in a blue gray shadow with the moon rising above it. It made your heart swell. Despite how badly he had wanted to escape it when he was eighteen, he could now admit he did miss some aspects of the farm. He was the youngest broker at the firm and had basically given his last eight years to the company. He worked long hours and had almost completely forgone a social life. His coworkers never gave up trying to get him to go out, however. At least once a week, Mike showed up at his door at the end of their workday. Apparently, today was his lucky day.“Levi, come on. It’s Lydia’s birth
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After conferring with the doctors and therapy team, Dani stayed at her aunt’s bedside the rest of the day talking to her constantly and doing range of motion exercises on her arms and legs. Her uncle sat through it all in the uncomfortable hospital chair, silently holding and stroking his wife’s hand. After trying unsuccessfully to lovingly convince her uncle to go home and get some rest, she finally resorted to using her best Nurse Ratchet voice to convince her uncle to unglue his backside from the horrible chair next to his wife’s hospital bed. “You’re not going to do her any good if you fall over too,” She put both hands on her hips and tried to glare at him. “I’m not going anywhere, and you know I know what I’m doing. Nurse’s orders! Go home, eat, take a shower and close your eyes for a few hours. I will call you if there is any change at all.” As he looked up, her voice and demeanor softened. “Please, Uncle E. She’s going to need you to be strong. Take a break now while you can.”
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The next morning, Dani found herself waking up worried that she had overslept for school before her brain righted itself. Living in her old bedroom in the house in Gladewater was like being in a time capsule. Her aunt hadn’t changed a thing. Pink painted walls, Luke Perry and John Stamos posters, and her purple beaded curtains on the big windows were just as they had been when she left. She supposed she hadn’t been back enough to worry about trying to modernize it and make it more grown up. She lazily wondered if she should try to do a little updating now. After grabbing a quick shower, she pulled her red curls out of her face with a headband and put on her hospital ‘uniform’ of yoga pants, a T-shirt and Toms. She grabbed her small wristlet and headed to the hospital to meet Zane. At 11 o’clock on the dot, Zane came breezing into the hospital lobby. He managed to look casual and professional at the same time. Today he wore a tan blazer over dark jeans and a navy T-shirt. His sun-kiss
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Levi sat sweating in his Tundra in the middle of the gravel road about a mile from his childhood home. The sweat wasn’t from the sweltering Texas sun, however. It was a cold sweat at being so close to the place he had escaped from when he went to college. The day he had left, his teenage self had vowed to never set foot on the place again, but here he was, a grown man come home. C’mon Levi, you can do this. Mom’s waiting. It’s just a set of buildings.He took a deep breath and put the truck back in gear, driving slowly until he arrived at the driveway. His mother must have been watching for him from the front windows because she burst out of the front door, screen door slamming behind her as he pulled up. She grabbed him in a hug before he could get completely out of the truck.“Come here, you!” She kept his neck in a vice grip and kissed him repeatedly on the cheek.Levi laughed and picked his mother up off the ground in a bear hug. “I’d have come home sooner if I knew I was going to
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It was a joyful and proud day when her Aunt Lu was released from the hospital to go home, well enough to start outpatient rehab. She and Maggie had tied balloon bouquets to the carport and made a WELCOME HOME sign for the front of the house. Maggie, JT and their neighbors had gathered to welcome her home. Her aunt and uncle both teared up when they saw the display. “Oh, yyyou! Yyyou shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble,” her aunt said, wiping her eyes. Dani leaned down to the wheelchair and gave her aunt a big hug. “Everyone wanted to be here. You deserve a few balloons for all the hard work you’ve done!”“C’mon Lu,” her uncle said, pushing her toward the door. “Time for you to start making me some dinner!”Everyone laughed. She reached back and patted his hand, looking up at him lovingly. “Dddon’t you think I wwwon’t be soon! You’ve wwwasted awwway on that hospital ffood!”Dani looked at her aunt and uncle longingly. They had been together for so long and were so happy together. T
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An hour later, Dani and Maggie were in Pearl trying to navigate the old gravel road out to the homestead. She had remembered the route but had forgotten the giant potholes in the road. Out that way there was just the old Cooper spread and theirs and apparently no one had even been trying to maintain the road. Poor Pearl was not a happy camper with the constant scraping of her undercarriage. “Gee, Dani,” Maggie said as they bounced through yet another pothole, hitting their heads on the soft top of the convertible, “if you had told me we were going out here we could have taken my Explorer. Your expensive car is going to be ruined.”Note to self, if I did move out here, Pearl and I were going to have to have a difficult chat about replacing her with a 4-wheel drive.“Yeah, well, it’s been a minute and I kinda forgot how bad this road can get,” Dani said, gritting her teeth as gravel flew up to hit the windshield despite creeping along like a turtle. “It’ll be ok. We’re almost there.”A
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Levi couldn’t remember being so tired in his life. Even when his dad had him working long hours as a teenager, he hadn’t felt this exhausted. It was a good kind of tired, though. One earned with accomplishment. After he had fired the farm hands, he had been happy to discover that they had at least kept up with his cattle. The prize breeding stock was well taken care of and his pastures looked good. He spent hours studying bloodlines and creating his own specialized feed that would be mixed by Johnson’s Feed & Seed as soon as he could make time to get into town. He also updated the spreadsheets for the farm’s finances and did maintenance on equipment that had seen better days. It was also up to him to make sure the stock were fed and watered and check all the fences were up to par. He’d also made a first pass at the gravel road trying to fill in some of the holes and smooth out the ruts. He couldn’t believe his mom had been traversing this road on a regular basis and never got anyone
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